Worm let out a barklike laugh. “You’ve always believed in me so much. It’s humbling. Really, Dad, thank you. And Mother, I’m glad you’re more worried about your own embarrassment than my life.” If Mom could maneuver them just right, we should be able to touch the jewel….I began to shift my weight, preparing. She’d spring forward, and they’d react—in that instant, we could make it, and Mom could follow. She was positioning herself for that as well. A few more feet…
“You don’t understand what you’re doing, son,” Worm’s father said.
“I understand completely,” Worm said, and then he lunged for the jewel.Dammit, not yet!Mom wasn’t in position! I jumped toward the jewel as Mom sprang forward to block the wyvern guard. She wasn’t going to be able to make it—Worm’s father and the guard were piling on her, stopping her, holding her down so she couldn’t follow. His mother ran for me.
“I’ll come back for you!” I called to Mom.
“Go, Sky!” she shouted.
I slapped the jewel, and the rainbow seized me and tore me away.
HEAT.
Pain.
I felt as though a hundred knives were being jabbed into my leg. Stifling a scream, I croaked, “Worm, use your fire!”
He was moaning next to me. Cracking open my eyes, I tried to focus on him, but he was a blur streaked with lightning bolt–like light. The beast—it attacked both of us, burning, like needles driven into my skin.
Rolling side to side, I tried to put out the fire, but the beast kept coming. “Worm,” I gasped out, “think of the Reckoning! Think of how they made you feel!”
“Worthless,” I heard him grunt. “Pathetic. Weak.”
“Show them your worth, Worm! Show them you aren’t weak. Blast your fire at them. Blast them away.” Every word hurt to say. Heat poured down my throat, as if I were drinking molten lead. My eyes hurt to open, but I made myself try to look, trying to see where the beast was.
It was raging above us, a smear of milky white.
“Worthless,” Worm whispered. And then flame roared out of him, white-hot. I rolled to the side, behind a shelf of jewels. Cowering, I curled into a ball as his flames raked across the ceiling and walls of the vault. “Weak,” he said, and the fire burned hotter. “Pathetic!”—and the vault was dazzling white.
The white light writhed.
Still curled like a pill bug, I lay still, staring up with tears streaming out of my stinging eyes, as Worm’s white-hot flame burned away the fire beast, until at last there was only the single bolt of light, pouring from his mouth, boring a hole through the wall, through the solid granite.
“Enough,” I croaked. “You did it.”
He didn’t hear me. Didn’t stop.
“Worm, you can stop now.” Unrolling, I reached over to touch his shoulder. He felt hot, like he was made of fire, and I pulled my hand back. “Worm! It’s done!”
He sucked in, and the white fire was drawn into him.
And then there was darkness.
We lay there, in the dark, side by side. My arm hurt, my leg above my knee, the side of my stomach—everywhere the fire beast had touched me.
Mom,I thought.
She could still be fighting the guards. Maybe they’d arrested her. Certainly they’d dragged her away from the Door by now. If enough time passed, she wouldn’t come even if she were free—the fire beast would return in thirty minutes, and she wouldn’t risk it.
I’d found her and lost her.
No. It was only that the heist wasn’t finished yet. I had to complete the mission: steal the Door and save my mother.
“I did it,” Worm said, wonder in his voice.
“Told you so.”
“You did tell me.” And now the wonder was directed at me. “No one has ever believed in me before. My parents…even my sister…No one saw any worth, but you…”
