“I don’t need your help with my mother. She should hate you too.” She had warned me not to trust the dragon shifters before I left Stonehaven.
He offered me a new smile, one I had not seen before, both genuine and infuriating. “She does not.”
The distress of competing with Fear for my mother’s approval was childish and infuriating in equal measures. I yanked my belt back on with my knives and was still threading the buckle, the leather sliding down my hips, as I stalked back outside.
My mother stood there with Tay, and suddenly I wished I had asked Fear for his help with a distraction.
“I want you to use the knife on me too,” my mother said abruptly. “Cut out Corbyn’s enchantment.”
“We don’t have to do that.” I felt overwhelmed by the thought of picking up that knife one more time today, and the cutting would hurt my mother, and it was unnecessary. “Corbyn can lift the enchantment.”
She met my gaze, wide-eyed and full of open need. “I don’t want him in my mind.”
Of course I would do that for her, no matter how tired I was. “Can we do it in the morning?”
“It nettles me.”
Those words were so understated, delivered flatly. The evening light caught the gray in her hair, the lines around her eyes. She looked tired. She had looked tired for a long time.
Tay was leaning against the tent post with his arms folded, watching us with the expression he’d worn for years when Maris and I were circling each other. He had the patient, slightly amused attention of someone who already knew the ending of the story. It was so familiar that something in my chest loosened for the first time all day.
“What do you think?” I asked him.
“I think you’ve done harder things today.” He lifted an eyebrow. “And I think Mam has decided, which means you’ve already lost.”
Maris smiled, her eyes crinkling at the corners.
The constellation of the three of us was so ordinary that my breath caught in my chest. My wish that night with Fear in the forest came back to me as it often did: Tay, alive and well, and Lidi with her magic.
Almost there. If I could wrench Lightbringer into being, then I could have both. The thought was both an ache and a glimmer; hope and dread mingled together.
Fear stepped beside me. His voice was quiet, pitched for me alone. “She’s tired. You’re tired. Leave it for the morning.”
I had learned to read his performances by finding the audience: the queen, the clan, the camp. But my mother wouldn’t appreciate being thwarted. Tay wasn’t paying attention; he and my mother had already begun their own side conversation.
Was he simply trying to protect me?
The thought was so simple and so disorienting that I didn’t know what to do with it. “She’s waited long enough.”
His face tightened with frustration. I saw it up close as his lips dipped near my ear, making sure the words were only for me. “You don’t need to burn yourself alive to light the world, you know.”
I looked up at him, and my hand found his shoulder, my fingers sinking into the powerful muscle there to steady myself when the two of us were so close. “Why should you care if I suffer? I hurt you, remember?”
“You are simply so bad at taking care of yourself that I find myself moved by your incompetence.”
I let out a little laugh. It sounded shaky and exhausted. Maybe I couldn’t read him correctly; maybe there was someone to perform for. “I wish you would leave me to suffer.”
It was harder to suffer his alternating cold anger and warmth. At least if I knew he was always performing when he was warm, I could begin to raise a shield.
He raked his hand through his hair, disheveling himself just slightly. It just made him more handsome, even when he looked exasperated. “Well. I will not.”
I hesitated. There was no need to finish the threads of our frustration with each other. “This time, perhaps you’re right.”
He waited me out.
“I’m going to do it anyway. Not because I think you’re wrong.” I looked back at him and tried to see him clearly, tried to see what was truly there. “Because she needs me.”
“She could also need you in the morning, when you’ve had a full night’s sleep and a good breakfast and time to recover.” He looked at me for a long moment. When I was slow to find a retort, he stepped back.
