He stepped inside from the window ledge with the ease of someone who had never once seriously considered falling. The morning had done something unfair to his already beautifulfeatures: the shimmering light off the sea caught the plane of his cheekbone, the collar of his shirt still open from the shift, the easy warmth of those smoldering golden eyes.
“Lightbringer and I will get there,” I said, which was not entirely true but felt like something I needed to say out loud. It was something I needed to believe.
Fear looked at me with the expression of a man who knew better than to argue with optimism doing important work. “You will.”
I crossed to the chest near the bed and lifted the lid. The knife was there, wrapped in the cloth I’d carried it in—dull in the morning light, ordinary-looking, the way things with too much power often were. I picked it up and turned. “When are we getting Tay?”
“Cara.” He sounded genuinely sad. “Let’s see you be able to defend yourself before we go to war with the queen. You need your dragon.”
“We have the knife.” I kept my voice even. I was proud of how even it was. “We can cut the enchantment from him. That was the entire point, Fear.”
He was quiet for a moment. Not the silence of someone without an answer. The silence of someone deciding which answer to give.
“We will, Cara. But Tay is not the sole reason. The queen wants it for a reason, which we can deny her. We can free Nightwalkers from their bond to the queen. We can save any enthralled mortals. We can do much before the queen realizes we have it. Once she does, there will be consequences.”
I gripped the hilt of the knife too hard, my fingernails biting into my skin, and Fear’s gaze dipped to it as if he didn’t trust what I might do. I wasn’t sure what he was seeing on my face.
“You told me we could save Tay. You knew I was upset, and that was your promise?—”
“I was always clear the timing would depend on our strategy,” he interrupted. He didn’t even have the decency to sound distressed. “I have a contact in the castle watching Tay.
“Spying,” I said.
“Protecting,” he said with a show of patience. “Do you want to know how he is?”
“You know I do.”
“He’s fine. In good spirits. The queen’s given him tutors in court politics and swordsmanship. His trainer is a good man. He’ll look after him.”
Something both loosened and knotted in my chest simultaneously. Tay, in good spirits. The image landed in a place I hadn’t realized was braced for something worse. But why was the queen educating him? Her words about an heir, about how Fear had disappointed her, floated by me again. But she didn’t need a mortal heir, surely.
The memory of those mortals being raised to Fae—the tumultuous cheering from the crowd—haunted me. “He doesn’t need tutors. He needs us to use the knife to free him.”
“As soon as we do, the queen will know we have it.” His voice was measured, patient, steady. “He’s safe. We need to bide our time.”
“I came back thinking we would help him. That I would have my brother back…” My voice was wrong. I could hear it. I stopped, trying to force myself to calm down. Fear had always been clear; there was strategy at play. “How long until we get him?”
“I don’t know precisely.”
“How long, Fear.”
The silence that followed was the wrong shape. “Long enough for Lightbringer to fly and for us to get clear of the capital. The knife is a powerful asset. We won’t get a second chance to strike down the queen.”
I turned away from him. I set the knife down on the chest because my hands needed somewhere to go, and I pressed my knuckles against the lid and stood there.
The sea came through the open window. Salt and cold and the distant cry of birds over the water. Down the hall, Bismyth was waking; low voices and the rhythm of their morning together slipped under the door.
I had wanted this for so long. Now I had this, and Tay still wasn’t home, and it would be longer. Because of me.
“I’m failing him again,” I murmured.
I hardly ever cried. Strangely, I had cried most often over Tay’s sickness when I could see what it was doing to Lidi and my mother. I wasn’t ashamed of crying, but it was my own private business. I had held Lidi in the dark after the burrowers and not broken. I had stood in an arena with my heart slamming against my ribs and not broken. I was built of anger sewn through grief.
But I was so tired.
It wasn’t just the few days’ hard riding and rough sleep, though that was part of it. I was tired in a way that had been growing since I understood that there was no version of saving my family that didn’t cost me everything.
And I was still tired, and perhaps he hadn’t meant to do it to me, but he had let me hope. Then he had damned me with strategy all over again. The sound I made was not quite a sob. Just one breath gone wrong.
