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Mom’s inhale is sharp, but she recovers well. “And now?”
“I’ll be fine with enough time. Like most things, humans recover, right?”
Mom rocks backward, propelling herself up to her feet. When she turns to sit next to me, she leaves a whole person’s space between us. That, more than anything else, shows me just how broken we’ve become. A mother and daughter, too uncomfortable to even embrace after surviving a shared trauma.
“I went to the volcano.” I decide that offering them a bit of information might build some goodwill. “I think you may have been right. I may have imagined the people there to make me feel better about what happened.”
Or at least, my brain may have interpreted the chanting from the lava as coming from the type of humans I’d normally see. I’m still not sure about that one. But the closer I can keep my lies to the truth, the better they sound.
Mom reaches for my hands again, and this time I grit my teeth and let her touch me. “I’m so sorry you had to do that alone.”
I wasn’t alone, I want to shout. At least, not the second time. Azar was with me—he’s always with me. He kept me safe in ways she never could, never did! But shouting would do me no good. As long as I’m shouting and angry, they’ll never release me. In fact, they might kill me for it.
“I’m happy you’ve calmed down,” Mom says. “They’re breaking camp soon, now that you’re healed, and they’ll be flying us all home.”
“Soon?”
Mom’s eyes narrow. “Another, larger force will be coming to begin a second assault on the remaining dragons, but before that happens, we’ll be leaving.”
Which means I’m running out of time to get out of here.
“If you were to give them some information they could use, they might trust you enough not to imprison you when we get back home.”
Imprison me.
It’s worse than I thought.
“What kind of information are they wanting?”
“Anything you know about the heart,” she says. “Anything you can share about fire dragons, especially. They may have killed Azar, but there’s another, even bigger fire dragon that poses a significant threat. Unlike your bonded, he hasn’t selected a human, which means he’ll be much, much harder to kill.”
I hate that I was the liability that cost Azar his life. Not that I believe them about him being dead, not entirely.
I’m still holding on to hope that maybe he didn’t die. Maybe he just turned into an earth dragon and, I don’t know, burrowed or something. None of the other dragons know what he can do, so obviously the humans would have no clue.
I try not to think about the chunks of red scales he left behind.
“You should get some sleep,” Mom says as she stands. “There’s something Gideon wants your help with in the morning.”
Gideon wants my help? “With what?”
Mom shakes her head. “That’s for him to share, or not.”
I can’t help standing as she walks toward the doorway—I’m too nervous not to. “Any word on Sammy, Coral, and Jade?”
Mom freezes, and then she walks out without saying a word. I guess that’s my answer.
If there is news, it’s nothing good.
20
Liz
The night before a fight, I always have to take a Xanax, so it’s no surprise that after telling me that we’re leaving soon and that Gideon’s going to come talk to me, I can’t sleep.
At all.
It doesn’t help that I have no idea what time it is, where I am, or how long it’ll be until someone walks through my door. It also makes using the stupid chamber pot they gave me a little nerve-wracking. Other than a few bottles of water and a soggy sandwich, they haven’t given me anything to eat or drink, either.
