Cara
Fear reluctantly left me outside Clan Amber’s barracks.
“I know you have work to do,” I told him, shooing him off. “Leave me be.”
Ander was waiting in the corridor outside my room in Amber when I came out from bathing and packing my few things. He took the bag from my hand. “I’ll always be one floor below if you need me.”
We went up the stairs in silence. He stopped at the top.
“Ander.”
I had been thinking about how to say this since the staged fight in the arena and the currency he’d spent with Fear for my sake. None of the versions I’d rehearsed were right. “Amber may suffer for me. I know that. And I’m sorry.”
“I’ve made worse decisions for lesser reasons,” he said lightly.
“Thank you. For all of it.”
He held out my bag.
I took it, and he turned back toward the stairs. I watched him go, the broad set of his shoulders, this man who bared his grief to serve our cause, who called Fear his enemy but helped him again and again.
When I entered Bismyth’s common room, Sera looked up from the table and called, “She’s here!”
Anayla reached me first. Her arms came around me with a decisiveness somewhere between a warm embrace and being taken into custody. “Finally!”
Then I was pulled back. Kiegan hugged me, lifting me off my feet, and he squeezed all the breath out of my lungs. I hugged him back, attempting to be just as lovingly aggressive. His face was bright with joy, with the grin I hoped we would see more now, the one that didn’t hold anything back. He had been claimed today. His dragon had chosen him. He had a home in Bismyth, and he had earned it.
Rees arrived through the middle of all of them with the magnificent indifference of a giant dog navigating a crowd that existed primarily as obstacles between him and his destination. He put his head against my stomach and shoved.
“Hello to you too,” I told him, scratching behind his ears. “Organ damage as greeting. You have no idea what’s happened today, but you’re glad I’m back, aren’t you?”
Some of my joy dulled. It wasn’t sharp—just dimming, like a cloud sliding over the sun. “Though because of me, we’re trapped here.”
Kiegan frowned. “Why?”
“We can’t leave the Trials until every shifter in our clan flies.” Asrael stepped in from the other side and gave my shoulder a firm clap, solid, grounding, the kind of contact that acknowledged both the problem and my ability to survive it. He didn’t soften the reality. He never did.
“Is there anyone else who hasn’t?” I knew the answer even before I asked.
Kiegan snorted. “You’re always the slowest when we run,” he said, entirely unbothered by the fact that this was not encouraging. “Perhaps you’re just the slowest to fly.”
I stared at him. He stared back, deeply sincere.
No one needs enemies when they have a genuinely loving orc on their side.
“It will happen.” Anayla gave me an encouraging look.
Dairen draped an arm over my shoulders, his grin irresistable. “Perhaps you just need to throw yourself from a window. Your dragon will answer!”
I huffed a laugh despite myself, shifting slightly under his arm. “That seems like a plan for someone who grew up with dragon levels of confidence, and I’m just a mortal.”
“Let’s save that plan for a day or two,” Anayla said dryly, casting him a look that managed to be both exasperated and fond. She nudged his elbow off me, reclaiming my space without breaking the loose circle we’d formed.
The tension eased just a little. Enough that my shoulders dropped, enough that I could breathe again without feeling like I was failing them. The memory of when I had first met them and wanted to be like them returned to me. They had hugged and sparred and thrown their arms over each other’s shoulders, comfortable with each other in every way. I had envied their tightknit bonds.
Now that familiarity was mine.
“Let’s get to the island,” Sera suggested, her cloak already over her arm.
