Fear, ever patient, shifted paths. “Cara needs to remain in Clan Amber until the claiming. An Amber dragon intends to claim her, and we need that dragon to defeat the queen. Bringing her into Bismyth now would block the claim before it can be completed.”
The ground seemed to tilt.
A dragon was going to claim me.
I’d been preparing to burn alive, the half-mortal who’d never be chosen. Kiegan and I had joked about it, or not quite joked. Fear had known all along.
He’d promised to tell me the truth once we were wed, once the bond between us protected me from the queen’s enchantments.
If only this clan would let us be alone.
“Being claimed by this dragon matters,” Fear promised. Then to me, he added, “I know how it looks. I know what you’re thinking.”
“Do you?”
“You think I’ve got a trick, and of course I do. But this trick protects you.”
The sounds from beyond the passage grew. Something moving wetly through the stone. Something close.
Fear looked at me the way he did sometimes, as if the rest of the world wasn’t there or had become irrelevant. “Cara. Do you trust me?”
The hesitation I gave him was honest; one he’d earned. “Probably more than I should. But yes.”
The tension in the room cracked. Fear’s expression opened, brief and warm, something almost surprised in it.
“I trustyouwith my whole heart, my fierce mortal protector.” He caught my hand in his and brought it to his lips, the scrape of his mouth against my knuckles sending a strange thrill through me that I noted with the appropriate amount of self-reproach.
“Trouble,” Sera called out, and she was already moving, and so was half the clan before I saw the chittering monsters that swarmed the opening to the grotto.
Asrael caught Fear’s arm as the rest of Bismyth moved to slay the monsters. “The queen may have laid traps for Cara before your binding held. Things already in motion.”
“I promise.” Fear gripped his shoulder once, brief and firm. “I will take care of her.”
Asrael held his gaze for a beat before he nodded. Whatever he was thinking, he held onto it for later.
The clan had killed the monsters at the entrance and were moving out in pairs. I glanced back at the grotto we were leaving behind, but Fear caught my hand. He whistled to Rees, and Rees gave the labyrinth a longing look but obediently lay down, resting his head on his paws with a distinctly sulky look. “Not allowed by Trial rules,” Fear told me briefly.
He strode toward the unsettling dark.
I followed.
Of course I did.
Four
Fieran
The labyrinth was a bad place to have the complicated conversation I had promised Cara. It was the kind of close-quarters terrain that punished divided attention.
And the conversation we were having itself would punish divided attention.
Cara moved well. She was still learning, her pulse visible in her throat and her sword clumsy, but she made clever, quick choices. I was proud to see her fight in the narrow dark of the labyrinth, her blade catching the faint bioluminescence of the stone. She was built for this in ways she didn’t fully understand yet.
“She is faster than she was just a week ago,”Shadowbane observed.“Remarkably clever thing, isn’t she?”
I had spent the last several years trying to train Shadowbane to offer compliments; he usually thought lower-grade criticisms were enough of an improvement from his insults to count as one. But he seemed to manage with Cara.
A wave came from the left passage. Six Lightless, low and fast. They moved in packs, cave-bred things with elongated jaws and claws that clicked against the stone.
