Gold sheathed the top of the mountain, with skyscrapers rising even higher. Pillars held the city, raising the tip of the mountain higher toward the sun, while beneath itwaterfalls of what looked like—“Are those diamonds?Inthe waterfall?”
“Yes.”
I saw dragons flying in and out of the city, from multifaceted domes that looked as if they were made of yet more diamonds. The dragons themselves were also impressive: large, beautiful, and draped in gold collars and anklets and bracelets. As they landed, I saw them transform into equally gilded people who strolled through the palace.
“Those are the best of the best, and they receive the best of the best,” Novi said.
Servers, gold coated instead of silver, whirred around the human-shaped wyverns—I couldn’t see what they carried, but they whisked between the people and then formed two lines. The wyverns walked between them. It was all as choreographed as a ballet; every move seemed graceful and purposeful.
“What are they doing?”
“To be honest, I don’t know—the elite have their own way of life. Even as a guard of the Door, I’m not allowed into the city. The Reckoning exists to determine who is worthy for what level of society. Next I have to show you what you get if youfailin the Reckoning.”
She led the way from one rope to another, as we descended into the valley. Lower, the air was warmer and smelled faintly of woodsmoke. Soon we were at the base.
We weren’t in the green part of the valley. Here, it looked as if the land had been burned in a wildfire. Walking forward, Novi called, “Worm? Worm, it’s Novi! Are you here?” She strode across charred earth that crumbled beneath her feet. I noticed she kept her hand on the hilt of one of her knives. I walked beside her. My tongue rolled in my mouth, wondering if someone had breathed on this piece of the valley, or if it was a natural fire. With this many wyverns, I highly doubted natural fire.
Up ahead, I heard a rustling. And then the face of a boy popped over a rock. He looked about our age, maybe a year or two younger. As he stood, I saw he was bare chested and very thin, so thin that his chest was concave, sucked against his ribs. “Novi?”
She rushed toward him and hugged him. “Worm, guess what! You’ll never guess. It happened! One of the Returned came through on my watch! You were wrong!”
He extracted himself from her hug. “So I was wrong again. Couldn’t wait to come tell me that. And this is her?” He turned to me. He had soot streaked on his legs and arms. His hair was long and matted.
“Uh, hi.” I waved at him.
“Sky Hawkins, this is my brother, Worm.”
I stared at him, then at her. “You, um, live here?” I didn’t know how to ask—why did he look so hungry and filthy if he was her brother? She wasn’t those things. Why would anyone choose to live here? And was his name really “Worm”?
Looking around, I saw others in the distance, scuttling over the charred earth. Most looked older than Worm, and all were skeleton thin, with ragged clothes hanging off their too-skinny bodies. A few watched us as we talked with Novi’s brother.
Novi blushed, her neck and cheeks turning pink. “Worm is one of the best with fire, but he can’t transform. According to our laws, it doesn’t matter if you can tie flames into knots if you can’t fly. If you can’t become a dragon, you’re ranked the lowest of the low, on the fringe of life. Only one step away from being outcast from all civilized society.”
He spat a lick of white-hot flame. It sizzled the air. Whoa, that was hot. Even Tuck, who once made crème brûlée without a torch, couldn’t make white flame. “You’re using me as an object lesson. How special.”
How could she let him live like this? Her own brother! “He’s starving. And practically naked.”
“I failed at my first Reckoning,” Worm said. “Before this, I was living with our parents, but a few weeks ago, I came of age….This is what happens when you can’t perform like a proper wyvern. No cave. No food. No anything.”
“And no one is allowed to change that,” Novi said. “He has to do it for himself. But you will, Worm! I know you will!” She hugged him again. Soot stained her armor. “Just keep practicing. This time, it will be different. You won’t have to be here much longer.” She beckoned to me. “Come on—I’ll take you back to your mother.”
I followed her back toward the ropes, trying to understand why she’d showed me the palace and this awful place. Both Novi and her brother seemed to think there was nothing wrong with the disparity, though Worm obviously wasn’t happy with his place in the hierarchy. “You have a class-oriented society, with very wealthy and very poor.”
“Yes. But unlike where you come from, our society is a meritocracy. If you perform well at the Reckoning, then wealth is yours. Poorly, and that’s your reward. Here, your fate is of your own making. Life here is fair.”
“Oh, yes, very fair,” Worm said behind us.
His sister ignored his bitterness.
To be honest, it wasn’t so different from Earth’s wyvern society: Once we were of age, we made our own rank. Until then, we lived off our parents’ wealth, but after our first heist, we were supposed to make our own way. It wasn’t entirely true, of course, since most parents didn’t cut off their children, especially if they wanted to go to college…but maybe they did here? “So you’re telling me Home is a dystopia?”
For the first time, her shell of cheeriness cracked, and she glared at me. “I’m telling you that you need to train for the Reckoning. Or you’ll end up like my brother, and there’s nothing that your mother or anyone can do to change that.”
I looked back at her brother.
As if to emphasize her point, Worm breathed a white-hot stream of fire and seared the already-charred branch of a dead tree. The wood crumbled to ash.
MOM DIDN’T WANT TOtalk about the Reckoning or the Door or my heist or hers. She wanted to talk about Dad and my brothers and me—what had we been doing, how had we been feeling, what had we been eating…I told her, “Not much, not well, and lots of pizza.” And then I launched into a detailed description of the new pad thai pizza from the pizza place in downtown Aspen, because it’s much easier to talk about food than to talk about broken family relationships. I also told her about Gabriela and how she didn’t like tortillas, and Mom confessed she’d secretly never liked pasta. “How can you not like pasta?” I asked.
