It was the first time he’d ever asked, even though I had begun to think he could banish my nightmares. I’d never had them when I slept in his bed. He’d been my escape from the nightmares of the Trials.
“There was a satyr who tried to stop me,” I said, after a while.
He said nothing. He was listening.
“I didn’t know how afraid the low Fae are of us. The mortals there were enchanted, but when she saw that I was not…she was terrified.”
“The world is a brutal place for mortals and sometimes because of mortals,” he said. “It’s the same for dragon shifters. By turns we are the terrified and the terror.”
The world felt unbearable today, and Fear was not particularly helping.
“I made the right choice. Didn’t I? To get the knife, I started a fire. Do you think they made it out?”
Fear was quiet for a moment. “You made the best choice.”
I scoffed and buried my face in my hands. The thought that maybe he was right was overwhelming. There had been no right choice, no honorable choice. Just thebestchoice, the one that stole some power from the queen, that protected my family and could be used to protect more.
“Do you want to know what happened with Tesa?” he asked.
“Do you want to tell me?”
“Not at all.” He raked his hand through his hair and glanced at Kiegan in his bedroll. “Ander had to be the one who killed the queen. I could not.”
“The enchantment.”
“It’s deeper than an enchantment, or I’d have hacked it out of me while we were still on horseback,” he said dryly. “Ander was with the queen. There were two groups of rebels on different missions as part of that work: a larger group led by a rebel leader, a smaller one led by Tesa.”
“We ended up in a situation where I could not get everyone out.” Fear’s gaze had gone far away, as if he was not quite with me anymore. “Ander tried to bargain with the queen to save Tesa.”
He seemed to shake the memories off, offering a wry smile. “She broke the bargain, of course. We both lost everything in the end.”
I reached to rest my hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
Fear looked at me, startled, as if he had not expected the touch. As if he did not feel he deserved it. When he shrugged resignedly, I felt it in my palm. “Ander says I let his world burn. He’s not wrong.”
“You would’ve saved Tesa if you could have,” I said. “You had to make a hard choice.”
Perhaps he had made the best decision.
He nodded as if he believed me. “I shouldn’t have said we lost everything. I saved our chance of one day findingyou.All that matters is that we wrench the queen off her cruel throne. Not whether I’m happy, or if he is.”
My heart beat faster at thatyou, as if I had been accused. Tesa was dead, and I had played a part? “Why?”
“Your father was with the larger group. He was my chance of finding you.”
Horror closed around my chest; I hated thinking of my father, of Maris’s monster. “You were working with my father. Is that how you knew to find me in Stonehaven?”
“He does not know anything about you yet,” Fear told me. “He kept you a secret to protect you, even from himself. He couldn’t tell me if you were male or female, nothing but your age. Since you told me you were not ready to meet him, I have not told him.”
“Is he a monster?” Maris’s words kept coming back to me.
“No.”
When I glanced at him, his mouth tightened, revealing more emotion than usual.
He added, “Of course, you would not trust my definition of a monster.”
“I didn’t say that, Fear.” My hand was still on his shoulder. I leaned closer, resting my head on his arm. He shifted so I could rest against his chest.
