“Imagine if we were free. To keep our magic to ourselves, to see what we can do with it?—”
“Our magic is harvested to raise the best mortals to Fae. What could we do with those little wisps of magic anyway?” She gave me a curious look. “You would take away the opportunity to be raised entirely? How does the prince plan to raise us into shifters?”
I felt as if I had stumbled into quicksand, composed of Fieran’s lies. Luckily, she looked past me. “Oh—I have to get back. Bismyth will be waiting on their wine.”
“And Malachite will be waiting a long time,” I said.
She shared a grin with me as she backed toward the door. Then I was left alone in the life dome.
I looked for the three stars clustered together. Tay’s and Lidi’s were tattered and dull compared to the brightness of my unstable star, its color and size ever-changing. And Fear’s—I couldn’t have missed Fear’s star, bright and blue, if I had tried. Ander’s words came back to me.
“The ones we love might not be special, but when we see them, they shine a little brighter.”
I’d accidentally confessed to Fear before that conversation with Ander when I asked him why his star looked so bright. The thought still made me cringe.
I left the stars behind and kept a watchful eye out for any impatient Malachite shifters.
After, Bismyth still celebrated. The noise in the barracks hit me like a slap at first. It took me a moment to adjust.
Dair plucked a bread roll from my plate without asking and bit into it. I gave him a look, but he ignored it magnificently. “We knew you’d come around eventually.”
“I didn’tcome around. Circumstances meant I had to help Fear, and apparently that means I’ll be one of you—eventually.” But the truth was I had wanted to be. It had bothered me to stand outside that door to Bismyth and knock before, no longer welcome inside without permission.
I might want Bismyth more than I wanted Fear, to be honest. Fear was charming and complicated. Bismyth already felt like home.
“She came around,” Dairen said, to no one in particular. He was already reaching for my throat, and I almost lost a roll trying to step back before I understood. He had a dark purple cloak over his arm.
“Not yet,” Asrael warned, catching his forearm. “You know Fear’s orders. She’s returning to Amber.”
Dair grimaced. “But not for long. The selection ceremony is soon. It should betomorrow, but the queen has delayed it for Fear’s engagement celebrations?—”
“Hence,not yet.” Asrael’s voice was edged with exasperation.
Dairen told me confidentially. “He’s thrilled. He just expresses it through disapproval of everyone else’s happiness.”
“Just yours,” Asrael said without stopping.
“A week’s respite before we face the potential of our fiery deaths,” Sera said brightly, bumping my shoulder. “Well, not you. We all know now you’ll be claimed.”
“Of course you’ll be claimed. What dragon wouldn’t want you?” I meant it.
Both of us glanced at Kiegan involuntarily. He paused in the midst of tearing into a whole chicken, grease smeared in his beard stubble, to give us a dark look.
“He’ll be chosen.” I thought of Ironheart—a strange but powerful dragon—who had been my bet for Kiegan when I read through the Bismyth Dragon Compendium. “He’s the best of us in his own way.”
“Of course.” Sera echoed my earlier words.
But we both worried, because he was half-orc and barely toleratedhere.I had no idea what the dragons would make of him, and I resolved to ask Fear. Or rather, Shadowbane, through Fear.
Fear came to a stop beside me and reached past my shoulder for a glass, close enough that I caught the warmth of him and the faint smoke-and-salt smell that I had spent months trying not to notice.
“The sigil on the ring. You made it from when I traced it.” On his chest, in the dark, half-asleep. “You were plotting.”
He reached over and refilled my wine without asking before he poured his own. “Are you impressed? Or angry?””
When I stared at him, he looked back at me with an expression that was placid in that infuriating way of his, the one that meant he was pleased with himself and had absolutely no intention of apologizing for it. It was a very familiar smile.
“Neither. I simply can’t stand you,” I told him.
