Despite the fairly early hour, Slate Quarter is already bustling with people, most of them on the way to work or heading back after a night shift. So I take the route that Fox showed us yesterday, heading around the back of town.
I pass only a few people out this way and they take no notice of me. Soon I’m out in the woods, being sure to avoid my old home.
Blaze is not where we left him.
Fear grips me for a moment until I hear noise deeper in the forest. I race that way and find him curled around several trees, bones scattered around his sleeping form. I don’t look too closely at the bones. I don’t want to know if he’s been raiding people’s sheep or goat herds.
I step closer and he stirs, lifting his great head and purring when he spots me. I come closer and stroke his long snout, kissing his smooth gold scales.
“A dragon, eh?” a voice says somewhere in the trees behind me, making me jolt out of my skin. The dragon growls.
But I recognize that voice. It’s my dad.
“He’s yours?” my dad asks when I make no response.
“Yes,” I say, not turning around to acknowledge him.
“You’ve really landed on your feet, haven’t you?” he says. And I can’t tell if there’s bitterness or admiration in his voice. Maybe there’s a mixture of both.
I don’t answer either way. Because in some ways I have, haven’t I? All these people I have now in my life who love me and care about me and who I love and cherish back. And yet it hasn’t been an easy path to get here. There have been many times my life has been in danger, where I’ve endured pain, ridicule, and abuse. My life is still hanging in the balance now. I haven’t reached my happy ending just yet. There’s a good chance I won’t at all.
I hear my dad’s footsteps crunching through the snow and then he appears in my peripheral vision.
“I’m pleased for you, Briony. I really am,” he says, eyeing the dragon with a mixture of fear and wonderment. “Those boys, the ones you were with, they’re from Onyx Quarter, aren’t they? Seemed like powerful shadow weavers to me. You think they’ll take you there? You think they’ll keep you?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
I could tell him everything – that right now a happy life in Onyx Quarter is looking very unlikely. After all, we’re traitors to the realm.
“Maybe if they do,” he continues, “when you’re settled, you’ll think of your old dad back in Slate Quarter, won’t you? You were always a good girl. You both were. Always kind to your old dad.”
I close my eyes. The pain inside is insufferable.
I should tell him no. I should point out he never extended that kindness, never considered me in his thoughts. If he had,maybe my time in Slate Quarter, those last few years, wouldn’t have been so hideous.
But I’m not that kind of person.
It was my sister who raised me more than he did. And she was kind, with a heart of gold. She never held a grudge. She always thought of others. Some would say that made her a pushover.
I think I’m more hardy than her. I think it’s taken a lot to crack through that hard shell I’d formed to protect me, to that softness deep within me.
But I am like her in lots of ways. And I know if things do turn out well – if I do land my happily ever after – I won’t be able to turn my back on my dad. Even if he probably deserves it.
Chapter Thirty-One
Thorne
I wake up to find myself forced against a wall; Beaufort, Dray, and Tudor sleeping wedged up against me. My immediate instinct is to jolt away, to get as far from them as I can. It’s been my instinct for such a long time. Don’t let anyone get too close. Don’t let them get too near. Don’t let them touch me.
It takes my mind and my brain a moment to remember that things are different now. Nini has tamed my shadows. Somehow they no longer seem the threat that they once were, not to my friends and my family anyway. I still think they’d be deadly and ruthless to anyone who tried to hurt us. In fact, that I’m certain of.
I shift on the bed, realizing that Nini is missing from this makeshift bed we’ve created in Tudor’s old room.
I shake Beaufort awake.
“Briony’s missing,” I snap, before he’s even opened his eyes.
“What do you mean ‘missing’?” Dray says, alert from somewhere else in the bed.
