“I don’t want Briony to end up on a kitchen table under some fucking blanket,” Dray says, his voice deadly. “And I don’t think there’s any universe, Beau, where your mother is alive and so is Little Kitten. It’s either one or the other. And I’m sorry, Beau, but I choose Little Kitten.”
I frown. “You know I do too, Dray. You know where my loyalty and my heart lie.”
“Then how can you be questioning if we’re doing the right fucking thing? Little Kitten just lost her best friend. She already lost her sister. Fucking hell, her mother too. It ends now, Beaufort.”
“How do we end it, Dray? That’s what I don’t see.”
He leans even further forward, resting on his forearms, the table creaking under his weight.
“She’s coming, Beau. The Empress is on her way to the academy.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve had a crow from my brother.” I arch an eyebrow because Dray’s family fucked us over. We can’t exactly trust them. “This was from Dirk and I trust him with my life,” he growls.
“Yeah, but would you trust him with Briony’s?”
He ignores me. “She’s mobilizing more than just the elite guards. She’s raising an army and they are on their way here.”
“An army? What kind of army?”
“She’s pulled troops from the realm’s border and she’s summoned the shadow weavers to fight.”
“Just for us? Just for one fucking girl?”
Dray shrugs.
“She’s not just any girl though, is she?” Fox says, coming to join us in the kitchen. “You saw what she did out there in Slate. How she obliterated every last demon in the sky. She could be the key to destroying the demons once and for all.”
“And that’s just too great a risk for the Empress,” I mutter.
“Exactly. We have to be ready.”
“Then what the fuck are we doing sitting around here?” I snarl. “We need to get organized.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Briony
Granite Quarter is exactly how Dray described it to me, full of buildings that look just like those back at the academy, with a few industrial-looking buildings – ones Thorne tells me are laboratories – sprinkled in-between. There are more trees here than I saw in either Iron or the main towns of Slate, plus little squares with patches of grass and benches for people to sit on.
It doesn’t have the grandeur of Onyx, the splendor or indulgence. But I’d be perfectly happy if this is where I ended up. At least, I think I would be.
I have Clare’s home address memorized. But that still leaves us with a problem – how we’re going to find that home without being spotted. We stood out in Slate Quarter in our clothes from the academy, and now we’ll stand out in Granite Quarter dressed as if we’ve come from Slate.
Clare once showed me pictures of her own Quarter. Though no one here dresses as elegantly or as brightly as those in Onyx Quarter, their clothes are of better quality, if a little drab.
“Where exactly are we?” I ask Thorne as we linger in the dark shadows. Luckily for us, it’s night, and there aren’t many people out on the streets. The darkness acts as a sort of cover of its own.
“In the university grounds,” Thorne explains. “They brought me here once. After the accident. They were trying to find ways to help me control my magic. It was one of the scholars at the university who designed my gloves.”
“Clare’s parents are doctors. I know their apartment was somewhere near the hospital building. Do you know where that is?” I ask him.
To my surprise, he does. “They took me there too. Ran some tests on me,” he says, a little too quietly for my liking.
“What kind of tests?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “It’s a long story, Nini. Not one for now.”
