His jaw clenched at the contact as he slid one arm beneath my back and another under my knees, lifting me so I fell against his chest. I wrapped my arm around his neck to steady myself and stared at his collarbone instead of his face.
The wound was sealed. The rest of me felt scraped hollow. I was trapped in a body that had given too much and been allowed too little time to recover.
The world was a blur of the healers’ quarters, stone corridors, the waterfall, the stairs. But always, the one constant: his arms, the smooth leather against my cheek, his hard-angled jaw in the corner of my vision.
When we walked back through the doors of Clan Bismyth, the scent of food and the noise of revelry hit us both. The scent of spiced wine and sweets hung in the air; music played, voices were raised, and laughter was everywhere.
The Last Hunt was over; Bismyth celebrated. It struck me with shock to realize that none of what had happened to me in the past hours—trying to kill my husband, being betrayed by my dragon, almost dying for it—was even known to them. I did not feel like the same woman who had padded barefoot downstairs to Clan Amber’s territory just this morning.
Fieran changed instantly.
He warmed like the sun itself. The tension left him in a single breath, and something else moved in: the ease and light that lived in him when he was among his own. He drew me closer. His jaw brushed the top of my head. His hand at my hip shifted, settled, and began tracing an absent pattern against my side.
But I knew that touch wasn’t absent at all. It was deliberate.
A cheer went up at the sight of us. Kiegan caught my eye and gave me one of his not-quite-successful winks.
Anayla and Asrael stood together in one corner, looking troubled as they cast glances at us; then Anayla caught my gazeon her, and she smiled. But there was no erasing her shadows. My stomach tightened.
What was happening to Bismyth? Anayla and Asrael adored Fieran.
Fear settled with me in his lap at his usual chair at the long table. His arm around my waist usually felt like an anchor; tonight, it was dragging me down below the surface of the sea.
“Be gentle with Cara,” Fieran ordered as his clanmates surrounded us, and his voice carried his usual amused, exasperated affection with them, as if nothing weighty had happened today. “I’d keep my wife away from you all while she regains her strength, but we have to plan our next steps.”
“Are we getting out of here?” Riordan blurted out.
Fear’s arm tightened around me. I would’ve thought it was comfort, but tonight I knew it was play-acted comfort, if anyone was even keen-eyed enough to notice and appreciate it. Gods, what a magnificent liar he was.
“Soon,” he promised.
Because we had to get out of here; Tay and Lidi and Mam were gone, and the unmaking knife had been used to heal me, and the queen would know why, and Bismyth would be punished. The queen’s reach seemed impossible to escape, but it had to be worse that we were within swatting distance from her castle.
My next thought was almost a prayer.“Lightbringer. Please.”
As usual with my prayers, it went unanswered.
Dairen handed me a plate. Roast chicken and crisp red grapes and buttery cheese and still-warm bread. The smell of it opened a hollow feeling in my stomach. I hadn’t eaten since before everything went wrong, and the hunger was sharp enough to embarrass me. But though I forced myself to chew one piece after another, I tasted none of it.
Someone brought Fieran a plate too. He picked up the fruit tart—my favorite—and put it into my hand. A thoughtful gesture for others to observe. I ate it but did not taste it.
When he turned his face and brushed his lips over my temple, I could feel his smile against my skin. The touch was warm and easy, and it made me want to die.
“I’m tired,” I murmured into the warm hollow of his throat.
“I’ve got you,” he told me quietly. Once, those kinds of words had warmed me. Now, I knew they were for a purpose.
He carried me away, down the hall. The noise of the revelry faded behind us. He shouldered open his door and carried me in.
It was all restored to order now: the bed made, the lamp on the desk down low, the windows closed against Obsidian encroachers and the cool night air. Glowing coals smoldered in the stone fireplace.
It was only when he had closed the door behind us that I said, “We aren’t going to sleep in the same bed.”
It was not quite a question, not quite a statement.
“Of course we are.”
I had half-expected him to deposit me on my feet as soon as we entered, like an angry cat he had cuddled only to discover its claws. But he settled me into the bed carefully, though not with the reverence that had once come over his face. It might have been an act then.
