“Not all parents are as devoted as yours.” Novi was smiling as she said it, but I heard the bitterness clearly in her voice, as sharp as a bite into a lemon. It was so different from her normal cheeriness that I stared at her. I wasn’t so sure she was right—after all, Mom had left us to pursue some idealistic right-the-wrongs crusade. Some of my doubt must have shown on my face, because she continued. “You should have seen her when she first arrived. It took three guards to restrain her—she kept trying to return. I’m sure you saw the wounds on her neck and shoulders. We don’t normally resort to anything as crass as physical violence, but we couldn’t let her just kill herself. Certainly not before she had a chance to experience what Home has to offer.”
Guards had done that? Also, who actually says “crass as physical violence”? I wondered what they’d do when I tried to return through the Door with Mom, because I wasn’t giving up. I just had to figure out how we were going to bypass the fire beast, which I was going to do as soon as this nonsense with the Reckoning was finished, and then I was out of here. “She really tried?”
“Before the results of the Reckoning restricted her movements, your mother talked to every wyvern she could, trying to find a way to get the spells she needed. But you can’t make magical potions here.”
It was nice to hear that Mom had tried to return. More than nice. Hearing it filled some empty bit of my heart that had been aching.
“When your mother realized she couldn’t return, she sank into despair. It was only the hope that her husband would find the clue she left for him that kept her from giving up completely—she told me about it. She left it in a box of food that she knew he would want to eat.”
“He didn’t touch it. I was the one who found the amulet. He preserved her office like it was some kind of tomb. Sealed the door shut.”
“It must be nice to have a family who loves each other so much.”
It was. And I missed my father and brothers so much that it hurt. Tucking the food into my pockets, I thanked her again and hurried back to Worm.
Unsure how to carry food as a dragon, I stayed human and used the climbing ropes to descend the cliff. When I got to the bottom, Worm was waiting. “What did Novi say?”
Glancing around to make sure we weren’t being watched, I gave him a hunk of cheese and a bit of meat from Novi. It wasn’t a lot, but he shoved it into his mouth and ate it fast, as if he expected someone to snatch it away from him.
I waited, saying nothing.
I’d never met anyone with nothing before.
There are homeless on Earth, of course. The poor. And also the very poor. But I didn’t see them, and what we don’t see tends to not exist. Shallow and selfish, yes, but natural for both humans and wyverns. I wondered how many wyverns were aware there were half-naked, starving people living in soot below their lavish city—and that at least one of them was a boy barely old enough to drive. I said nothing when he finished. Just waited until he was ready.
He glanced at me. “No pity?”
“Would it help?”
“No. Did Novi tell you about my failure?”
“She mentioned it,” I said cautiously.
“Did she tell you that she saved me? Jumped off the cliff herself, transformed, and caught me before I hit the rocks. That’s why she’s a guard. Proved herself amazing in the same instant that I proved myself pathetic.” His feet crunched as he walked over the burned earth. I thought I saw new scorch marks on the grass beyond. “You want to know a secret? Sometimes I hate her for saving me.”
“That’s stupid. If she hadn’t saved you, you’d be dead.”
“Better dead than this.” He looked up at the sky. “Always wanting what I can’t have.”
“You don’t believe that,” I told him. I remembered Novi’s version of Worm’s failure. She hadn’t mentioned her own role in it. She’d said he’d hit the ground. Splatted. Maybe she’d been embarrassed. Or ashamed. Or even afraid.
He sighed deeply, and his eyes looked lost in a way that made me want to either tear up or shake him. “You don’t know me.”
“If you’d given up hope, you wouldn’t be helping me.”
“Maybe I just like burning stuff.” He plopped down on the ground. Soot plumed around him. He beckoned me over. “Let’s begin.”
If turning into a dragon was about believing you’re the best, then breathing fire was about believing the rest of the world was the worst and deserved to be crisped. Worm, it turned out, excelled at that.
He pointed to a tree. “So I simply picture my parents and—” Opening up his mouth, flame poured out as if he were a person-shaped blowtorch. The heart of his flame was blue near his tongue, and the orange flame shot toward the tree and singed a strip of the bark.
“Okay, I can try that.” Certainly I had enough recent emotional angst to draw on. I thought of Ryan’s dad, picturing his smarmy smile, his overly cultivated muscles, and his expensive suit. I opened my mouth, but instead of breathing fire, I spat out a puff of smoke.
“Good,” Worm said.
“Really?”
“No, not really. That was bad. You’ve got to work yourself up to it. Who’s your person?”
