The Nightwalkers had dissolved back into their shadows, and the world itself felt empty.
Thirty-Three
Fear
Bismyth prepared quickly to leave the Trials. It wasn’t long before we were standing in the arena, surrounded by our packs.
I stood with Anayla and Asrael, mapping out our path. I’d send a smaller contingent to carry out the queen’s mission. We needed to get Cara’s family and my Nightwalkers to the rebellion.
Suddenly Anayla touched my arm. I followed her gaze to where Cara was deep in conversation with a mortal servant. Helda, I was pretty certain.
“We have a problem with the mortals,” Anayla told me quietly. “They’re losing faith in Cara.”
“They’ll find it again. Corbyn’s gained new mortal recruits as the story spreads.” We just needed it to be more than a story.
I stepped forward. “Bismyth, ready to fly.”
They all called back to me, cheering out their readiness. We all wanted to be free of this place.
“I will carry my wife,” I declared, my wings spreading to either side.
Cara, who had faced down a monster with nothing more than a shovel, looked far more shaken by being carried in my arms. But she smiled, a beat too late, and came toward me.
“We are going to get your family,” I told her quietly. She would do anything for them. We had certainly established that fact at length.
When she reached my side, I touched the empty scabbard at her hip. She looked up at me, her eyes flashing dangerously.
“You seem to have lost a blade,” I told her, though we both knew damn well where she had lost it. Her body was so close to mine. It felt intimate, gripping the scabbard at her hip. I slid the enchantment knife home into the scabbard. “You should carry this one. You are the one who has the power to wield it. You will be the one who frees mortals from the queen’s enchantments.”
“Perhaps I should carry the blade I failed with,” she muttered.
I usually read her so easily, but I wasn’t sure now whether she meant she might make a second murder attempt or if she intended to serve the rebellion with the weapon she had used to almost destroy it.
“I’ve decided to keep that one as a souvenir.”
I smiled down at her, looping a strand of her long blond hair around my finger. For the view of the clan, for the mortals. The way the two of us were standing so close must look as if we were intimately close, husband and wife, as Bismyth expected.
And if my devoted wife sometimes glared at me as if she hated me…. Well. Bismyth knew me and likely understood her.
I scooped her into my arms. She stared resolutely at my collarbone but put her arms around my neck obediently.
Then Bismyth launched. One contingent to the queen’s mission, the rest to the rebel encampment. I would lead mysmall group to collect my Nightwalkers and Cara’s family from the safe house.
I launched myself into the air, and Cara’s grip tightened around my neck. She looked grim about it. She didn’t even see the mortals who had come out to the arena to wave goodbye.
Quietly, I told her, “Corbyn is doing us a great favor by allowing us to bring your family and my Nightwalkers into the midst of the rebellion.”
“Am I supposed to be grateful to my father then?” she asked me pointedly. “Is that what you want from me?”
“Seeing as I know you, I was not particularly expecting gratitude,” I said dryly. “I was merely trying to explain to you the texture of the problem that we face. You want honesty from me, do you not?”
Her chin was tight. “That might be a start in…”
Her words failed. She didn’t have it in her to say it: in fixing things between us. She would never admit it if she even wished for that. It would be a vulnerability. What if I did not wish to fix things between us? But was there any way of fixing things between two people when one of them had tried to kill the other?
“We have to be allies. We have to be husband and wife.” I brushed my lips over her temple, and even though we were in the air, her body shied away from me. It was as if she were more afraid of proximity to me now than she was of height itself. “It would help if we could be friends.”
“How?” There was the thinnest edge of vulnerability in the question.
