She frowned up at me. “Youbecome mine.”
“I’ve been yours for a long time,” I promised her, pulling her hand up to my mouth to kiss her knuckles. It was all I trusted myself with, and it was dangerous enough.
“So we can’t…finish. And wecan?”She raised her brows, prompting me.
“I can touch you. I can kiss you. But I cannot have my fill of you.” I hadn’t meant to confess in quite that way. “Though, I don’t think that would ever be possible. I don’t think I’ll ever have my fill of you.”
She did not say she felt the same. She was too careful. But the red of her lips and the flush of her cheeks, the way she gripped my shirt, meant she did not have to say it for me to understand.
“All right.”
I had to knock on the door to Clan Amber, regretting it all the while.
Ander came to the door himself. Of course it would be Ander; I couldn’t escape him today. It felt as if I would never escape him. Tesa’s face came to my mind, reminding me I had a secret I owed him. But not tonight.
“Cara.” He greeted her first, which was technically a slight given I was the prince, but not one that bothered me. My rank had brought me little joy. “Fieran.”
She smiled at him, then reached out and touched my hand, her fingers trailing over the skin below my bracers. “Goodnight, husband of mine.”
When Ander stepped back, she went into Amber’s corridor without looking back. I had expected it, and yet it still stung.
Ander watched her go. Then he looked at me as if he wondered why I still stood in the doorway, which was a fair question. I had been wondering the same.
“Thank you,” I said.
Ander was quiet for long enough that I thought he might not respond at all. “I don’t do this for you.”
“I know.”
He gave me that too-knowing look, the one that said he had always seen through me and always would. But at least he nodded before he closed the door between us.
Nine
Cara
Returning to the rooms I had shared with Tay stung. The door still stood open between our two doors. I closed it, latched it, then sagged against it. I had not seen Tay since he chose the queen, and when I thought of it, it felt as if a knife had found its way under my armor.
I could hear Clan Amber celebrating down the hall. Ander knocked on my door to check on me and respected my desire to be left alone. A huge shifter named Beck and a surprisingly petite one named Vanya knocked on my door, one of them carrying a plate of food and the other a bag with my few items from Bismyth.
“Dairen told us we had to make sure you ate,” Vanya told me.
“Thank you,” I said, and I felt less alone even with my brother’s room empty beside me and Bismyth on the floor above.
The night was longer than it had any right to be, but it passed, as nights always do. In the morning I went with Clan Amber to train in the arena in the morning and found myself facing Nixi, Maura’s twin sister. It felt as if it had been arrangedthat way, and I faced her, curious if she had arranged it, or if I was being tested, or if she was.
“Careful with each other,” Ander reminded us. “Our real battle is tonight. And then, beyond the Trials.”
We moved into position.
Nixi fought nothing like her sister. Where Maura was rage given form, Nixi moved as if she had a budget for motion.
She tapped my leg with just enough pulled force to bruise before I realized I’d given her the opening. “Mortal. Drop your shoulder when you swing. You are giving the strike away.”
I dropped back, buying myself time to breathe after that blow. But still, it was good advice. “Thank you.”
“Thank me with competence,” she said.
She was as cool as Maura was heated, and I wondered, not for the first time, how they had come to be in two different clans.
