Page 96 of Fortune's Blade

Louis-Cesare drew me close, but it didn’t help. He had been quiet since he returned from the faire-turned-graveyard, which was understandable; Lord Rathen’s people had been, too. That sort of thing stayed with a person, clogging the throat when they tried to speak and tasted ashes, ashes that might have been someone they knew not so long ago. The exploratory party had eaten their evening meal in silence and gone to bed early. As had I, to give the ointments Claire had been bathing me in all day a better chance to work.

They seemed to be helping, but probably not quickly enough.

Nothing was quick enough here.

Louis-Cesare’s arms tightened, and I wondered what he was thinking. Probably that I should go home. That I was as useless here as I felt, a puny human out of weapons and way out of her depth, in an alien world that seemed determined to destroy us.

And if he was thinking that, he was right.

The feelings had been growing all day, as I was scrutinized by dragon lord after dragon lord, and realized that my main use to the cause was how pathetic I looked. It didn’t help that, in between ‘diplomatic’ sessions, I sat around with nothing to do but think. I had tried to help around camp, but everyone else could do it better and faster, and anyway, I was injured. I had been shooed away, back to my thoughts, which had gotten progressively darker as the day passed.

With Louis-Cesare gone for hours and Claire so different suddenly, and away much of the day gathering, chopping and mixing who-knew-what, I hadn’t even had anyone to talk to. Or anything to do but toss and turn in my tent once it got set up and pretend that I wasn’t panicking. I’d kept my weapons near even though I didn’t need them. They seemed paltry and almost as useless as a child’s slingshot, now that I knew what we were up against, and no one else had anything better to offer.

Everybody here was a weapon; they didn’t need to carry them. That dusty collection at the castle were trophies, I had learned, taken in ancient wars and likely to crumble in my hands as soon as I looked at them. I had nothing.

We should leave.

“What?”

I hadn’t realized that I’d said that last part out loud until Louis-Cesare spoke. I would have preferred to keep facing the door, where one of the ties on the tent flap had come loose and left the panel ruffling in the wind. I could see the fire outside in flashes, which had burned down to embers now, and the stunning scarves of aurora borealis veiling the stars above.

It was beautiful, as Faerie always was.

It didn’t make me feel any better.

I decided to stop being a coward and rolled over to face him. “I don’t belong here,” I whispered.

“Neither of us do.” He glanced at the tent flap, too, and I thought about all that he had seen today. I didn’t know most of it, as I’d only caught glimpses occasionally through his eyes when he forgot to shield, but it hadn’t been pretty.

“This isn’t our world,” he said, as if reading my thoughts. “I feel it much as you do.”

I shook my head. “No, I mean I don’t belong here, pretending that I have a chance in hell of finding Dorina. Tanet was right. I’m going to get people killed.”

Possibly a lot of people.

Possibly the man I was talking to.

My hand tightened on his arm. “We should go.”

Louis-Cesare looked at me, his eyes tinted green in the reflected light from outside. “You don’t mean that.”

“I do!”

“You don’t, though.” He brushed a strand of hair off my forehead, his touch gentle. “I know you too well to believe that. It’s the fear talking, the pain, the uncertainty—”

“It’s all of those, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong!” I hissed. “I was a fool to come here, a fool to think I could handle this! You were right. Without Dorina . . . I’m nothing.”

His fingers froze in place, halfway through tucking an errant strand behind my ear. “I never said that.”

“But you thought it. And you were right.”

“I never thought it, either.” He abruptly sat up, disturbing the warm cocoon that our body heat had made and letting in a great billow of cold air. It was like a slap in the face, but I didn’t mind. I deserved it.

“I endangered you, all of you, by bringing you here,” I told him steadily. “I’d heard of Faerie, but I didn’t understand. No one can until they come here—how vast it is, how deadly, how strange.

“Rathen’s people went to get our guards, but they’d be better off taking them to the nearest portal. I can’t protect them if they come here. I can’t even protect myself!”

Louis-Cesare looked at me as if he thought I might be more ill than he’d realized, specifically in the head. “You killed a dragon—more than one—all on your own—”