Charles scowled. “No, Sky. We talked about this. It’s too dangerous.”
Liam nodded. “Right now, we’ve got equilibrium. The human press has mostly forgotten about us. Even wyvern society—it’s mostly moved on to other scandals. So long as we lie low, we can keep doing whatever we want, keep living here, keep living our lives.”
“It could be much worse,” Tuck said.
Charles nodded. “I know it doesn’t feel that way to you, that it felt like rock-bottom end-of-the-world when Ryan did what he did. But it’s not. We don’t need them, or anyone. We have everything we need right here.”
Except Mom,I thought. And friends. And a father who smiles and laughs. “But don’t you want more?” I pressed. “Don’t you want what we’re supposed to have? What’s rightfully ours?”
Charles looked amused.
“Okay, maybe ‘rightfully’ isn’t the perfect word,” I admitted.
“We have enough,” Tuck said.
I stared at him. That was a very unwyvern-like attitude. All our kind wanted to accumulate gold, expend the hoard, increase the family legacy. “What aren’t you telling me?”
They exchanged glances. Suddenly, I was sure: they were hiding something.
“Spill. What’s going on?”
“Nothing!” Liam said. And Tuck echoed him, “Nothing. Don’t be so suspicious.”
I glared at them, as if I could stare their secrets out of their heads. “If you’re lying to me…”
“We aren’t, not exactly,” Charles said soothingly. “It’s just…We know we can’t do a heist right now. It’s too dangerous. Too much at stake.”
“Why?” I asked. “What’s at stake? You’re keeping something from me.” I was furious, even though I was keeping a secret from them. “Dad told you…what? What did he tellyou?”
All three of them looked at one another again. “No,” Charles said. “He’ll tell her when he thinks she’s ready to understand.”
“Dad never tells me anything. He thinks I need protection. But I don’t. I need the truth.” I was trying not to shout, even though the movie would have drowned me out.
To my surprise, it was Tuck who answered. “Dad said the council was one vote away from destroying us entirely. We would have been stripped of everything—worse than just shunned. We’d have been declared outcast.”
I stared at him, then Liam, then Charles. All of them looked serious, and I thought of Ryan and his worry about his father ruining us. But he couldn’t…The council wouldn’t…No one had been declared “outcast” in…well, ever. That was a thing the wyverns did at Home, at least according to the stories. Our families had never done it. Shunned meant we were disgraced, the lowest of the low; outcast meant we were disowned. Treated as if we did not exist, and with no hope of redemption. It was, to put it mildly, an extreme reaction for a botched theft. “But…it was just a heist!”
“We don’t know why their reaction was so extreme,” Charles said. “Apparently, they decided to make an example of us.”
“Mr. Keene, your ex’s charming father, pushed hardest for it,” Liam said. “He lobbied for us to be outcast. Has a lot of sway on the council.”
“Hate that guy,” Tuck muttered.
“She should know what kind of family she’s pining after,” Liam said. “No idea why Mr. Keene hates us so much, but I heard there were bribes and blackmail. Fun stuff.”
Charles nodded. “Dad had to make all sorts of promises.”
“Including that we’d all behave ourselves,” Tuck mumbled.
“And that means you too,” Charles said. “Abandon this crazy idea about stealing back what’s ‘ours,’ and just be grateful that we’re still allowed to live here, still allowed to be wyverns.”
I shook my head, more because I didn’t want it to be true than because I didn’t believe them. It matched up too neatly with what Ryan had said about why he’d done what he’d done. (He really had been protecting me!) His father led the wyvern council—they wouldn’t have considered shunning us if he hadn’t led the way. But why? Why did he hate us so much? And what did he know about what had happened to our mother? “No one can keep us from beingwyverns.”
“You know what he means, Sky,” Liam said. “We’d be shut out of gatherings, closed off from everyone. You think no one speaks to us now? That’s just playground stuff. You can come back from a shunning—given enough time and ‘good behavior,’ we can be declared forgiven. If we were outcast, we’d be dead to them for all time. At least thisway…”
“If we lie low, they’ll forget,” Charles said. “All it needs is time, and it will get better. Maybe Dad won’t ever be on the council again, but we’ll still be a part of wyvern society. We can earn back our reputations, gradually and quietly. Promise you’ll let go of whatever half-baked, harebrained daydream you’ve been nursing.”
My mouth felt dry. And I had the terrible, tempting thought:I don’t have to go.I could stay here with my brothers, eat popcorn, and watch a movie. Gabriela, Maximus, and Ryan…they’d wait for me for a while, and then eventually they’d give up and go home.
