Then the door opened, and it was the Nightwalkers who filed in like overlapping shadows.
“Already?” Tay looked disappointed.
“It’s almost time for the queen’s Last Hunt,” I said, my voice bitter. “I have to go and prepare.”
I squeezed his arm. Hugged Lidi. Met Mam’s eyes one more time.
Everything I needed to say was too large for the time I had. “Stay together. Wait for me.”
She hugged me, holding me a little too long. Into my ear, she whispered, “We’ll be ready.”
Then I made myself walk out the door, head high, as if I had borrowed a shifter’s arrogance.
The corridor was cold, and long, and quiet, and I walked back toward the labyrinth with my bare, bloodied feet, a likely-poisoned knife in my belt, and the feeling of Lidi’s arms still around my neck.
I found Anayla in her quarters, folding gear into a pack. She looked up.
That was enough for her to read my face.
“What’s wrong?” She abandoned her bag and came to me.
The calm I’d been holding together since the queen’s study cracked down the middle. I shut the door and turned my back to it and slid down until I was sitting on the floor.
Anayla sank down the wall until she was in the same pose, then put her arm around me.
“Tell me the mate bond isn’t permanent,” I said. “Tell me that there’s a way?—”
“Cara.”
“Tell me.” My voice came out shattered. I wanted Fear. I wanted to be able to go to him and get his help; I wanted to be able to trust him. Even now, I knew the truth, but I didn’t want to believe it.
“It’s permanent.”
I’d known. And yet I rocked forward as if someone had driven a knife into my gut, wanting to scream out my pain. I didn’t. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
“The bond is something we grow up understanding. I didn’t think to explain it.” She stopped, her face shifting into horror. “But you were raised by mortals.”
“Yes, I was.”
The silence between us had a specific weight. She hadn’t lied to me. No one had. They had simply assumed a knowledge I’d never been given, and I had never questioned Fear in this. I had trusted him when he promised me that our marriage could be a ruse. He had said it so many times.
“Fear didn’t realize you didn’t know either,” she said hesitantly, a question in it.
She wished that was true.
“He told me if I didn’t fall in love with him, there would be a door out. That if it didn’t work, he wouldn’t hold me.” My voice was doing something strange. “He said he hoped I would choose to stay. But that it would be a choice.”
Anayla closed her eyes.
“I thought I chose him.” The word felt like something I was prying out of myself. “I was proud I protected him. I knew he could be tricky and deceitful but also heroic, and I thought most of all…he would be mine.”
My jaw ached, and I ran my fingers over it, hard, trying to press away the stress that had built up. I hadn’t even noticed I was holding it so tensely. “I was always going to want him. Because of the bond. He promised me something he knew wasn’t real.”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to.
He had taken my choice from me. He had violated me.
The rage was there. Somewhere below my sternum, building quietly into something I couldn’t name yet.
