“I’m aware of the queen’s attention.” Fieran rose to his feet. “I’m also aware of what she can and can’t do with it. You’ll keep Cara safe. You’ve proven yourself capable when we were in the arena.”
Every word was hooked, even though I knew it cost him something to reference Ander beating him. Even if I had helped Ander.
Ander looked at him for a long moment. I had the distinct impression of two people who understood each other completely and hated what they understood. “You don’t get to use her.”
“I could not. She has made her decisions.”
Ander’s eyes found mine. The rage dropped and what was underneath it was pity. Not contempt. The expression of someone watching a person they care about walk into something they can see and she cannot. It was worse than anger would have been. “Let me talk to Cara alone.”
Fieran waited until I nodded. His thumb brushed my jaw once, light and deliberate, and then he stepped back and walked toward the far alcove with every appearance of a man whose evening was going exactly as planned.
Ander and I moved into my old room, where he paced among the discarded furniture. He had been annoyed when he discovered this was my room, but now he was too perturbed to even register the clutter. I closed the door behind us, muffling the sounds of celebration; his frustrated face was reflected in a dozen discarded mirrors.
“I chose this,” I said, before he could start.
He rubbed a hand over his face. In the dimmer light, he looked exhausted, and not from the Hunt. “I have no doubt you believe that you did.”
“Ididchoose it. To protect him. To protect what he’s trying to create.”
“He’s let you want something badly enough to make a decision you can’t undo, Cara.” He caught my hand in his to raise it between our faces. The light glinted off the ring, off my sigil and Fear’s. “Think about when he started making the ring. When he had your sigil etched.”
The ring. The sigil I had traced on his skin without knowing he would remember every line.
“I begged Fear to marry me last night,” I told him. “I was afraid Tay was in danger, and now my family will be safe. He wouldn’t do it. He had wanted me to choose him or reject him with a clear mind.”
“Did he?” Ander watched my face. “And is your family indeed safe now?”
I refused to answer. Ander let the words dangle painfully long before he sighed. “I’m not saying this to hurt you. I’m saying it because you’re the most capable mortal I’ve met, and I need you to think clearly.”
“I know he planned this. I understand marrying me serves his plots.”Lightbringer.Shadowbane’s mate had come from Clan Amber. I needed to know her story. I needed to know her powers.
And I needed to protect Lightbringer from the queen.
“You know one layer of his plans,” Ander said. “He set up half a dozen stories to obscure what he wants from you. He is very much the queen’s creature, twisted and devious.”
The words felt like a slap. Fear was always a dozen steps ahead with his plots, but he was nothing like the queen. She was cruel and power-hungry. Fear was genuine in his desire to free mortals and shifters alike. He would do anything for Bismyth.
“He needs me to marry him to serve his plans,” I agreed. “But I need to marry him to protect my family. Fear and I are using each other.”
Ander looked at me with a regretful twist to his lips. “You think he hasn’t planned this, Cara? That every step hasn’t been designed to make youthinkyou chose it?”
His words hit me harder than they should have. The sense of being trapped felt as if it were attached to Ander’s presence, and suddenly all I wanted was to get away from him.
“I understand,” I said coolly. “But could you protect my family? Could you force a bond on the queen that would keep her from slaying them?”
For the briefest time, emotions shifted over Ander’s face, there and gone—he didn’t want any of them to show. Then his jaw hardened and his gaze met mine.
“No,” he said, the word flat. “I cannot.”
“Then it doesn’t matter if Fear manipulated me into marrying him, if he plotted this since the moment he met me.”
His gaze studied mine. “I would do stupid things, too, if it could bring my family back.”
My anger flared. But just as quickly, I heard the ragged edge of Ander’s earlier grief as he faced me. A terrible sense of foreboding gripped my chest, and I found I could no longer meet Ander’s gaze.
“Oh, Cara.” Ander’s voice was gritty with restrained emotion. “It’s for your own sake that I want you with Bismyth. Believe me, I’d be furious otherwise that Fear stole me from you when he could not win you fairly.”
I raised my head sharply. “I’m not a prize to be won.”
