“Take it out, please,” Cara moaned. Sweat beaded along her forehead; tears were still leaking from the corners of her eyes. “I’m going to?—”
Siona’s gaze snapped up to one of the assistants who had just reached her. “Get her a sleep draught.”
“I need her awake.”
“She’s going to pass out anyway when I pull the knife. Mortals are weak,” Siona warned me.
“Not this one.” My voice came out hard. I had watched Cara fight fiercely, a mortal in the shadow of dragons, and no one would insult her.
Cara’s gaze flickered to mine. I put my palm on her forehead, smoothing back her sweat-dampened hair. “What danger is your family in, Cara?”
Her eyes widened at my understanding. Her voice was thready. “The queen intends to raise them. Unless I leave with them.”
“I told you she won’t.” My voice was rough. It startled me. I never heard myself sound like that, ragged and nearly out of control.
“She will!” She strained forward, her fingers going for the knife, as if she were going to wrench it out of her own leg so she could reach them.
Or so she could try again to bury it in my gut.
I gathered her wrists in mine, pinning her hands to her chest. “Stop struggling. Siona’s trying to save your life, and I will be very vexed if you die before we can discuss today in full.”
Her gaze narrowed at me, and I hadn’t seen such hate in her expression since I took Lidi’s magic.
“They. Will. Die. I have to save them.”
Understanding was beginning to crystalize for me, and every bit of it felt as if it were hardening in my chest. “You can’t save anyone, mortal. Rest.”
She started to say something else, and I cut her a warning look. Siona and her assistants surrounded us, and I would not tolerate exposing her secret to anyone.
Mortals rushed to the arena doors, hoping for the chance to be raised—though my mother would have chosen her most prized sycophants long ago for their usefulness—but Cara was already their rising goddess. She could mean more, offer more, be more than my mother.
But the story of how she had stabbed me would make it rather difficult to set up the happy ending where dragon shifters and mortals united to remake the world.
“Coming out,” Siona said, and the most terrible, animal sound was wrenched out of Cara’s body.
I gathered her in my arms, murmuring soothing nonsense into her ear. Nonsense she didn’t deserve and that might not even work because she had fooled me once. I had misread her, this tricky little mortal.
I was furious at my mistake. I shouldn’t be furious at her, shouldn’t feel this rage that sang hot through my blood even as Iheld her. If I were furious at her, then she had all the power over me.
I’d misread her. A mistake. My stupidity.
“Fear,”Shadowbane murmured in the back of my mind, and his gentle tone made me even more furious. “Even you can be betrayed. You can admit you wanted her to choose you; then you can understand why she did not.”
“Shut up.”I had no clever response to Shadowbane for once in my life.
She was still thrashing. I half-lifted her from the table, pulling her against my chest, her head under my jaw, so I could hold her still. “Do it.”
Siona still glared at me. “Get her under control or put her asleep!”
“No.” Cara grabbed my arm, her fingers twisting desperately into my flesh as she arched up to meet my gaze. Her eyes were wide, her pupils blown large by the pain, but she was still fighting. “I can’t sleep. Lidi. Tay. If I can bargain with the queen?—”
“You’ll have to trust me.” The words came out flat and hard.
“Fear, please?—”
My gaze flicked to Siona’s, and that was all she needed. One of her aides was at my side with a sleeping draught.
“The knife’s enchanted,” Siona said, indicating the wet red blade she had set on the slab. “Do you know how?”
