‘What if Wyvernmire finds out your dragonlings are gone?’ I say.
Atlas glances round his basement workshop and I see a hint of sadness. First Dodie gone, then Lumens and now the dragonlings.
‘We’ll blame it on Lumens,’ I say, answering my own question.
‘What? No—’
‘He’ll be gone by then,’ I say. ‘We say that Lumens stole the dragonlings and the eggs, so no one suspects you. By the time she organises her Guardians to go after him, the rebels will be here.’
‘All right,’ Atlas says slowly. ‘We’ll need to remove the sonar blockers around the glasshouse. Otherwise, they might stop the rebel dragons from communicating when they fly over.’
I nod.
‘We meet at midnight,’ Atlas says. ‘Outside your dorm.’
‘Midnight,’ I repeat, pulling him towards me with a smile.
I GET OUT OF BED at a quarter to midnight. In the hallway, a floorboard creaks beneath the Guardian’s feet as he readies himself for the end of his shift. Sophie sits up in the bed next to mine, lights the lamp and glares at me.
You’ll pay for what you did to me.
‘We’re going to get caught,’ she whispers.
‘No, we’re not,’ I say. ‘We’ll go as soon as that Guardian leaves.’
I pull on my jacket and boots.
‘How nice for you, to be Wyvernmire’s pet one day and a rebel the next,’ Sophie says. ‘Will you go back to being a Second Class snob when it’s all over?’
‘You were a Second Class snob, too, once,’ I say.
‘But I didn’t betray my best friend to get into university.’
There’s the pang of guilt again, the one that will never go away. How did I even entertain the thought that Sophie might forgive me?
‘No,’ I say. ‘You’re a better friend than I ever was. Nowwill you please get dressed?’
We hear the shuffle of footsteps going down the stairs. The Guardians usually have a cigarette break together in the courtyard before changing shifts. We have about two minutes to get out. I open the door a crack and jump as a face appears on the other side.
‘All right?’ Marquis says.
Karim and Atlas are standing behind him. When I slip out on to the landing, I let my hand brush against Atlas’s. He has a large pack on his back.
‘This is going to get us killed,’ Sophie says to Marquis as we hurry down the stairs.
Marquis shrugs. ‘Better than waiting for Gideon to come and murder you, wouldn’t you say?’
We walk through the dark hallways and the kitchen, then out the back door and into the walled garden where Ralph broke my arm.
‘You’re meeting the dragon at the top of the forest,’ I whisper to Karim.
I wonder if Serena really is hiding in town. She must be terrified. For all I dislike her, I wish that she was here with us now, about to escape. We walk through the trees in silence and when we reach the glasshouse Atlas stops. He pulls the pack off his back and hands it to Karim.
‘Give it to the dragon,’ he says. ‘She’ll know what to do with it.’
Karim gives Atlas a wary look, then opens the pack and almost drops it.
The three dragonlings are curled up inside, their tailsentangled, and poking out from beneath them are two dragon eggs.
