I take a deep inhale and exhale. If Bardin is right, my mother has sent us here to die. She ordered it. She wants me dead. The final option is that we strike her first – we kill her first. And yet the prospect of that is completely unimaginable. It turns my stomach to think about it. We’ve never been close. She’s never been loving. She’s barely treated me like a son. But I don’t think I could do it.
And then there’s my sister, too. I can’t do anything that would jeopardize Arabella’s safety.
The professor examines my face, and it’s as if he reads my thoughts. “We’d never be able to do that anyway,” he says. “She’s too powerful, too heavily guarded, and has too many allies.”
“Then we expose her,” I say.
He shakes his head. “The only people who have the power to remove her from her throne are the shadow weavers, and they wouldn’t believe us. They wouldn’t want to believe us, because it shakes the foundation and the security of their whole world.”
“Then we flee.”
“To where?” he says, spinning his hand through the air. “There’s nowhere to go.”
“Somewhere beyond the demon realm – there must be somewhere else.”
“We’d die before we reached it.”
“Then what?” I snap in annoyance. “What do we do?”
The professor strokes his beard, thinking. He thinks for a long time. Finally, he says, “Nothing. We do nothing.”
“Nothing?” I say in dismay. “We have to do something. She wants Briony dead.”
“Our safest mode of action is to pretend like we don’t know – to forget that we know – and to protect Briony. We return to the realm alive. What’s she going to do about it?”
“Strike at us as soon as we cross the border.”
“For all she knows we’re dead.” Fox shakes his head. “Besides, it’s too risky, an act like that – what if someone saw, someone knew, someone talked? Killing kids from Slate or Granite or Iron is one thing; killing her own son? If that got back to the palace, back to Onyx Quarter, rumors would swell, and rumors are dangerous for the Empress.”
But I’m not so sure. Bardin may be cunning and clever. However, she’s nothing compared to my mother. After all, it seems my mother has quietly been eliminating students with powers for years. And no one – no one but Briony – has ever questioned it until now.
Tudor’s gaze flicks to the others.
“Do we tell them?” I ask.
“Yes, we tell them.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
Dray
We’re all running on fumes, on empty. The food’s all gone and I’m fucking starving, my stomach moaning loudly and rumbling around. Fuck, what I would give right now for a beef burger.
Little Kitten is struggling too. Once or twice she stumbles and she’s practically swaying on her feet. Thorne tries to convince her to fly on the back of the dragon, but she refuses. She says he’s still healing from his wounds; she doesn’t want to add any more burden to his bruised back.
In the end, with a huff, and after she’s nearly toppled over a third time, I take hold of her wrist and tug her toward me. “If you won’t ride his back, then you’re going to have to ride mine.”
“What?” she says, looking confused.
I wink at her, and then I’m shrugging off my clothes, stuffing them into my rucksack and transforming into my wolf, my four paws hitting the hard, dusty ground. I look up at her and she looks down at me in confusion. I yap, rolling my shoulders, making it clear I mean for her to hop on.
“I can’t,” she says. “I’m too heavy.”
Beaufort snorts. “Don’t be ridiculous, sweetheart. You weigh nothing at all. Besides, Dray’s wolf is strong – especially at the time of the full moon. He can easily carry you.”
“Seriously?” she says, although I can see there’s a slight temptation in her eyes. Poor thing is exhausted. She’s spent the last few days navigating palaces, undertaking trials, fighting demons, and facing Madame Bardin on numerous occasions. Okay, so have the rest of us too, but we’re used to it. We’ve been trained; she never has.
“Come on, up you get,” Beaufort says, marching toward her, taking a grip of her waist and practically plonking her straight down on my back. Before she can squeal and wriggle off, I’m moving, and she has no choice but to take handfuls of my thick fur and hang on.
