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“You didn’t try to find me,” she hisses. “You sent me back without you, without my dragon, and without anything at all. I was left to fend for myself, so of course, they gave me the shittiest assignment possible: all thanks to you.”
“This is an assignment?” I look around in mock surprise. “You didn’t come here for fun?”
“Unless you think sitting around for fucking months in case a dragon happens to show up is fun,” she growls. “Then no, it’s not.”
“A dragon? What the hell? What do you need a dragon for?”
“That’s none of your concern,” she says, seemingly realizing she’s given me too much information. She has. She’s basically revealed that she’s been sitting around, waiting for someone to show up.
Lee.
She’s been waiting for Lee.
That’s when I look behind her and see the set-up she has in the cabin.
“What the fuck?” I push past her.
“Get out of here, Nicole.”
“What the hell is this stuff? Guns? Weapons? You weren’t waiting for a dragon. You look like you were about to skin one.” I don’t know what half of the stuff I’m looking at actually is, but I know it’s not good.
“You’re. Supposed. To. Be. Dead.” She grits out the words, and I turn around to look at her.
“Excuse me?”
“I told them,” she says, shaking her head. “I told them you were dead. That the dragons had killed you.”
“Why would you do that? You didn’t know that for sure.”
“Because that was the mission, you stupid bitch.”
It cements things in my mind now, for certain. I was sent into the woods to die. Erin didn’t want me around. No: she couldn’t risk me around. Not after my relationship with Micah. Not after she found out. Although, I’d be willing to bet she knew about me for a long time before he realized she knew.
Erin is a woman in power.
She wasn’t going to let me walk gently into the night.
“Why did they want me dead?” I still have to ask, still have to find out what she knows. This isn’t going to end easily. One of us isn’t going to walk away from this situation. I can already tell. I move back toward the doorway, but Bernie blocks me.
“Sorry, kiddo,” she says. “You know I can’t let you go.”
“What? Why not? You already said everyone thinks I’m dead.”
Maybe Bernie can be saved, too.
Maybe it’s not too late.
But when she reaches for a gun and holds it out, pointing it at me, I realize that it’s absolutely, definitely, too late.
“You should have stayed dead, Nicole. It would have been better for everyone. Now I’ve still got to catch a dragon, but I’ve got to hide a body, too. You’ve always loved making extra work for me. She shakes her head. “Any last words?”
“You should have ducked,” I say.
“What?”
That’s when the ceiling of the cabin comes crashing down. I dive backwards into the corner and roll under the bed. It’s not a lot, but it’s going to minimize the impact of the splintering wood and any loose nails or glass that might go flying. The bed is exactly where Lee warned me it would be and, as promised, it’s both sturdy and tall. I have plenty of space to roll beneath it. I hear Bernie scream as he lands, but I close my eyes. I don’t look. I don’t need to know what happens next.
She had a chance to turn, and she didn’t.
