“She might have if she was helped by a horde of demons,” I growl, feeling sick to the stomach at the thought of it.
“Or maybe he went after her to try and catch her?” Clare suggests helpfully.
“We can speculate all we like,” Beaufort says, “but until we find him, we aren’t going to know for sure.”
I can’t help smiling at him. Despite the fact he probably agrees with Dray, he’s trying to be reasonable about this, because he knows how much Fox means to me.
“What?” he says with suspicion.
“Nothing,” I say.
“Wait,” Fly says, “what about the lightning bit? How the hell did you get struck, Cupcake? And also,” he adds, “half the academy is currently gathered out on the field gaping at a dragon – a dragon, so the rumor says, belonging to you.”
“Ahhh,” I say, chewing my cheek and dropping my gaze to the floor. “I decided to fly off on Blaze to rescue Fox.”
“From the demon wastelands?!” Fly cries. “Have you lost your mind?!”
“Yeah, for a moment there, I think I did.”
“Love can do that to you,” Clare says matter-of-factly. I nod.
“Professor Fox Tudor does not need you to go rescue him,” Fly points out. “Have you met the guy? He’s fucking scary.”
“That’s what I said!” Dray pipes up. “Plus, the dude is fucking immortal.”
“It’s Bardin and she’s working with demons. He needs me.”
“I think the others are right, Briony,” Clare says. “Fox can look after himself and the Madame has a strange fascination with him, doesn’t she?”
“An obsession,” I mutter.
“Right, she’s not going to kill him – even if she could.”
“She murdered my sister. I’m not letting her take anyone else I love from me.”
“Do you even know for sure that he’s in the demon wastelands?”
I explain to Clare and Fly about the rips in the air, about how the demons and the Madame had escaped through them before they’d resealed. Then I explain about the same strange abomination hanging in the air at the lake.
“Portals,” Clare murmurs. At Fly’s puzzled expression, she adds, “It’s like a way of traveling from one place to another. Similar to displacement.”
“Demons can’t displace,” Beaufort tells her.
“No, but they’ve found another way to infiltrate the realm,” Clare counters, paling at the idea.
“Shit, that’s not good,” Fly mumbles.
“So you see,” I tell them both, “that has to be where he’s gone. Which means I’m going to have to follow him out there.”
“I thought you lost your mind momentarily,” Fly mutters, “clearly you misplaced it permanently.”
“He doesn’t have anyone else, Fly. No one else is going to go and bring him back.”
“And what if he went there willingly?”
“Then she’s warped his mind and I’ll have to fix that too.”
“Sheesh,” Fly says, “you’re really serious.”
