“Exactly,” I said. “I’m not losing you twice.”
We stopped directly below the ledge with the Door’s cave. We couldn’t go through the jeweled door. Far too noticeable. We’d climb up to the cave. We didn’t even have to discuss it to know this was the plan.
Except there was still too much of a crowd. Someone would certainly see.
Someone like Maximus.
Peeling away from the crowd, the wizard wyvern sauntered over to us. “Let me guess,” he said to me. “You’ve hatched a daring plan to return to Earth and reunite your family?”
“You’ve nothing to gain by stopping us, Maximus,” Mom told him.
“Quite true,” he said. “And I’ve everything to gain by helping you. My Angela has been…vocal in her disapproval of how I treated you. But she’ll forgive me once I’ve repaid my debt to you.” Glancing over his shoulder, he waved ather.
“You can’t do spells here,” I said. “How are you going to help us?”
“I might not be able to do spells,” he said. “But Iamstill a wizard.” And with that annoyingly cryptic statement, Maximus strode into the center of the crowd and transformed into a dragon.
People around him yelped and fell back as he expanded to several times his size. Maximus as a dragon wasn’t small and unobtrusive—his dragon form was as showy as Maximus himself. He was orange-red, with a long, sleek neck, which he stretched out toward his wife, who rolled her eyes athim.
Then Maximus stretched out his wings, opened his mouth—
And he began to sing and dance.
From his dragon throat came the lyrics to “So You Wanted to Meet the Wizard,” his song fromThe Wiz.He shimmied. He sashayed. He grooved.
“I can’t believe I’m seeing this,” Mom said.
“Neither can anyone else,” I pointed out. “Let’s climb.”
And as Maximus continued to repay his debt in the oddest way possible, Mom and I climbed toward the cave. Glancing out at the valley, I saw another set of dragons take to the air.
A guard was on the cliff, at the edge, watching both the dragons in the air and the dancing dragon in the middle of the crowd below. He wore the same green scale armor that Novi wore, and his back was to us. We didn’t have to create a distraction—between the Reckoning and Maximus, the guard was well occupied. Punching his fist in the air, he cheered as a maroon dragon executed a flip through a cloud.
Mom put one finger to her lips, and then she pointed up with the other. The jewel-encrusted rocks on the walls of the tunnel were chunky. Climbable. Monkey-like, Mom began climbing, reaching high until she was on the ceiling. She hooked her feet around a dazzlingly decorated stalactite and held out her hands, like a trapeze artist waiting for someone to jump to her.
My mom is very impressive.
I grabbed her hands, and she swung me up to the next jewel-encrusted stalactite. I clung to it. We stayed there, stuck on the ceiling like bats, while the guard marched inside. He completed a patrol round, through the tunnel and then out again.
We moved slowly across the ceiling, stalactite to stalactite, careful to not knock any stones or jewels loose. Inching across, we crawled inside. Once we were out of sight of the guard, we dropped down and hurried into the chamber with the Door.
The jewel shimmered in the candlelight, and I couldn’t tell if it was reflecting the flames or giving off its own light. It looked like a miniature moon. Beautiful. Not as beautiful as gold, but still quite pretty.
Worm wasn’t here yet.
I paced around the Door while Mom watched me.
I wondered if Novi would have any trouble reaching the cave. She was a guard. I was hoping that meant she wouldn’t be questioned. With luck, everyone was still focused on Maximus and the Reckoning.
“Say this works,” Mom said, her voice a whisper. “What happens to the Door? And the other exiles?” She was watching me intently, as if this was a test.
“We can’t take the Door with us; we still don’t know how to defuse the bomb. Escape first, and then we’ll come back for it, with Liam. He’ll be able to do it.”
She grasped my hands. “Then you understand how important this is. We can’t allow Thomas to have control over the Door. It’s not right. I tried to explain to your father, but all he saw was risk without reward….But it’s not about reward. It’s not about any hoard. It’s not about rank. It’s about family, being together, being home, wherever your home is.”
I thought of Maximus and his wife. “Yeah, I get it.”
Voices echoed from the mouth of the tunnel. Both Mom and I quickly scanned the chamber—there was no place to hide. Jeweled wall, jeweled ceiling, and the jeweled pedestal that held the Door. That was it.
