She was too careful for anything to show but for the flashing of her golden eyes. She let another moment pass, the two of us staring at each other above the roar of the crowd. Her lips pursedas they did when working through problems. I had seen that look quite often; I was often a formidable problem.
The queen wanted me dead, and I was not, which was proof of the value of the royal protection magic, but it was a slender shield. Generational only. Parent to heir and spouse and siblings, heir to parent and spouses and siblings, preventing patricide and filicide. No further. I assumed that, like some dreadful spider-monster, my mother had murdered my father once she had what she needed from him. If she could have found a way to unmake that ancient enchantment on the royals, she would have.
“Who?” Her eyes moved across the arena floor with the slow, methodical sweep of a woman who had centuries of practice reading a room. Bismyth. Amber. Obsidian. The unclaimed.
As is always the case with predators, the movement caught her attention. Bismyth cut through the crowd, getting Cara to safety.
“The mortal.” The word carried a weight of revulsion she didn’t bother to conceal here, where only I could hear it.
“She has a name.”
“She has nothing. Sheisnothing.” She stopped, setting aside the distaste to replace it with something colder. “What could you possibly want with her?”
I let her see the satisfaction I’d been holding back since the bond locked.
Would I have spared Cara this danger?
I would not undo the bond even if I could. I had longed for her to choose me and slide my ring onto her finger, and not just because that served my plans and ruined my mother’s.
“She walks into your arena as a mortal and comes out the other side. The mortals watch and whisper, and hope spreads across the kingdom.” I let myself smile. “She is becoming their salvation, and I intend to stand at her side.”
Let her think it was politics. Let her think I was building a mortal faction, a popular movement, some new shape of the old game between us. Let her be surprised by Lightbringer.
She studied me with those calculating eyes, weighing what I’d given her against what she suspected. “How very common of you.”
“Mother.” I inclined my head. “A pleasure, as always.”
“The Claiming ceremony can be so unpredictable.” Her voice was pleasant, as if she were discussing the weather. “It would be a shame if your mortal found herself unclaimed.”
If a dragon did not claim her at the ceremony, Cara would burn alive. After this delay of these five Hunts, every shifter would either fly or burn.
She didn’t need to kill Cara. She only needed to keep anyone from saving her. It was almost elegant.
“She cannot fathom Lightbringer,”Shadowbane murmured, and if my heart had started beating faster at the threat, that soothed my fear.“She cannot fathom how we will shake this world with our mates at our sides.”
I descended the stairs. My wife was waiting.
Two
Fieran
Ilaid two fingers over my heart and murmured the words of my enchantment as I walked across the still-cheering arena floor. The tracking spell I’d left on Cara spooled out in front of me like a rope tethering her to me.
Shifters tried to congratulate me as I walked, and I nodded and thanked them and kept moving.
Cara hadn’t asked me to lift my tracking enchantment on her, and I wasn’t going to offer. Following the thread now brought up flashes of memory: feeling her break the barrier, feeling terror spike through the enchantment, plunging through the labyrinth to find her. My heart beat faster now just recalling my fear.
When I found Bismyth in one of the grottos where we sometimes trained, my gaze skipped over everyone else, seeking Cara. My clan parted without my asking, as if cued by whatever was visible in my face now that I faced them instead of the queen. More than I would have allowed if I could.
Asrael met my eyes briefly. The question in his gaze was the one no one had asked aloud yet, but that he would demand I answer in private. What was this going to cost Cara?
“Poor girl,” Anayla murmured, but her smile softened the words. “Lucky you.”
Rees stood beside Cara, her fingers resting on his head; he was enormous and black and far too intelligent for his species, a hellhound in temperament if not in origin. Her best bodyguard. My gift to her.
She looked up as I came through the last of the clan. Her eyes were too bright. The bond between us pulled me forward, an unsettling force that would not resolve withouther.
I had tricked her into creating a sigil, tricked her into wearing my ring, tricked her into my arms. I had never imagined that I was tricking myself most of all. I had not let myself see how much I needed her.
