He cuts again and my mouth fills with blood.
‘You brought this on yourself,’ Ralph says. ‘My aunt told me all about how you betrayed your friend. And now you’re betraying your government, your country. You should be thanking me for not giving you worse, for not—’
‘You’re just bitter,’ I gasp, staring into his eyes. ‘Bitter that Wyvernmire brought you back from Germany just to be a useless Guardian, bitter that she didn’t trust you to be a codebreaker or an aviator or a zoologist. Bitter that she choseme.’
Ralph’s nostrils flare as his face turns red, his mouth twisting into a terrifying, furious smile.
‘You’ll pay for what you did to me.’
The words are like an electric shock. The exact same words Sophie used. Ralph leans forward, the sharp smell of his aftershave filling my nose.
‘You think you can play the hero now, after everything you’ve ruined?’ he whispers in my ear. ‘You deserve to suffer, Vivien Featherswallow. But you already know that, don’t you?’
Terror rises up inside me. What if he’s right? What if this is how things end for me, a retribution for all the awful things I’ve done?
I think of what Chumana did in Bulgaria and how she’s dedicating her life to making up for it now. I think of how Mama told me that everyone must live with the consequences of their actions, and how I know, because I know my mama, that this isn’t what she meant. I think of how much I used to hate myself because I couldn’t see a way out of my own guilt.
‘It’s never too late to change, Ralph Wyvernmire,’ I whisper back. ‘EvenIget a second chance.’
I open my mouth as if to kiss him, then sink my teeth into his neck. He roars in agony and springs off me, holding his hand to his neck as I spit blood from my mouth. I roll off the sofa and on to the floor, then grab a shard of jagged metal from the ground.
‘Don’t come near me again,’ I snarl. ‘Otherwise, when the rebels win this war, I’ll make sure the dragons know how you tortured their kin.’
Ralph laughs, blood seeping out from between his fingers. ‘I’m not going anywhere except inside to make sure little Ursa knows the feeling of a knife on her soft skin—’
‘Like hell you are,’ says a voice.
Someone moves in the shadows behind Ralph and then there’s a CRACK.
Ralph jerks forward, his knife dropping to the floor with a clatter. His eyes roll back as he lands beside it. Marquis sets the butt of his gun down.
‘Viv?’ he croaks. ‘Are you all right?’
I stifle a sob and nod, and he holds out his arms to me.
‘Where’s Sophie?’ I say as we break apart.
‘In the forest,’ Marquis says. ‘After they took you, we tried to follow, but some Guardians found us and it was too dark to see anything. I hit one, and got his gun, and then I heard you screaming.’ His voice breaks. ‘And then on my way here a dragon flew so low it knocked me over—’
‘A dragon?’ I say. ‘What did it look like?’
‘Well, I hardly stopped to admire it, Viv – what are you doing?’
I step over Ralph and rush to the window. Through the trees, Bletchley Manor is on fire. And there’s a dragon flying towards the glasshouse. I grab the loquisonus machine from the table and head for the door.
‘Come on!’ I say.
Out in the forest, I hide the machine beneath a pile of leaves.
‘We might need it later to communicate with the Coalition,’ I tell Marquis.
We turn our faces towards the smoking sky, and the tops of the trees tremble as Chumana lands beside us with a crash, black smoke billowing from her nostrils. She looks down at Marquis and me, her amber eyes burning.
‘Never use that artificial tongue to talk to me again, human girl,’ she says.
Then she swings her huge head down to the ground and a figure jumps off her neck, landing with a thump on the frozen ground.
‘Evening, misfits,’ Atlas says with a grin. ‘Ready for redemption?’
