All three of them look at me blankly.
I gape at them. “You’ve neveraskedhim?”
They look a bit sheepish now.
“Alright. We’ll just...table that for now. But maybe sometime, you could...retire Rip?” I offer. “And Ryatt can either lead your army forreal, as himself, or do whatever it is he actually wants to do—which you’ll find out, when youaskhim,” I say pointedly to Slade.
He flashes me a smirk. “Noted.”
“Alright, I’ll go to the Perch to get that message sent off, and I’ll make sure the caregiver knows we need our timberwings ready as soon as they’re finished hunting,” Lu says as she starts to walk toward the front door. She pauses just at the doorway to the hall and looks over her shoulder. “Don’t do too much this time, Rip.”
Slade stiffens but doesn’t reply. She sighs and then walks off, the door closing after her.
As soon as she’s gone, Judd jumps up. “I’m going to go get the damn wine while she’s out. I know she stashed it somewhere. Whistle if she comes back.”
I can’t help but smirk.
Judd looks at Slade just before he disappears down the corridor. “I’ll get food and water packs ready and start closing up the house, too. You go do your thing, but like Lu said, don’t do your thingtoomuch.”
When he walks off, I frown over at Slade. “What are they talking about?”
His steady eyes settle on me. “Well…there’s more that I haven’t explained about the rip.”
Slade and I enter the cave, the dim blue shade surrounding us in its subterranean midnight. I let my head tip back, let my gaze run across the shadowed dips and curves of the ceiling. The fingers of the stalactites reach down, pausing in their grasp, while the little clouded beetles cluster together against the fluorescence, making their whole bodies glow.
I may not have been in Drollard for long, but I’ll miss these caves. I’ll miss the way they’ve given me shelter from the world for these past few weeks. Like a cocoon for a caterpillar, I’ve been encased in their hollows, enveloped in their protective shells. But now, I’m ready to leave their protection—to face the world outside.
I’m still no winged butterfly, but I do feel as if I’ve been reborn. My metamorphosis has been twenty years in the making, but I’m ready to be what I’m supposed to be.
My old life had to end, had to be cut away, burned down to nothing but gilded ashes. And I can either remain stagnant in these ashes or I can root down into them and sprout up anew.
I canthrive.
But these cocooned caves—I will miss them.
“It’s peaceful here,” I murmur.
Slade nods, but I can tell that he doesn’t hold the same quiet esteem I have for it.
“You don’t like it here, do you?”
A little chuff escapes him. “I was responsible for yanking all of these people with me from Annwyn. The raw magic of the rip killed some of them and badly injured others, my mother included. We were stuck in these caves forweeks.We had nothing. No food, no homes, nothing but the clothes on our backs. One of the Oreans tried to jump backintothe rip, but it nearly killed them.”
I try to picture that, picture him going from this horrific fight for his life—a fight for his mother’s and brother’s lives—and then suddenly being yanked through a rip in the world and shoved here, in the middle of nowhere.
“Did you know you were in Orea when you fell here?”
“Not at first. But I figured out pretty quickly that we weren’t in Annwyn anymore. I could feel it.”
An old memory trickles into my mind, like the gentlest first drop before the rain. “Yes. I remember that—remember how strange Orea felt in comparison. I don’t really remember Annwyn all that much, but I do remember that when I came here, something just felt...lacking.”
Slade nods, and I know he knows exactly what I mean.
Elore’s house comes into view, its rooftop practically gleaming. “How did you all survive?” I ask. “This isn’t exactly the best place to suddenly be thrust into.”
“It was good in the sense that no one was here to see us arrive, no one here to see the rip. But it also meant that we were stuck in this frozen wasteland with nowhere to go. And I was responsible for it.”
“You didn’t know it would happen. The rip was partly your father’s fault too. And who knows what he would’ve done to everyone if you hadn’t gotten them all away.”
