He lifts his drink to his mouth, stares at the liquid, then lowers it again untouched.
“The elite guard,” I say.
“The elite guard,” he repeats.
“You think your mum will let us have them?” Dray asks.
Beaufort sweeps his hand backward over his head, then forward, and drags it down his face. He groans. “I dunno. She’s unhappy with us. The dragon, the lumomancy, everything.”
“I don’t see any other way, Beaufort,” I tell him.
“No,” he agrees. “I’m going to have to ask her. Let’s just hope the professor returns before it comes down to that.”
Chapter Eight
Briony
“What’s it like being in love?” Fly asks me as the three of us – me, Fly, and Clare – lie sprawled out across my giant bed in the attic room of the Princes’ Tower.
Beaufort insisted I go to bed and rest, and so I insisted on taking my two friends with me, much to Dray’s obvious disappointment. I guess he was hoping I’d take him.
“Wow, Fly?” I say. “That’s a big question.”
“You’ve never been in love before?” Clare asks him in return.
“No,” he says. “I don’t think I have. I was expecting it to be this kind of wondrous thing where you’re walking around on cloud nine the whole time with love hearts in your eyes, but, geez Cupcake, it looks pretty stressful.”
I can’t help laughing, rubbing my knuckles into my eyes.
“It is pretty stressful,” I say. “Right now I feel like my heart’s been ripped in two, like there’s a piece of me missing. And I won’t feel right again until Fox is back with me.”
“See,” Fly says, “I get the whole sex appeal thing when it comes to the professor, but the love thing? The dude is scary.”
“Not underneath,” I say. “He’s kind. He’s brave. He makes me feel seen.” I lift my head to look at the two of them. “Do you think I’m crazy? Wanting to go after him, wanting to find him?”
“Uh, duh,” Fly says. “There’s a reason they banish people out to the demon wastelands, Briony. There’s a reason people that run away out there are never seen again.”
I sigh and drop my head back against the soft mattress. “I don’t want to put the others in danger,” I tell them. “It’s like a lose-lose situation. I don’t know what to do.”
“We said we’d help you,” Clare says, “and we will.”
“I know. But right now, I can’t see the best way to do this. I said I needed a plan, but I don’t have one at all.”
“We’ve got to look at it as a trial,” Clare says, rolling up to sit, crossing her legs and pushing her glasses back up her nose. “Just like any other trial.”
Fly snorts. “It’s not like any other trial,” he says.
Clare ignores him. “And you know where we usually start when we have a trial?”
Both me and Fly shrug.
“The library!” Clare says.
“No offense, Clare Bear,” Fly says, “but this is a problem the realm’s been dealing with for hundreds of years. If there were answers to how to defeat the demons in the Wastelands sitting there in the library, I think someone would have found it by now.”
“Maybe,” Clare says, unperturbed, “but I’m going to go and check anyway.”
She shuffles to the end of the bed and jumps down.
