Ander looked at them. His voice was level. “You know we can take you.”
“You can.” The Nightwalker’s voice held no inflection, no interest. “And then your entire clan will be killed.”
“What do you want?” Nixi asked tightly, her voice strained and high like her chin, with the Nightwalker’s blade to it.
“The queen requests you deliver Cara to her.”
Did the Nightwalker not even know who I was? Perhaps a barefoot mortal in their midst just didn’t register. They assumed I was just a servant.
“Are you lost?” Beck asked. “She’s upstairs, curled up in Fear’s arms.”
“They probably don’t want to face him again.” Nixi’s voice came out cool. She was self-possessed even with a Nightwalker’s hand gripping her braids and a knife to her throat.
“If you must menace us instead of Bismyth,” Beck said coolly, “at least let us send our servant girl for breakfast.”
Beck glanced at me with barely a trace of interest, as if I were truly nothing to him. Something skipped a beat in my chest, trying to understand why Clan Amber would protect me. I would never understand the shifters.
“Get us Cara or we start killing.” The Nightwalker still sounded disinterested.
Ander was not the kind of man who spent other people’s lives on the hopeless. But he was slower to name me now that he should have been if he were entirely practical.
“I can talk to the queen now.” My voice came out steadier than I expected. “In fact, I would love to have words.”
“Cara,” Ander said my name quietly. A warning.
“She can’t harm me. Not by her own hand, not by her order. I have the same protection as Fear.” I watched him want to argue with this and watched him know, at the same time, that it was true. “Let Nixi go. I’m coming willingly.”
He didn’t like it. But I had watched Amber protect me at cost to themselves, had watched Ander make choices that put his clan at risk for my sake, and the weight of that debt pressed my chest. This was my only currency.
I walked toward the corridor’s end, and when I reached the doorway, when two Nightwalkers had seized my arms, the last Nightwalker released Nixi. She gave the Nightwalker a once-over look and a cold smile that promised revenge.
“Cara.” Ander still looked as if he was barely containing himself. But Ander was always able to contain himself. “Come back. I won’t leave until I know you’re free and well.”
I nodded. Then I followed the Nightwalkers into the dark morning.
The Nightwalkers moved like living shadows around me, making me feel even more alone as we went back through the labyrinth.
But there was something new this time: a passage I’d never mapped, a hidden door, a long tunnel that was not winding and natural like the rest of the labyrinth but straight as a road.
Had Fear known? It was hard for me to believe there was much he didn’t know when it came to the palace and its tricks.
The shadows slid toward me, narrowing my path, until some were ahead and some were behind. I could touch the stone passage on both sides. The ground underfoot was damp. I was never again, in all my life, going anywhere without thick socks and a good pair of boots; what had I been thinking, slipping downstairs to Clan Amber in bare feet as if the barracks were my home?
In the dim light I banged my foot into the stone and stumbled, my shins catching the step. Agony split my toe.
A Nightwalker helpfully put their hand on my back and pushed, in case I had not gotten the message.
“I’m going,” I said, and when they were all shadows, it felt as ridiculous as talking to myself.
We emerged into a brightly lit hallway. I followed the lead Nightwalkers down the hall. There were four of them, and I looked back over my shoulder, confused about just how many there were. There were more behind me than I remembered earlier, and the door through which we had come had vanished.It must be concealed in one of the walls. I wasn’t finding it again easily on my own.
“The queen will see you in here.”
A Nightwalker opened a door. I half expected there to be something terrible beyond it, but the door opened into a study, with windows overlooking the sea and linen curtains drifting in the breeze.
The room was empty. The door closed behind me.
I glanced down at my feet and saw blood smeared across my toes.
