Side by side, Tesa and I walked toward a conversation that we both dreaded.
Forty-Five
Fear
Tesa raised her mask and slid into the shadows as I approached Ander’s door. It stood open like an invitation, but when I glanced in the doorframe, Ander’s quarters were empty.
I lingered in the doorway a moment as if he might come back. But the lamp was unlit, a map half-unfurled on the table, his pack against the wall.
I stood there a moment longer because I had steeled myself to come face-to-face with Ander now. Dread knotted in my chest.
Nixi came down the hall. “What are you doing here, Bismyth?”
Nixi had hated me for choosing Maura over her, and now she seemed to hate me for casting out Maura.
“Are you looking for your wife?” she asked before I could answer. “She’s in her room.”
Why would she know where Cara was within Bismyth’s floors? “I’m looking for your clan leader.”
“Ander is with her,” she said.
I didn’t give her the pleasure of the reaction for which she wished. My horror stayed entirely internal. “Thank you.”
“He’s with your wife,”Shadowbane observed as I headed for the stairs.“Are you curious about their conversation?”
“She won’t have told him.” I was nearly certain. I usually read people so well, but when it came to Cara,nearlywas the best I could do.
“Because she gave her word? Or because she will try not to betray your trust?”
I did not have a good answer. She had betrayed my trust once before, but if I reminded Shadowbane, he would yell at me about how I had betrayed her too. He could give me a headache.
“You should tell her that you still desire her,”Shadowbane instructed.“You have not stopped wanting her for a moment, even when you are bristly and rude. Ah! Or show it. She is with your so-called-enemy, after all. Perhaps they are sitting quite close. Perhaps he has clapped his hand to her shoulder, to comfort her, like a comrade?—”
“You can’t convince me to be jealous.”I cut in, my tone a bit hotter than it should have been.
Shadowbane’s concept of courtship involved both generosity and possessiveness to degrees that seemed unhinged.
“A display of jealousy might mean something to Cara. One might assume that you take her love for granted.”
“She tried to kill me. She doesn’t love me at all.”
Shadowbane sighed.“Tiresome. Of course you know she does.”
For a few seconds, I didn’t answer him. Then I admitted,“It doesn’t count when she has no choice.”
“So give her a chance to choose you.”
I heard his voice and hers before I reached the door. It had been left open, which I appreciated, for the sake of how the clan might look at Ander emerging from our quarters.
“If he could forgive me. If we could forgive each other.” Cara sounded less angry than she often was when we spoke to each other. I searched for the right word to name her emotion.
“Wistful.”Shadowbane supplied helpfully.
Something twisted in my chest. I would’ve liked to eavesdrop, but I came into the room just as Ander was asking dryly, “If you regret it, have you tried apol?—”
He cut himself off when he saw me. Ander was sitting in the chair by the window. Cara was on the edge of the bed. Both of them looked at me with startled faces, not quite guilty, but certainly unsettled by my arrival.
Ander recovered first, but I cut him off as he started to speak.
