Everyone quiets. Though not wrong—we don’t have any upper-metaled dragons on the sanctuary—those words drip with condescension. While most of the world is constructed in iron, tin, and copper, it’s only bronze and silver metals that have proven health benefits. Simply put, why protect anything not worth their weight on the open market?
Maybe an even bigger question—why trust Hort’s care to us, and access to his silver, when we are butworthlesscopper-crafters who sacrifice our time to save insignificant dragons? Tension crackles through the room. This is the main reason I despise the Murphys. They always make sure we remember our status two stations below them.
Another piece slots into place. This wasn’t a choice. This wasn’t an “oh we forgot to tell you, Farren.” I look back to the Murphys. This was silver-crafters telling someone lower than them to do what they’re told. The unsaid rings as if it were shouted.Be thankful we even work with you. And for our own peace of mind, let our son onto your land every day so he can make sure you don’t do anything illegal, like bonding withourdragon, touchingoursilver, trying to climb toourlevel.
My blood boils. And for the millionth time I want to scream the truth.
“That’s right,” Mom inserts. “Only copper, tin, and iron. And yet still hunted down for mere sport and stripped of their metal.”
I whip my attention to Mom, shocked at her cutting tone. She noticesme and wipes her hands with a loose cloth she always has hanging from her belt. I can tell she wants to throw it at me. Here the Murphys are insinuating we’re beneath them, and I’m covered in mud—playing into the part.
Damn it.
“I’d be happy to give you all a tour,” Dad says in perfect diffusion. “It’s been a while.”
Yeah, a while since Mr. Murphy and a horde of trainers and scalers traipsed through the fields, plotting out what each square foot was worth, what they were willing to offer. I still remember their faces falling one by one when my parents said no.
“Another time,” Mr. Murphy grumbles. Mom just insinuated his business is as bad as poaching, so yeah, I don’t see them wanting to stay for dinner. “If this is all settled, we should get going. Aine.” He pulls his wife toward the door. “James, come get your bags.”
I watch them leave, my head bloating like it’s being airlifted. It’s done and decided? Bags? I spin, taking the moment without the Murphys’ direct presence to get to the bottom of this. “Please tell me this is a joke?”
Dad’s cheery demeanor deflates. “We always knew taking in Hort meant someone from the Murphy tracks would check in on us. The Murphys think it makes more sense to have James stay with us while he’s healing. So, they asked that James intern all summer.”
“And by asked, you mean Aine mentioned the idea last week and then just showed up unannounced,” Mom says, not exactly bitter. Mom doesn’t do bitter, as she likes to remind me. But this has to be a close relative because that tone was at the very least acidic.
I was right. They forced us into this. But as my dad’s words echo in my head, I snag on another phrase.
“Stay with us?” I sputter. That wasn’t in the ad’s job description. “Whereexactlywill he be staying?”
While we’ve been talking, we’ve been making our way outside to say goodbye to the Murphys. As we spill onto the porch Dad jerks a thumb at the barn. “He’s going to live in the loft.”
Time liquefies. All normalcy deteriorates.
Live. In. The. Loft. At each word I pinch my arm. Bad news, I’m very much awake.
The loft is my favorite place, the gorgeous rustic apartment-like rooms atop the barn Jeffrey lives in, the room I can see from here. So close. So very close. Which means in some capacity I have tolivewith James Murphy. Not for days or weeks either, but months.Three months.This is worst-case-scenario bad.
Out of the corner of my eye, James awkwardly and one-handedly lugs a warm brown trunk out of the back of the metallic silver car. No one would put in this much effort for a prank. And James Murphy is not the joking type. His smiles only know arrogance. I can’t even imagine his laugh because after five years of knowing him, I’ve never heard it.
He’s truly chosen to give up his summer, to live here, in order to beat me. My dislike escalates into hatred.
“What about Jeffrey?” I wave a hand forcefully enough to fling some mud toward the man himself, who has been way too quiet about being evicted. “You’re casting him out after what, twelve years?”
Jeffrey, the best dragon trainer a girl could ask for, laughs, some secret embedded in the sound. “I’m not being cast out, Farren.” His eyes twinkle as he continues with, “Shelly said yes.”
My mind stills. “You mean—?”
“We’re getting married. Moving in together up the road into Mr. Flynn’s old place.”
For a single moment I forget everything else. I’ve been wanting Jeffrey and Shelly together since the day they met on the sanctuary. Giddiness bursts inside me and I holler, throwing myself into Jeffrey’s arms. He expects as much and catches me, spinning me around once before grounding me. And grounding I need because over by his parents James Murphy witnessed my twelve-year-old-girl-like excitement.
And great, now he’s eyeing me like I’m some sort of weirdo. Which isn’t new.
“Tell me everything later!” I demand of Jeffrey.
A warm smile accompanies a promise. “I will.”
I turn back to my parents. “I still don’t… What about Nity?” I whisper urgently as James’s mother talks to her son by the trunk of their car.
