Light flared behind me. I threw up my arm to cover my eyes from the dazzling glare, my eyes stinging when I tried to open them.
“One last Hunt to go,” the queen said from behind me. “Are you ready, Cara?”
“Giddy with excitement.” The words came out brash. Internally, I felt like shaking. The queen was terrifying. She was so clearly not human. Capable of things of which it was hard for me to even imagine.
But she was not capable of harming me or my brother. Not now. I turned to face her, my mind humming those words again and again: not by her hand or by her order, not by her hand or by her order.
She was seated at her desk. Her shimmering gown spread around her, and she held a small book in one delicate hand. Her golden eyes were Fear’s eyes, and the warmth in them felt like a phantom.
She held out one bejeweled hand, the movement graceful. “Show me your ring, daughter.”
She sounded amused.
My sense of disquiet only grew.
“Yes, I know.” Her brows arched, a disbelieving smile slipping across her lips. “I’ve known since my engagementannouncement failed. Fieran acknowledged you from the dais. Did he not tell you?”
She might well be lying. She wanted me to distrust Fear. To divide us.
She was still holding out her hand, and she was the queen, and I was in her lair, so I crossed to her. She lifted my fingers with the back of her hand, examining the ring. Her touch was surprisingly gentle, her fingers cool.
The most beautiful scent, like breathing in roses in a garden just after the rain, teased my nose, and I locked my jaw, fighting to keep from breathing in. She had shaped herself in every way to be enchanting.
“With the ring I once gave him,” she said quietly. “Because he is supposed to be my heir.”
I looked at her face. There was sadness in it I hadn’t expected. As if Fear had found a way to carve something out of both of us. But she was a liar, even more gifted in deceit than her son.
She released my hand. “Do you know what Fieran means?”
“I do not.” I didn’t have the first hint about the old Fae language.
“It means faithful.” She smiled as if I were invited into the joke. “It has not been true for anyone yet. He always betrays the people who love him. But surely it will be different for you.”
There was a long pause between us. Long enough and quiet enough for me to realize that in the quiet of the room, I could hear the buzz of my blood through my ears, the slightly erratic flutter of my breath. I’d gone still as prey.
“Do you know why it will be different?” she prompted me gently, in a tone generally rendered to the very old or the very small.
Answering her felt like a trap, like opening the door to betraying Fear. I waited her out, hoping I did not look as much like prey as I felt when watched by those ancient golden eyes.
She was terribly patient. I thought she wouldn’t speak at all until I caved.
But finally, she said, “Tell me the name of your dragon, Cara.”
“I don’t know it.” I kept my voice level.
Truths, thin ones, but it felt dangerous to give her anything at all.
“There is a reason no shifter marries before they are claimed by a dragon. Do you know what it means for two dragons to be mated?” Her face seemed sorrowful for my ignorance, though I knew better than to trust that soft gaze and sympathetic frown. “What it means for their shifters?”
“No.”
“No. And he did not tell you.” Her expression was that of a woman about to give a gift she knows will not be received as one. “You will never love another, Cara.”
I stared at her, perplexed. The words did not quite resolve into anything that made sense, though they were all familiar enough. I would never love another?
The performed sorrow dipped, apparently exhausted by my stupidity. But she managed to stay the course. “Fear married you, prior to your claiming, so whatever dragon claimed you would be bound to him and to Shadowbane through him.”
The sense of being trapped closed around my chest again like a vise. My breath was shallow.
