My lip trembles and I nod. “And you’ll take Blaze with you?”
“If he’ll come,” Dray points out.
“He will,” I say. “I’ll come with you out to the forest now and explain everything to him. Stars,” I mutter, swallowing down more tears. “He loved Clare so much. How do I even explain it to him?”
Dray pulls me toward him and hugs me. I hug him back tight. He liked Clare and I know he feels her loss too.
I spend some time talking with the Tudors, explaining about Barney’s likes and dislikes, while the others pack up the stuff, Beaufort carefully tucking the two firestones inside his coat. Fly isn’t much help. He’s still huddled by the fire. I didn’t know it was possible for one person to cry so much. Every so often he stops, seems to regain his composure, and then the next second he’s dissolving into tears all over again. I’m barely holding it together myself, and I can’t look his way or toward the kitchen. If I catch sight of my friend or the body on the table, I know I won’t be able to go on.
The others ply Fly with drink, water, and the odd snack, checking in with him every so often and I’m taken aback by how much these men have changed. Or were they always like this – caring, kind, considerate – that I just never saw it, blinded by myown prejudices? Either way, I am more than grateful for these men.
Finally, we’re ready to go, Mrs. Tudor making us all promise we’ll be safe and that we’ll be back soon. Of course we all promise, like she asks. And we all know we have no right to make those promises, because who knows what is going to happen to us next. I just hope with every ounce of my magic, every bone in my body, every part of my soul, that Dray is right, that no one else will be hurt.
Everyone in Slate Quarter knows we’re here now, but we still use our magic to hide ourselves. None of us feels like conversation, being accosted, or sidetracked. We’re all lost in our own thoughts as we walk along the paths back down to the forest.
The night sky is covered in a blanket of thick cloud, the darkness even more impenetrable than usual, as if the sky itself is mourning, an idea that’s only amplified as freezing rain starts to streak down through the trees and batter our heads.
Blaze must have known we were coming. He’s sitting upright, large golden eyes wide open, sniffing at the air. He sniffs around all of us. He sniffs at our feet, our bodies, our heads. And I can’t help feeling he’s searching for Clare, that he already knows something’s wrong.
“She’s gone, Blaze,” I say, almost choking on my words. “Clare’s gone.”
He halts his sniffing and meets my eyes with that golden gaze of his. He lets out a low whine and paws at the ground. He’s as sad as any of the rest of us.
“I know, buddy,” I say. “I know. It sucks so hard.” I shake my head. “And I don’t want her to be gone either. But I need you to go with Fly now, and Beaufort and Dray. I need you to go back to the academy. I’ll be there soon.”
The dragon whines again. But I don’t have the stomach for arguments right now. I take hold of Thorne’s hand in my right, and, with the rain streaking down my face and soaking into my jacket, tell them once more to look after each other, and then, in a rush of air, I displace out to Granite Quarter.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Beaufort
I don’t know how it’s come to this, how I’m the one who’s drawn the short bitterly straw, but here I am, hovering outside the door of Clare’s boyfriend’s room.
When we arrived back at the academy, the dragon went slinking off toward his cave, the Professor muttered something about needing to speak with Cornelius, and Dray insisted he had to take care of Fly, despite the fact that Fly was being reunited with his own boyfriend, the redhead whose name is Jack or Mac or Slack, something like that.
And so it’s just me outside that door, wondering how the hell I’m going to break it to this boy.
I raise my fist, and as I do, I picture Clare’s small body laid out on the Tudors’ kitchen table, hidden beneath that blanket. I lower my fist, squeeze the bridge of my nose between my finger and thumb.
Shit.
I’ve had to do some hard things in my time. It was me that broke the news to Hells Bells when our siblings passed away. Shewas little, with very little understanding of what that all meant. She hardly knew our half-siblings.
This is going to be so much worse.
I steady my shoulders and knock on the door. It takes a few minutes for it to open. And then there he is. Damien. He’s much shorter than me, and he has to crane his head back to find my face.
“Beaufort,” he says, clearly surprised.
I open my mouth, ready to say the words I’ve rehearsed in my head many times while I deposited the two firestones safely in my room and walked over to his tower. Now those words seem stuck in my throat, and they won’t come. The color drains from the boy’s face before my very eyes.
“It’s Clare, isn’t it?” he says quietly.
“Yes.” And before he gets any hope that she’s merely wounded or hurt, I hurry on. “I’m very sorry to tell you, Damien, but Clare’s dead.”
He stares at me, unmoving and unresponsive. For a moment, I wonder if I really did speak the words, or if I just said them in my head once again.
Then finally his face seems to crack, like the ice on the pond out there in Slate Quarter.
