The queen’s gaze found me, warm and molten and glimmering. Never cold. She was consuming like fire.
She smiled and gave me a little nod. Like a mother prompting a child.
Something cold and dark rolled through me. I missed whatever was said next, missed her last words before the cheering rushed through the arena.
The horns sounded, signaling the beginning of the Hunt.
The sound hit the stone walls and came back doubled, tripled, into something I felt through my chest. My pulse quickened as if I were not already anxious enough.
The floor of the arena heaved beneath our feet.
In the stands, the crowd lurched all at once in the immediate, instinctive sound of several hundred people registering a threat.
I felt it through my boots: a grinding deep in the stone just before cracks split the arena floor. I didn’t understand the way they spread—exact, engineered—and then sections of the ground dropped away, revealing dark beneath. I waited for what would emerge.
The stands, with their fracturing noise and chaos, faded away. All that mattered for now was what happened on the arena floor.
Some of the clans were already moving forward, steel drawn. Others raced toward the labyrinth entrances; there would be other threats, there would be other prizes.
Then the shadow passed over us.
Not one shadow. Many, moving.
They came down from the open top of the arena like something poured in, a dozen of them, pale wings beating. The wingspan on the nearest was easily fifteen feet, and the wings themselves were wrong, arranged along a body so elongated it was almost pure spine.
“Skein.” Fear’s voice, low, pitched only for me. “Don’t panic. They’re drawn specifically to cortisol—they hunt the fear response more than the movement. Keep your breathing level.”
“How convenient,” I said, through my teeth.
“Malachite will take the Skein!” A green-cloaked shifter shouted. Other green-cloaked shifters flooded around him, heading for the monsters; others were already transforming into their dragons.
“Stay close.” Fear was at my left shoulder. His sword was already in his hand.
“I’m with you.” My voice seemed to come from far away, as if someone else were acting in this tragedy. “Let’s go down. See if we can find where they’re coming from.”
Fear glanced at me. “A good strategy.”
Whether it was or not, I was already striding toward the labyrinth entrances.
Of course he easily matched my stride; I only had a head start for an instant. “Cara. The three raisings she mentioned. It’s not Tay and Lidi and your mother.”
“How do you always see through her tricks?” My voice was short, clipped. I did not believe him.
“I’ve survived them for a long time,” he said, and it almost softened me.
Then I remembered I had only survived his tricks for a short time, and it had already changed me. It would change me more—it would change Tay and Lidi—if I did not get free of him.
Fieran followed me, so it was just the two of us alone at the top of a descent into one of the labyrinth’s branches. It was cold, the ground slick underfoot, even with my boots and my Bismyth cloak. Perhaps I was wearing the cloak for the last time.
My fingers found the clasp at my throat, pressing the cool, engraved metal. I swallowed a lump and knew it was stupid. What did a cloak mean to me when my family was at stake? What did a clan matter?
Fear went ahead of me. He hadn’t worn his cloak; he moved with his usual mesmerizing grace, broad-shouldered and lean and quick. The light leather armor he wore hugged his shoulders and covered only his most vital organs; the bracers on his forearms bristling with knives caught the flashes of torchlight. A mirror reflected the flicker of a torchlight and cast it over us, catching the glints threaded through his dark hair.
The mirrors. They were everywhere in this hallway, reflecting back the two of us: the tall shifter with the handsome, chiseled face and the petite mortal with the blond hair. I barely looked at my own reflection now at any time; it was prettier, and it was not quite mine.
Lidi and Mam had recognized me. The memory of my mother catching my shoulders, the desperation in her gaze caught me again. She had been terrified and alone in her terror because Lidi and Tay were lost.
They were depending on me, and the surest way for me to fail them was to depend on him. I couldn’t say with certainty he would betray me; I couldn’t say with certainty he would not if it served his larger strategy.
