“As did I,” Maximus said to her. “You should have shown it to me when you came for the spells. I would have believed you. I thought you were chasing dreams, like my Angela.” He gazed up at the dragon again, and I’d never seen an expression so full of love and devoid of rational thought.
“How were you caught?” I asked Mom.
Mom made a face. “My contact didn’t know about the explosive on the jewel itself. Liam could have defused it without triggering an alarm, but I clipped the blue wire, which alerted security. Sky, how did you even manage to reach it?”
“She led her first heist,” Maximus said. “And thanks to her bravery, ingenuity, and persistence, I’ve been reunited with the love of my life. Sky, I owe you a debt of gratitude.”
I raised my eyebrows. His words were over the top, but he seemed to mean them.
Mom’s face lit up. “Oh, Sky, I’m so proud of you!” She hugged me again—she’d never hugged me this much. As I was squished against her, I had to tell myself not to cry. It was all well and good that Mom was proud of me, but I had been caught. “I’m amazed your father let you lead. Such a dangerous target. You must have won his trust.”
Or lied to him and snuck out. “Not exactly.”
My stomach chose that moment to rumble.
Smoke puffed from Angela’s snout. “She needs food,” Maximus’s wife declared. “She’s been through the portal. You may take from my share.”
“She’s newly arrived,” a man at a nearby table said. “We’ll all share.”
“Speak for yourself.” An older woman. “Some of us don’t have the ranking for it.”
Thanking Angela and the man profusely, Mom swept me away from Maximus and his wife and toward a long table. She waved toward a silver-coated wall, and a door slid open. A faceless man of silver metal rolled out carrying a tray with bowls balanced on top.
“Home hasrobots?” When I’d pictured a dragon homeland, I hadn’t pictured, well,Star Trek. But I supposed, as Mom had said, time had passed here, just as it had back on Earth.
Whoa, that was a weird phrase: “back on Earth.”
I watched the silver metal man deliver bowls to wyverns throughout the Hall—he seemed to be moving in a deliberate pattern, but I couldn’t tell what determined it. It wasn’t by table, like in a restaurant, nor was it based on who seemed the hungriest. A few looked as if they hadn’t eaten in days. With haunted eyes, they tracked the server’s every move. Then I shook my head. “Mom, we can’t stay here. You belong with us. Everyone will be so worried. They’re already worried about you. But now me…We can’t do that to Dad. And Charles, I know he’ll blame himself. And Liam isn’t making jokes much anymore. Tuck has been through at least a dozen hobbies since you left. He doesn’t talk about becoming a chef anymore. Dad thinks he’s only going to drift from thing to thing until he’s exhausted. And Dad won’t let anyone go on heists. I think it’s only going to get worse. Mr. Keene will punish them for my actions. He’ll insist the council declare them outcast—”
“Oh, sweetie, our people don’t do that anymore. Your father will appeal to the council. He has sway. You can’t worry about him—”
“Not anymore. They stripped him of his rank. They blamed him for you.”
Mom paled. “They shouldn’t have done that.” She sank onto a bench. “He wasn’t involved. He’d made it very clear he didn’t want to be involved—like Maximus, he thought the Door was a fairy tale. Or at best, a lost treasure that would never be found. So I was careful to ensure he wasn’t involved. Thomas Keene knew that.” Mom looked at me, her hands clasped tightly in front of her. “Tell me what happened, Sky. Everything.”
But before I could reply, Novi, the young honor guard, jumped in. “There’s no point in wallowing in the past! Your future has begun. You’ve escaped! You’re Home now.” She plopped down on the bench beside me and beamed at me.
“Earth is my home,” I said.
“You’re only saying that because you don’t know any better,” Novi said. “As many of the Returned often say, you’ve escaped hell and found your way to heaven. You don’t know how lucky you are!”
The silver metal man delivered a golden bowl to Mom. I watched him pivot and then glide across the hall, whirring to deliver another bowl to another wyvern. “Heaven has robots? Seriously?” When I pictured heaven, I pictured angelic choirs. And when I pictured Home, I imagined a medieval Tolkien-esque world, with dragons in dark, dingy caves squatting over their hoards. Not this—a cathedral-like hall, with high-tech servants.
Novi turned to my mother. “Anabeth, she has to start training. The next Reckoning is in three days, and she’ll need to be ready.”
“They have Reckonings here?” I asked.
“Of course,” Novi said, smug. “They’re the heart of our civilization.”
Mom nodded. “Our ancestors brought a few ideas from Home to Earth. The Reckonings were one of them, though over time the criteria for determining ranking diverged between the two worlds.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, then I shook my head. “Never mind. Tell me all about it when we’re home. I mean,homehome. Not Home. You know what I mean.”
“You can’t!” Novi chirped, horror written across her face.
“What do you mean, I can’t?” I didn’t like the way the wyverns around us had quieted, or the way they looked at me with pity.
“Sky, honey…you know why,” Mom said gently. “There’s a fire beast on the other side of the Door. You must have seen it—its heat is more intense than any wyvern can withstand.”
