Well, I had their attention. A sea of skeptical faces spread before me.
“I believe Lightbringer is coming, and I believe it matters. But I want to tell you something else. Three days ago I used this knife to cut the queen’s enchantments away.”
When I drew it, light glinted off the blade. The mortals nearest me pulled back slightly before they caught themselves. “I freed two of her Nightwalkers. My own brother.”
They knew this story. But there was more to it.
I raised the blade above my head. “Without Lightbringer, I freed them from the queen. No one but a mortal can wield this knife. We have our own gifts. Gifts that we surrendered to the Fae, bringing them our children to have their magic stripped away.”
Understanding washed over me. There were dozens of mortals to every Fae. Perhaps a hundred to one. “Never again! Why do they take our magic? Because they are afraid of us! You don’t need me. The rebellion needsyou.”
I exhaled. Most of them looked interested, even moved. Others shifted back, eager to leave. The possibility of being raised to something higher than a mortal had been dangled overthem all their lives. It was not easy to see the raising to Fae as a stupid aspiration.
What would Fear say?
“Mortals are not the audience to an epic story about how the dragons saved the kingdom. You are the story.”
I turned. Bismyth was behind me, and the faces I found first were the ones I wanted: Kiegan’s bleak approval and Anayla’s full-hearted smile. I didn’t need to see what the crowd was doing. I could feel the shift.
“I kept my promise to you,”I told Lightbringer.
There was no answer, of course.
Fear took my hand in his. That was for the crowd; the pride on his face might not be. “Only you could give them that hope.”
The girl I’d been in Stonehaven couldn’t have stood before an angry crowd and made that speech. He had given me the beginning, but I had found the rest along the way.
I didn’t know what to do with the way he believed in me when I was still angry. I definitely didn’t know what to do with the complicated feelings churning within me every time I looked at him. His palm was warm and dry against mine; I felt his ring on my finger when we held hands.
Fear raised his other hand, telling the clan it was time to fly.
Then Bismyth was moving, and the morning was opening.
Dragons shifted, then rose into the sky, wings soaring effortlessly. Mortals cheered, and children ran along in their shadows, arms outstretched.
Lidi ran in those shadows, barefoot with other children, Rees racing with them. I wished I was the one with my wings stretched wide. If I were free to rise on these winds, I would’ve done a loop for her and listened to their distant whoops and cheers.
Fear’s arms came around me easily, as if nothing else was expected.
We lifted off into the gray sky with the remaining mortals watching from below. Tay’s upturned face was the last thing I saw before the camp fell away beneath us.
He was waving.
I didn’t know yet that might be the last time.
Forty-One
Cara
We smelled the eastern seawall before we saw it.
Smoke first, thick and black.
By the time we landed, we could smell the monsters, the ichor and the bitter scent and the saltiness of the sea.
And blood.
Fear landed fast, but he had slowed right before the descent. I was on my feet at once, with his hand on my back to steady me as I caught myself.
