“Lidi.” My voice came out cracked and broken, raw with the emotion I always tried to protect her from.
She struggled up in my arms. “It’s all right, Cara.”
More lies.
Ander and Fieran crowded the doorway.
Fieran carried my brother’s sleeping form.
Fifteen
Lidi was different.
I took a breath, steadying myself. Ander and Fieran were both looking on, which was going to kill me.
“Lidi, honey,” I asked. “What happened? I left you with Orx.”
Maybe it wasn’t what I thought. Maybe I was wrong.
“The shifters were in trouble,” she said. “So I had to help them.”
“Lidi, they don’t need your help.” I glanced at Fieran, despite my best intentions. He looked even more god-like than he had yesterday, tall and muscular and seeming to glow from within. There was no mistaking him for a mortal. “They’re shifters.”
“She called us into the shop when we were on the run,” Fieran supplied helpfully. “She’s clever and brave like her sister.”
“I didn’t askyouwhat happened, Fieran.” The words would’ve sounded more hostile if I didn’t sound so shaky. “Lidi. Did the monsters hurt you?”
Did the burrowers take your magic?Maybe I had misunderstood what I saw from a distance. I didn’t want to examine why I felt so desperate for that to be the answer.
But no matter what, the magic that would have paid for Tay’shealing was lost. Despair was a wild, writhing thing in my chest, something that made it impossible to breathe fully.
I dared another furious look at Fieran. Had they endangered my sister? Had she been bitten and had her magic taken by the burrowers? There was blood on her arm, and I took her wrist in mine carefully, peeling back the fabric slowly and expecting to find a wound.
But there was no wound.
Someone else’s blood had soaked into her clothes while they stole from her.
“They needed my magic,” Lidi said in a small, hesitant voice.
“Who needed your magic?” I asked, slow and thick and unwilling.
“We did.” Fieran stepped beside Lidi, towering over us both. He rested his hand on her shoulder, and I almost ripped it off to try to beat him with it, no matter how much bigger he was than me.
“Don’t touch my sister,” I ground out as I rose to my feet.
He studied me with an expression I couldn’t read, but crossed his arms over his chest.
I whirled, the world red at the edges. Both Fieran and Dairen were soaked in blood. Dairen watched me with wide, worried eyes.
“Which one of you?” I barely recognized my own voice, livid with rage.
Fieran wasn’t even looking at me. His gaze was soft, kind, focused on Lidi.
“It’s all right, Lidi,” Fieran said.
He spoke if he had some rotted bond with her, and I knew, and I wanted to rip his eyes out, and I wanted to fall to the ground and scream.
“What did you do?” I demanded. I looked down at Lidi, and her eyes were wide and afraid, the way they’d been when the townie kids picked on her about her magic.
