One
Fieran
My mother had a new gift for me: a wedding.
The gleaming arena had been rebuilt since monsters crashed into the stands, endangering mortals and Fae alike, who clogged the stands again tonight as if they had already forgotten. On the dais, where the queen usually stood alone, three thrones now rose.
Three thrones made of dragon’s bones, dipped in gold; I had never seen twins of her own terrible throne. Shadowbane’s restlessness lashed inside me at the sight, as it always did.
The question was only the specific shape of the trap. Either she intended to make a mockery of what I’d plotted with Cara or marry me to someone else. Mockery for its own sake was not her usual style. She wrapped gentle charm around the blades of her plans, and they cut no less sharp.
Just last night, Cara had asked me to marry her. Begged me, really.
I hadn’t wanted Cara to bind herself to me to shield her family while she was out of her mind with terror. I had told herno in a fit of sentimental foolishness. Now I was going to pay for in front of everyone my mother could fit in the stands. My delay had been uncharacteristically moral of me, and I regretted it immensely.
The herald’s voice cut the murmur. “The queen calls her son to her side.”
I turned before the echo died, and I let myself seek Cara, just as I yearned to. I checked with Ander first, but he stood there straight-backed, his arms crossed and his face a mask. I frowned, and my gaze skipped on to Bismyth.
Cara stood straight-backed at the center of my clan as if she had always belonged there. Her striking ocean-colored eyes were wide with worry. She took a step toward me as if she would fight the queen at my side.
She couldn’t, but her desire still settled on my skin like a claim.
Shadowbane, in my head, somehow managed to snort despite being a disembodied voice.“A claim you have no right to.”
Perhaps.But one I would never surrender anyway.
I winked at her.Hold, Cara. My fierce little mortal.
She was just as much dragon shifter as mortal, but it was her mortal side that made her so incredible. No wonder the mortals were ready to deify her after seeing her command griffins and throw herself into the fray to save them.
The stands were packed as I climbed the steps to the queen’s dais. Fae were in the best tiers, wearing careful expressions because the queen and her spies and her Nightwalkers saw all. Mortals crushed tight in the poorer sections, every one of them pressing toward the rail for a better view. Magic shimmered in the air, distorting the edges of faces into a blur of jewel-bright eyes and eager mouths.
The queen was luminous and composed as she always was for a ceremony. She watched me climb with the glowing smile she reserved for moments of her most gleeful cruelty.
“You look prepared,” she said, low enough that only I heard it.
“I always am.”
The look she gave me was long and amused, almost fond, as if she had come to enjoy my struggle for freedom. “We will see.”
Sometimes it felt as if she saw things as a game between us. As if she had not tried to get me killed to the best of her ability, given the magic that bound us, and as if I had not returned the favor with a murder attempt.
“When Lightbringer returns, she will eat the queen.”Shadowbane’s voice was his signature growl, accompanied by his signature promise of violence.
“She can’t eat the queen any more than you can,”I reminded Shadowbane. But I understand the urge to indulge in the fantasy.
“We will celebrate today,” my mother said, her voice now carrying through the whole arena with that particular melodic amplification she had perfected over centuries, “with a great hunt of the creatures that have stalked our lands.”
The crowd responded. Hunts always worked on them: the combination of safety promised and danger displayed was the most effective theater she managed.
“This is a special day, indeed,” she continued, “because I am pleased to announce my son Fieran’s wedding.”
The shock and excitement below were immediate.
Bismyth would close around Cara. Clan Amber would protect her as well. Its leader, Ander, who had claimed her for their clan in his perpetually delightful and useful jealousy, would use this as proof of my deceit.
Cara herself was hard to predict. She was an outsider to our world, but she was sharp, and she moved through it as if she intended to bend it to her will. Sometimes that was a gift, and sometimes I thought it would lead to our doom. Given she had pieced together my plan to drag Lightbringer back into this world before we married, just in time for my mother to enchant her and babble my plots, I was leaning towarddoom.
