“Many of the Bismyth dragons despise orcs,” I admitted. “But that could serve your interests. You are a horrible orc.”
He made a sound. Short, compressed, the laugh he made when something had caught him before his defenses were fully in place.
“That is not reassuring,” he said.
“It wasn’t meant to be reassuring. It was meant to be accurate. You rebelled against your father, and you’ve got orc blood on your hands. You’re the son of our lost shifter, and the dragons have long wanted revenge on your father.” I debated what else to say. “I wouldn’t usually have bothered dragging a half-dead orc to the healers, either. My ministrations to wounded orcs have generally run in the opposite direction. I didn’t claim you just to watch you burn.”
He was quiet for a moment. “How long have you known who I was?”
“I was pretty sure from the beginning.”
“Of course you knew,” he said, without heat. “Right.”
The story of our lost dragon shifter had haunted us all, but we’d assumed she’d been killed by the orcs. If we had known she spent years in captivity, that she gave the orc king a son…“We would have come for your mother if we had known.”
He scoffed. “And probably killed a monstrosity like me.”
“That sounds like a bedtime story the orc king would tell. Not our reality.”
He shook his head. “I can’t believe in a story of the past that I could’ve been rescued from.”
“Bismyth would’ve burned down the orc kingdom to get her back…and you. And so would the other clans.” Most of them,anyway. Lazuli was more focused on their texts than on their honor. “You were just a child.”
Kiegan exhaled, the look on his face pained, and urged his horse even faster to get a few paces ahead of us. He needed to be alone with his thoughts.
“I wish things had been different,” Cara said to me quietly.
I thought of Tesa and Ander’s suffering. Of Cara growing up thinking Corbyn was a monster. Of wherever my unknown father’s bones were decaying.
“I wish that every day.”
Night fell. But we dared to keep riding. We were so close to the border.
At the next ridge Kiegan reined his horse to a sudden stop.
In the valley below, between us and the border, spread a series of fires glowing orange against the darkness.
An orc war camp.
Sixteen
Cara
“Your father is fast,” Fear told Kiegan as we moved back off the ridgeline.
“He has always been fast.” Kiegan’s voice was flat. “He is also between us and the border.”
“What does the western pass cost us?”
“A day. Maybe two.”
I did the arithmetic; Fear and Kiegan hadn’t bothered to speak aloud. The fresh possibility of being unclaimed and burning alive—or was that a lie, along with the nightmares?—lit in my chest.
“We’d better make it a day. Kiegan and I have a date with our dragons.”
We rode wildly at first, then at a long, steady pace. Kiegan and Fear glanced at each other in the dark. Better to risk low Fae tricks, though, than to be hemmed in by orcs while we slept.
Sometimes in the dark, when I had lost track of time, my eyes began to drift shut.
