She patted the seat beside her, and my resolve stiffened. She’d just looked at me as if she’d seen too much. She might know I’d thrown myself to Lightbringer’s mercy…and fallen.
“There she is.” Dairen gestured with a bread roll to the seat. “We saved you the seat with the wobbly leg.”
“Generous.” I sat because I had to.
Anayla passed me a cup and filled it with tea without being asked.
Fear took the seat beside me. Of course he did. His arm settled along the back of my chair, closing the distance I’d been trying to hold around myself, and he said something to Dairen that made the table laugh, and the performance was so immediate and so seamless that the ground shifted.
He’d saidI’ve got youand looked at me so unguardedly, and in that moment, it had felt real. But was anything with Fear real?
Anayla leaned in. “Are you all right?”
“Of course,” I said brightly. Then I realized it was too much, too bright a response, when the barracks were empty and Bismyth was the only ones left here.
Because of me.
They all knew they were trapped here because of me.
I felt like an actress who had forgotten her lines. I was supposed to pretend everything was fine with Fear, but no one would expect me to be fine with Lightbringer’s rejection.
She leaned her face into my hair, her hand resting lightly on my shoulder, and I closed my eyes against the intimacy. I’d been jealous of how easily physical Bismyth was with each other, how it showed their friendship, and usually, I would have appreciated Anayla’s friendship.
But today I felt overwhelmed and jittery, and I wanted to be alone. Untouched.
“You don’t have to be fine,” she whispered. “Do you want to get out of here?”
Gods, yes. But alone.
She was so gentle.
“I’m fine,” I promised her, my voice level and warm as I could manage. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings by being cold. I didn’t dare, anyway. I couldn’t lose Anayla.
She looked as if she were deciding whether to press or not, and I hoped she would not, and then she murmured, “You jumped off the overlook.”
“Lightbringer and I are still working out who’s in charge. I was pressing the issue.”
Anayla covered my hand with hers. Her eyes were warm and steady and impossible to meet. “I’m here. You didn’t need to go up there alone.”
“I was hoping she’d object more to me flinging myself to my doom.” I let out a little laugh that didn’t sound very much like a laugh, then realized how loud it seemed, because the room had gone awfully quiet.
Anayla had the briefest flash of hurt across her face, as if I had rejected her. I realized a beat too late that she had offered to be with me at the overlook if I went again, and I regretted glossing over the offer.
“I was watching.” Fear leaned toward us, and his smoke and his spicy, clean scent and his warmth washed over me. His presence felt overwhelming as his attention turned toward Anayla, and he offered us both an easy grin, but now it was clear he had always been listening.
It felt overwhelming and dark, Fear’s admission that he was watching. Always watching. But the rest of the table seemed to find it a comfort.
Of course he was watching.
“Lightbringer must have known you were there,” Anayla said. To me, gently, “You can’t force a dragon. Can’t command a dragon. Can’t trick a dragon.”
Then how the hell did Fear keep Shadowbane under control when tricks were all Fear knew?
“So what’s the problem?” Dair demanded cheerfully. “You’ve won us all over. Why is your dragon being difficult?”
I felt cut to the quick, even though Dair had wrapped the all-too-relevant question in tenderness.
“Have I won you all over? Did you feel you were missing out before when you didn’t have a fragile mortal of your very own to protect from monsters?” I said it lightly, laughing. And it didn’t land. I felt the faint unamused shift in the room.
