“It’s okay. Nothing serious. I’m okay. Are you okay?”
“Mom, I—Nity—” I choke.
“I know.” She brushes my hair. “James told me everything.”
After I’m thoroughly checked out once again, I’m allowed into my father’s room. He lays still in the bed. I wonder if that is how I looked—suspended between life and death.
Then he cracks open an eye. “Hey, kiddo.”
I hug him so tight I worry I’ve hurt him, but he huffs out a laugh. “I’mokay. Everything is okay,” he says just like always. We stay like that for a good long while.
When Dad naps again and doctors are out of earshot, I whisper to James what I’ve needed to say for hours. “I have gold. A vial I carry with me always.” I pat my hospital gown. “It’s in the dress I was wearing.”
James’s face falls. “You don’t actually. Not in that vial.”
I turn toward him. “What?”
“I tried to save you with it. I used the silver dust I had. God, when I thought that wasn’t going to be enough…” James takes a heavy breath. He looks me directly in the eye. “As Jeffrey told me, he switched out your vial for iron and sprinkled the gold powder in Shelly’s teas for the last month.”
Disbelief consumes me. They were so firm in denying me. So much older and wiser. “He… he used it? But—”
“He didn’t want you to know. Didn’t want anyone to know, not even Shelly. Thought it would protect you and your family if he got caught. He planned to tell authorities he bought it off the black market.”
I think back to that day I’d first offered the vial after learning about Shelly’s remission. Jeffrey’s hand covering the vial. I can easily imagine a switch as I was overcome with uselessness.
He did exactly what I wanted him to. But that means…
“I think that’s how they knew,” Mom says softly.
I gape at her in horror.
“Not that it’s your fault or Jeffrey’s.” Her expression goes stone-still. “Those men are to blame. But I think that’s how they knew we possessed gold. Then they used the wedding as a cover to search the sanctuary.”
The tears come thicker. “They saw James and me go down the cliffs to check on Nity. That’s how they found her.”
“Farren, please don’t blame yourself. When they couldn’t find gold, they would have started threatening us. They probably only followed you in order to use you against Dad.”
“You don’t need to saytheylike we don’t know who sent those poachers,” James says, in a tone I’ve never heard before.
“James, honey,” my mom answers gently. “You can’t blame yourself either.”
He clenches his fists in his lap. “I don’t. But I’m just saying, you don’t need to tiptoe around the truth.My fatherordered this.”
The next day I’m released from the hospital. Two days after that, when I’m strong enough, James takes me to the caves. I’m trying to see if maybe… maybe they missed a few pieces. Not for me, though I’d appreciate the ache in my arm to fade. And not even for Dad, who’s recovering slowly, but steadily. There are three little dragons whoneedthat gold, who are too young to be weaned off metal. We can give them silver, but for Zilar it won’t be enough this late into development. I’m not even positive Oria could survive only on silver.
Nity’s nest was always dark, but a gloom now lives in the newly forged shadows. Without gold, or Nity, it’s emptied of its joy, its beauty. No, it’s more than that, more than the visual emptiness. The scene before me is also a hollow thing, devoid of possibility. Because now there will be things that cannot happen. Saving the entire species? Seeing Zilar, Electrum, and Oria grow up with strong metaled coats? Nity’s existence broke open the impossible.
I spend all my energy searching for gold, trying to sense even a scrap of it. Nothing. After a solid hour, I fall to my knees. I begged her to trust me and she had.Failure, my brain loops the word.Failure. But I didn’t just fail to save the last of the species, my charge. I failed myself because I’ve been living only for her. Pretending, hiding, breathing to protect her. And without her?
I’m nothing.
It should be me at the bottom of an ocean.
“You should have let me—” I start and then drop the sentence. Blame grows like vines over my heart, choking me.
“Don’t you dare say I should have let youdrown,” James demands, pain etched in each word. He holds my shoulders; tries to calm my shaking.“You are worth more than gold. You are more precious than anything, and I almost lost you.”
I must not look convinced because he continues. “You know that, right? You know you are more precious than any metal.”
