She was a good friend to Kitten. She saw how special she was. She was there for her. In a way, she’s been there for all of us.
“You’re right,” Thorne says. “We have to go.”
I glance back toward the front room. Fly and Little Kitten aren’t sobbing anymore. They’re holding each other, whispering to one another, Little Kitten’s old dog peering up at them anxiously as if he can sense something is wrong.
We walk back into the front room and they stop, looking up at us instead, expectant.
“You’re going to say we have to leave, aren’t you?” Little Kitten says.
“Yes, we do,” Beaufort tells her. “It’s too dangerous to stay. We need to go now, because the Empress’s elite guards, maybe the Empress herself, are coming.”
“Then why don’t we fight them here?” I ask. “You heard the mayor. They’re willing to fight with us.”
“These people just sustained a horrific attack by demons. They’re in no fit state to fight, and besides which, they don’t have powers.”
“They might,” I say. “Hidden powers like Briony’s.”
“They need time to regroup and heal,” Beaufort says. “We can’t ask them to fight now.”
“Then where are we going to go?” Little Kitten asks, her cheeks tear-stained.
“Back to the academy,” Beaufort says. “It’s safe there, and there are people willing to fight alongside us.”
“Fight?” Her eyes are big and sad and it feels like a knife has been plunged straight into my heart. “I can’t fight. I can’t do this anymore.”
“What do you mean, Little Kitten?”
Her breath is ragged and strained and her shoulders shake with each inhale.
“This is all my fault. All of it. Clare is dead because of me and I don’t want anyone else to die. I don’t want to lose any of you and I don’t want to do this anymore.”
“Brion–”
“No, Beaufort.” She jumps to her feet, shaking her head. “I can’t. Don’t ask me to. I can’t watch anyone else die.”
“Then we won’t, Nini,” Thorne says. “We’ll head back out to the demon realm. You saw the way she obliterated those demons out there,” he says to the rest of us, “We’ll find a way to cross the wastelands and reach whatever lies beyond. And we’ll leave all this behind.”
“Is that what you want?” Beaufort asks her.
“I’ve lost too many people, Beaufort.” The tears cascade down her face and roll off her chin. “I can’t do this anymore. I don’t have anything more to give and I won’t sacrifice the people that I love.”
“Okay, then,” he says, “if that’s what you want.”
“It is!”
He looks around the rest of us. It sounds like a freaking crazy plan to me but probably no more crazy than remaining in the realm and waiting for the Empress to kill us. And I’m willing to do anything this girl asks of me. I nod my agreement and Thorne and Fox do the same.
“Then we’re leaving for the border,” Beaufort instructs.
“No!” a voice says from the doorway and when we turn around we find Mrs. Tudor lurking there, listening in to our conversation. Her arms are folded across her body, her clothes dirty with blood and her face coated in grit. “You can’t go,” she says, staring directly at Little Kitten. “You have to stay and finish what you started.”
“I… I can’t,” Briony mutters, her gaze falling to the floor.
“You don’t have a choice. Fate has chosen you, has given you a gift, not only of my son and these three powerful shadow weavers, but of a magic not seen for hundreds of years. You can’t waste that gift. You can’t stand out there in the square and raise people’s hopes like that and then walk away, Briony Storm.”
“I’m walking away so that no one else gets hurt,” Briony says hoarsely, “so that no one else I love dies.”
“We all get hurt. If you stay or if you go, that won’t change. You know what it’s like living here in Slate Quarter. You’ve spent most of your life here. You know the people are hurting all the time, even if they put on a brave face and pretend otherwise. And we all die, sooner or later. We all lose the people we love. That’s a fact of life. It shouldn’t stop you from doing what’s right.”
