I kept my eyes on the passages. “Half mortal. There is only one person alive who meets that description that I’ve found so far.”
The pause was short. Cara was quick. “How long have you known you needed me for Lightbringer?”
Another wave of Lightless—larger than the ones before, seven or eight, trying to flank us from the right and the left and, inconveniently, the ceiling. Cara stepped up beside me withouthesitation. We broke the first line together, and for a while there was no conversation, only the work of it.
When it was done, she was breathing harder. “From the moment you knew who I was, you planned to use me to bring Lightbringer back.”
“I did.”
Some of it had been set in motion long before her and me. Eventually, Cara would have to discover that too.
She turned to look at me, with the look of someone deciding how much to believe. “Did you flirt with me in Stonehaven because you suspected who I was?”
“Yes. And because I found you brave and charming.”
She kicked a dead monster off the tip of her sword and paused, life-threatening though that might be, so she could aim a skeptical look my way. “No one finds me charming.”
There were so many real lies and tricks between us, and yet she thought that truth was a lie. “I do.”
“When you told Bismyth the queen didn’t know who I was, you were trying to keep from telling them about the dragon.” She had to cut herself off as something came around the corner. We were supposed to be making our way toward a prize, but Bismyth didn’t care about winning this Hunt. “You lied to your clan, didn’t you?”
She had gotten to that understanding faster than I expected.
“Bismyth loves you. Which shows their wisdom and renders me grateful. But our friends sometimes focus on the wrong things.”
“They want to protect me and you want to make me into a myth.”
That was uncomfortably insightful. “The mortals need a hero. They needyou.”
She scoffed. She needed to be needed so badly that she kept sacrificing herself for her family, and yet she couldn’t hear she was needed without protesting. My wife was maddening.
“Ander will protect you in Amber. Whatever else he is, his instinct where you’re concerned has been thoroughly demonstrated.”
“You hate Ander.”
“Deeply. Creatively, even.”
“But.”
“But he kicked my ass in the arena for your sake.” That truth tasted exactly as sour as I expected.
“Is it especially hurtful that he only won because she helped him cheat? You would have cheated, if it had served your purposes,”Shadowbane asked.
“So I am supposed to go along with your lies because the alternative is that Bismyth would want to protect me.”
She had a way of stating things clearly that I found exasperating.
“You have the chance to save your people if you bring back Lightbringer, Cara. And mine.” My jaw tightened briefly. “I don’t want to risk your life any more than I want to risk mine.”
I didn’t want to make the confession that followed, but I wanted her to understand. “I respect you enough that protecting you, possessing you, only occupies my thoughts. That drive does not fully control my actions.”
“Not yet,”Shadowbane murmured, because gods knew what I needed was more complications in this conversation.
I set the way she destroyed my control aside because something very large had just entered the passage from the east. My mother’s hospitality was endless.
“Behind me.” My hand found her waist. I pulled her left and behind me in the same motion, covering the angle while Iassessed the threat. It was large, larger than anything we’d faced so far, oozing through the passage.
“I can fight.”
