“Hullo, Syd!” North said brightly. He was leaning heavily on Owain, who looked only a little steadier on his feet.
“Are you hurt?” I asked. “When you didn’t come back I thought that—Did you get the dragon?”
North tried to draw me into a hug, but I knew the warning signs now. Flushed cheeks, glazed eyes…and the smell. I took a step back, and he landed face-first on the bed.
I looked to Owain in disbelief, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“He’s drunk—you’re both drunk!” I said. “All this time, were you just drinking yourself to rot?”
“We did the job, lass!” Owain said quickly. “Job done, dragon slayed, all merry!”
“So tell me how the job entailed drinking yourselves into stupidity?” I demanded. “You should never have left me behind! I wanted to go!”
“But it was a dragon—too dangerous,” Owain said, almost whining.
“I’ll decide what’s too dangerous for me from now on, thank you,” I snapped.
Owain shook his head, and the rain clinging to his thick hair went flying. “Took us hours to ride out there on Vesta. North gave that dragon hell—never seen so much magic in my life. Whirls of ice, fire of his own! I thought he might be burned to a crisp, but he brought the red cloak down and there wasn’t a burn on him. Then I climbed on the dragon’s back and took my sword and—” He took a deep breath. “And then the villagers made us stay and feast, because that dragon had been around for a year and no wizard had been able to kill the bloody thing until him and me!”
I clenched my fists at my side. “So North, where’s your pay?” I demanded. “If you killed this dragon, I want to see what the villagers gave you.”
North had a piece of paper in his hands and was peering at it closely. He blinked several times, trying to clear his vision.
“Henry Porter,” he began, his voice slightly slurred as he read the name on the letter I’d written earlier. “Who is this Henry? Why do you keep writing to him?”
“That’s my letter,” I said, ripping it so brutally from his hands that it tore. “How dare you?”
“Why do you keep writing home, anyway?” North asked, rolling onto his back. “What do you tell them? How much you…you hate me and how stupid I am?”
My throat burned, but I couldn’t speak. He was the one who had taken me far enough away that I could only imagine what was happening to my home—to my friends and family.
North continued playing with the ripped edge of the letter. “’s not so bad with me, is it? I take care of you. Not like your parents. Gave you up for a few drops of rain.”
He wasn’t even talking to me anymore. My throat clenched, and I felt the letter wrinkle in my palm. Don’t cry, I told myself. Don’t cry, don’t cry…
And just as quickly, the ache in my heart gave way to a new one, only this pain was hot and burning. The tears dried up in my eyes before they had a chance to fall.
“You’re better off with me, Syd,” North said simply. “I’ll take care of you and all.”
“Well,” I said, clutching my necklace in my fist. “Start taking care of yourself, because I won’t be your problem anymore.”
“What?” He lifted his head. “Don’t be stupid, Syd—”
I tore out of the room, not letting him finish, and I stumbled down the stairs.
“Syd!” he yelled, his voice cut off as the door shut behind me.
I heard the door bang open again and the sound of a few heavy steps before a sudden crash marked the end of all further movement. “Syd, don’t—”
But I just ran harder, past a startled Mrs. Pemberly and out into the cold rain.
If it had been a clear night, I would have been halfway back to Cliffton, but the rain was hard and unforgiving, so thick that I had to stop and shield my eyes just to see the street names. Lungs burning, desperate, I forced myself to keep running.
I came to rest against the beveled surface of a building, gasping for air. The wind howled angrily back at me, as if disappointed that I had given up so easily. The rain soaked straight through to my bones and caused my stubborn hair to cling to my cheeks. I took a deep, steadying breath. The more upset I let myself become, the worse the storm seemed to be. I needed a few moments to think, I told myself, bringing my hands to my face.
I had to go back to North. It wasn’t a choice; no matter how many times I stormed away, it did not change the situation in Cliffton. What was I running toward? Soldiers? A village that was no longer standing?
When I closed my eyes, I could see everything so clearly. The sun-bleached mud houses, the shadows the foothills cast over the valley, the mountains that scraped the very sky—those things were a part of me. I had spent so long dreaming about the day I would leave, but I had never imagined the world to be as it was. For so long I had thought of those mountains as nothing more than the barrier that kept me from my freedom…but the truth was, they had kept so much of the world’s wickedness out. Times had been hard before the rain, but we had managed. There had been no angry crowds, vile wizards, or drunken brutes. There had been family and love.
But there hadn’t been hope. There hadn’t been a dream to keep me there. There had been only the same of everything I had known, and a suffocating familiarity.
I needed to escape the storm.
Across the street, a small OPEN sign hung on the outside of a great wooden door, clattering noisily whenever the wind brushed by. Thank you, Astraea, I thought, wiping the rain from my eyes. I struggled to pull the door open against the wind and barely managed to slip inside before the storm slammed it shut behind me.
It took me a few moments to gather my wits enough to recognize the shop I had wandered into. I had been in this particular building earlier in the day, making a delivery of sand to Mr. Monticelli, the glassblower. He had been so completely involved in his work that he hadn’t even looked up as I dropped the sack of sand on the floor.
He was still working, hours later, though this time he did spare a glance in my direction.
“I see you have come back to me,” he said, in a strangely accented voice. “Terrible storm we are having, no? Come in, come in.”
I nodded, taking a few steps closer to his fire. The rain, dripping from my hair and clothes, collected in a puddle on the stone floor.