Except, perhaps, for Fear.
No one has ever chosen me the way you do.
Had that feeling been the result of his trickery too?
“Something he arranged to make sure you believed the story, to make sure you stayed. The burning you felt? The nights you woke up thinking you were dying? That was his work.”
“Prove it.” I told her, my voice cold. I was proud of that. “Prove to me that I shouldn’t trust the husband who has taken care of me over the bitch that beat me half to death.”
The way she smiled, thin and cruel, told me she had an answer. “He used an enchanted coin.”
A memory rose for me, and with it, my breath hitched. Rees darting into my room, Fear bringing him back out. I’d been annoyed by Fear going into my room, but he strolled out so quickly, toying with a coin. I’d felt then that he was up to some trick.
I made myself offer her a tight, disbelieving smile. “Why are you telling me?”
Her face dressed itself in prim self-righteousness. “Because you should know.”
I laughed in her face, though the sound ripped into ragged pieces. “That’s not why. You don’t give a damn about me, and I don’t see how betraying Fear’s plots gets you back into Bismyth. You’re here for revenge, and you’re happy to hurt me if it hurts him.”
Her mouth twisted as if she were tasting something bitter. “I did what he asked me to do for years. Anything. I would have died for him.”
My stomach hollowed. I glanced at Kiegan, and he took a step forward, protectiveness flashing across his face. His reaction warned me I was too transparent.
“I was too rough with you in training, and I know that. I know what it cost you and I know what it cost me. But I tried to keep you alive after. I went for the healer.” She faltered. “I thought there would be something on the other side. That I could earn my way back into Bismyth.”
She looked past me as if she were looking into the past, her face painted with grief. “There’s no hope of winning Fear’s forgiveness. There never was.”
I looked past her to Sera, who made a gesture of confusion. I was confused, too, both by the conversation and by the unsettling feeling I had about Fear’s tricks.
“He cares about you and you betrayed him.” I couldn’t trust her either.
“He cares what I’m useful for.” There was something raw and broken in her voice; true or not, she believed what she was saying. “Same as you. The difference is you still believe in him.”
My nails were biting into my palm. I forced myself to unfurl my hands from fists. “I’m not sure you’re trustworthy.”
She laughed, short, sharp. “No. I’m not. I’m angry and hurt, and I want?—”
She had broken herself off. Her gaze flickered up past me, and I followed it up to Bismyth’s door.
Her hand lashed out, and I automatically blocked, expecting an attack; she managed to seize my arm and lean in close. She went on, not caring that I had misread her movement as an attack. “He’s going to keep things from you. He always thinks he knows better. That it’s not a betrayal.”
She released me to swirl her cloak over her shoulders. “But only you can decide if you have been betrayed.”
A Bismyth shifter ran across the floor and spoke briefly to Sera and Kiegan, who raced toward us, urgency written across their faces.
Maura backed away from all of us, her hands rising to her shoulders in a placating gesture. The same arrogant smirk she wore so often was back in place, like a too-small shield.
“We’ve got to go,” Kiegan growled.
The two of them were on either side of me, flanking me like guards. I looked to Sera for more, who was better at walking and talking simultaneously than Kiegan, as we hustled across the floor.
“Obsidian invaded Bismyth,” Sera said. “Looking for stolen property.”
A jolt went through me, accompanied by the always unnecessarily vivid work of my imagination. Fear, sprawled on the ground with blood pooling around his body. Bismyth, suffering around him.
“Everyone seems to be all right,” Sera said, and it was only then that my mind went further. To the empty chest. To the knife that could save my brother.
To the way Fear hadn’t let me use it in time.
