Then my mother was there, running toward us frantically. I smiled at Lidi and gave her a gentle shove toward her, hoping that smile had seemed like more than the bearing of teeth. I could not deal with my mother right now.
“I came home to find you all, and the house was empty.” She sounded furious, but fury and fear often were knit together for her. “Where did you go?”
“We’re all fine,” I said woodenly. Though it wasn’t true. None of us would ever be the same after today. “Tay needed a healer.”
Ander had picked my brother up again to carry him home; Tay’s pale face lolled against his shoulder. He tried to rouse himself, muttering, and my mother pressed her hand to her mouth, her face crumpling like an apple decayed.
“A healer,” my mother repeated.
“Lidi and I took him.” The words were flat and heavy. It was another time that I had carried the burden on my own when I wished I’d had my mother. “While we were here, burrowers attacked, and the shifters…”
Dairen looked stricken, as if he were on the verge of confessing, and I shot him a hot, hate-filled look that my mother didn’t see because she was focused on Tay. I was the one who had ruined every life in our family; I wanted to choose how we had that conversation.
Ander looked at me over both their heads, his gaze scrutinizing, and then his gaze flickered to Fieran. Something unspoken passed between Fieran and Ander.
“We were able to stop the burrower attack,” Ander told my mother. “Everything is going to be all right. They’re gone. But now there’s a lot of devastation with which to reckon.”
“Take Lidi home, Mam.” I hadn’t called my mother that in a long time, but she looked so small, almost mouse-like, with her arms wrapped around Lidi. She looked at me as if she wanted to hug me, and if I were a better person, I would’ve reached to hug her. “Ander will carry Tay home. The healer gave him something so he could rest.”
“Lead the way.” Ander seemed to project confidence and calm that even cooled my mother’s fear.
Fieran smiled and inclined his head to my mother respectfully, but she gave him a long, cold look that made me realize how much we probably looked alike, except for twenty-five years between us.
Lidi waved goodbye to Fieran, who waved back. The look that passed between Fieran and Lidi—as if they were bonded by him stealing her magic—enraged me. Lidi didn’t know yet what she had lost.
As soon as they had gone, Dairen tried to speak to me, his tone distraught. I put my hand up to stop him, turning away. It might not be his fault that he’d been healed by my sister’s stolen magic, but I wasn’t ready.
“I need to talk to you,” I told Fieran tightly.
“I need to talk to you,” he returned. He didn’t seem to share Dairen’s grief and regret. “Privately.”
He swept his arm to indicate someplace—it was hard to tell where, given the destruction of the village around us. I raised my chin and went with him, though.
Fieran had the ability to take my sister’s magic. He’d done it without the ceremony with which the Fae stripped our magic away. The ceremony hid how vulnerable we were, how our magic could be taken at anytime. But the shifters were Fae-born too; their magic just took a different shape. I’d never seen them the same as the Fae who stole our magic.
Until today.
The streets were wreckage. Orx wandered outside, his face stunned, and stared at his ruined window and door. Then he bent and began to pick up fragments of smashed relics that had sat in the shop window.
Someone was weeping in the ashes of the village. I couldn’t see them, but I heard them crying.
“Let’s get out of here,” Fieran said, as if he needed to be away from this scene. He tried to guide us between two half-collapsed buildings toward the forest.
I stopped and faced him instead. I wasn’t stepping into the trees with him. From here, I could still hear the woman weeping, and I didn’t want to leave the devastation behind. Fieran would go soon, but we would be left with pain that lasted years.
“I thought you were supposed to protect us.” My voice came out cool and hard.
“That is the job.” He looked at me with an unflappable calm that made me want to hurt him. “And that’s what we did today.”
“My village is destroyed. Half the houses are damaged?—”
“There are two dead,” he interrupted. “A tragedy. But not the tragedy it would have been if we hadn’t been here to stop the monsters. Your village would have been annihilated.”
“I thought you could protect us—I thought you were like—” I cut myself off. I’d been about to saygods, but I couldn’t admit that. I couldn’t admit, either, that I’d felt safe because he was here in the village. I’d been looking for him as if he would rescue us, right before he ruined everything.
“How do I help, Cara?” he cut in, his voice steady, almost gentle, as if it could possibly be that simple to undo what he’d done.
For a heartbeat, I could only stare at him. The smell of smoke and blood hung heavy in the air, the ruins of my world stretching around us. My hands were shaking—not from fear, not entirely—but from the sheer effort of holding everything together.
