“So is Shadowbane, half the time,” he promised me. “Always a lecture.”
“At least Shadowbane still has some sense,”Lightbringer muttered in the back of my mind.
“She misses him terribly,” I said. There was a sound of annoyance in the back of my mind.
Fear nodded. “Shadowbane too. He adores her. He’s missed her for so long. I think he’s been lonely, coming back to this world over and over while she stays dreaming.”
I leaned my head against his shoulder because I was tired, and he was my husband.
I wondered if he and Ander could ever reconcile. I didn’t know much about forgiveness. I sometimes woke at night still furious about childhood grievances. Apparently Kiara Liverson, who had pushed me into a mud puddle when I was eleven, had grown into a lovely person, but I didn’t care to know her.
But I wanted to believe. I was glad about Fear going to Tesa and the way Ander had said her name and the looks on both their faces as they studied each other.
That brief glimmer of joy faded into worrying about my brother. Corbyn was working to find him. Staying with the rebellion was the right choice. It still cost me.
“Do you think we can save Tay?” I’d made my voice very soft because it was not trustworthy. “Do you think, in the end, I’ll get to Tay alive and well and Lidi with her magic?”
It was not the thing that mattered most to me anymore. But it still mattered.
“He’s not gone, Cara.” His strong arm was around my waist, and he dropped a kiss in my hair, and I was too tired to think about an audience. “He’s walking in the wrong direction—in every way—but he’s not gone.”
When I blinked, tears spilled onto my cheeks.
Fear shifted, his arm no longer around me. I looked up at him, startled, his handsome face a blur.
Gently, he wiped away my tears.
“Someday, I still believe we’ll get to Tay alive and well, and Lidi with her magic.” He said it the way he said things he had decided to make true.
It was still his promise.
I turned my face back into his shoulder.
Forty-Seven
Cara
Icouldn’t sleep that night. I woke up in the middle of the night and stared at the ceiling, my heart pounding. The terror was not for myself but for Tay, wherever he was.
I glanced at Fear beside me, wishing he was awake to give me company. Even though he could be the most exasperating company, he was also comforting.
“What are you doing to me, Lightbringer? It’s your mate bond with Shadowbane that is driving me mad, isn’t it?”
Because I thought of Fear far too often in ways that did not suit mereallies.Even now, taking in the powerful line of his shoulder, the place where the sheet had slid away to reveal his even olive skin, desire whispered under the surface of all my other thoughts.
“Definitely your fault.”
It wasn’t as if the dragon could disagree. If she wouldn’t speak to me, she would bear the allegations.
Fear stirred, and then his eyes opened. His golden eyes seemed to glow in the dark. “Cara?”
I had wanted him to wake up. I’d willed him to wake up. And now that he was awake, I wasn’t sure what to do with him. To be fair, I never knew what to do with Fear.
“I know you’re still angry. But we are allies, aren’t we?”
His lips quirked. “Always. Always the best of allies.”
“Then would you distract me for tonight?” The words came out sounding too vulnerable. Too raw. “It’s stupid. Never mind.”
