“Feels like eating worms,” she said with a shudder. “I’ve eaten worms, you know. Once, on a mission. We had to camp in the woods.” She launched into a story about how she and Dad had chosen a heist in Georgia—the state, not the country—and had to backpack into an old plantation that had been taken over by a wyvern family….While she talked, I couldn’t help thinking of Worm, Novi’s brother. That could be me, if I failed.
“Did you go through the Reckoning when you arrived?” I asked.
“Yes, I arrived shortly before the last one. That’s why I have this”—she held up the amulet. “You’re given an amulet at the end of the Reckoning. The markings denote your rank, which determines where you live, what you eat, who you may socialize with, everything. But please, Sky, I don’t want to think about that tonight. I want to just be with you. Soak up the you-ness of you.”
I rolled my eyes at her, though I didn’t really mean it. It was nice that she’d missed me. I’d thought she’d left us voluntarily. I’d thought she hadn’t cared at all.
She must have done okay in the Reckoning, since she wasn’t living like Worm in the barren char, but not that great. Her home was a hole in the wall, not unlike a rabbit would have in a warren. It had only a cot and a chest made out of rough wood. It was nothing like our house back in Aspen.No matter how great Novi says Home is,I thought,home is home.
I started yawning after about an hour, and she found me a shirt that looked more like a sack with a hole cut out of the top. It was soft, though, so I changed into it. She insisted I take the cot, since I’d had a harder day than she had, and she curled up on the floor to sleep.
She blew out the candle. “Tomorrow, we’ll train you for the Reckoning. You need to do well enough so you can stay with me. Wyvern of different ranks aren’t allowed to be together.”
“Like I’m going to be able to sleep after you said that,” I told her. “What do I need to do? I don’t have any wealth with me. I failed my heist.” Back home, the council would have been unimpressed.
“None of that is necessary. The Reckoning itself is steeped in long tradition and focuses only on the two core wyvern skills that no other being possesses. One, you will need to fly.”
Of course.
“And two, you must breathe fire in a controlled manner, from the air.”
Great.
“Sleep, Sky. We’ll worry about it in the morning.”
I worried about it for hours until, eventually, I slept.
“I’m not the best person to train you,” Mom said over breakfast, which was a slab of seasoned rabbit. Odd but okay. I craved a bagel. “I’m a novice myself. Luckily, the guard you met—Novi—has been appointed to help. The Door guards are responsible for easing new exiles into the culture.”
“I really think we should be focusing on how to get home,” I said.
“She’ll be here soon,” Mom said. I’d never seen her so nervous before. Usually she radiated confidence and competence. But she wasn’t comfortable.Because we don’t belong here,I thought.
“What about Maximus?” I nodded across the hall. He was with a beautiful woman in a stunning blue sari-like gown—his wife in her human form. She had her gold amulet necklace and wore strands of gold balls braided through her hair. He was whispering in her ear, and she was laughing. He looked happy. I thought of Ryan and couldn’t help but glare at Maximus.
Catching my eye, he at least had the grace to look embarrassed.
If the heist had worked, I could have had Ryan backandMom.
“He’s found his own trainer,” Mom said, nodding at the woman in the blue dress. “I had hoped to bring her back with me, as well as the others who were sent here against their will. Thomas Keene has no right to tear families apart. Like them. Like us.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell any of us any of this?” I asked.
“Because it was dangerous. We all could have been sent here.” She waved her fork to gesture at the hall. Novi had said that everyone in Hall of the Returned was an exile, or related to one. Comparing their clothes to the splendor I’d seen at the mountain palace, I guessed not many exiles ranked very highly at the Reckoning. “Your father cautioned me against taking on Thomas. He’d used the Door both secretly and strategically to consolidate his power on the council, and that made him a dangerous adversary. Once I knew…I couldn’t turn away.”
You could have,I thought.We needed you too.
“Eat,” she told me. “You’ll need your strength.”
I ate a few bites, not tasting them, and shortly, Novi arrived, bounding across the hall as energetically as if she’d pounded down six espressos. She was in the same green armor, her hair slicked into a braid and a knife strapped to her belt. “Good morning! Are you ready to embrace your destiny? I have an hour until my next guard shift, so we can start now.”
Hurriedly, I shoved the rest of breakfast in my mouth and chewed as I followed her through the bejeweled tunnels out onto a ledge. This time, Mom came with us. She needed the practice too, she said—all wyverns competed in the Reckoning, to reconfirm their status. Given that I’d seen her sailing around the sky as a green dragon, I thought she needed a lot less practice in transforming into a dragon than I did.
Me, a dragon.
This was crazy.
Looking out over the valley, I saw other dragons filling the air. So graceful. So majestic. So—
