We slid into the back of Bismyth’s ranks. The relief of not running was almost immediately replaced by the acute awareness of every part of my body that had been on a horse for the past two days.
“Still more miserable than terrified?” Kiegan asked in the quietest voice he could manage.
“Barely,” I whispered back.Terrifiedwas rapidly winning out, though.
Anyla reached out and caught my hand, giving me a dazzling smile. Asrael raised an eyebrow at me as he bumped me with his shoulder, his gaze an entire scolding. I smiled back at him, and his lips gave slightly.
There were no mirrors here like the ones that watched us in so much of the labyrinth. I glanced up at Asrael, who stood at my side like a bodyguard. We both knew he—and even Fear—could do nothing if no dragon claimed me and I was incinerated.
“Why no mirrors?”
“This is a matter for shifters only. It’s not for the prying eyes of those who see our lives and deaths as entertainment.” He spoke in his usual restrained way, but I wondered if he thought I’d ever been one of those mortals, watching for entertainment.
“I never wanted to see any of the Trials,” I told him quietly.
He favored me with a thin smile, his gaze sliding over my face. “Unfortunate for you that you have to then.”
“It’s unfortunate for all of us.”
Ander had materialized at my other side. He looked at Asrael, then at the assembled recruits, then back. “You intend to flaunt her as part of Bismyth?”
“She knows who Cara is to us,” Asrael said. “There’s no denying that. If you had cast her out, we would take her.”
“As if I could for long.” Ander offered me his arm.
I went to stand with Clan Amber.
“You’re ours anyway. You’ll always be ours. It’ll be an Amber dragon who selects you.”
“Or doesn’t,” I said.
“You’ll be selected,” he told me, with gruff confidence that I found remarkably comforting.
We watched the first few recruits go up from Garnet, fearless as they stepped over the scorch marks and spoke the words of the Claiming. Fear had told me that Garnet prided themselves on embracing death as nothing but another mission.
My breath caught in my chest as the first of the Garnet shifters stiffened, her eyes widening and lips parting; the entire room seemed to hold, waiting for them to ignite.
But the Garnet shifter’s lips parted in a smile, and that preoccupied look came over her face that the shifters wore when they were in private conversation. Jubilantly, she called, “Castmire.”
Garnet didn’t cheer, but their pleasure, reflecting her joy, was palpable.
In the space between shifters approaching the altar, Ander leaned over. “Did Fieran tell Kiegan and Sera which dragon will claim them?”
I shook my head.
He gave me a curious look. “Does he no longer play that game? Demonstrating how well he knows us all, better than we know ourselves?”
“I don’t know,” I said, but the thought troubled me. Fear had told Kiegan he would be claimed. If there was some particular dragon likely to choose Kiegan, Fear would have known it.
Either Fear had been jollying Kiegan along…or he had kept Kiegan’s likely dragon to himself. I had no doubt that Fear, who had known Sandwing would claim Ander, would guess what Kiegan’s dragon would be.
“Perhaps he’s stopped gambling,” I said, knowing it was a lie.
Fear had gambled an awful lot on his plan. On Lightbringer. On me.
“That’ll never happen.”
Ander gave me the look he gave me sometimes, as if I were missing something obvious, but he was too polite to name it. But then the next Garnet shifter had stepped into the circle, and he turned his attention politely back to the front.
