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“It worked. It worked, Zaina.”
I breathe a sigh of relief against his chest and nod.
“I know. I saw,” I say softly.
When he pulls away, his features are more hardened.
“There isn’t enough for everyone, though. I don’t know how I’m going to tell them that.” His broad shoulders sag as he sits down in the armchair, running his hands through his silver-blond hair. “Was this part of her twisted game? To make me choose who lives and who dies?”
“Yes,” I say bitterly, placing a hand on his shoulder. It makes sense now why she bothered to leave him with the means to a cure, just so she could twist the knife in deeper even if he did discover it.
Maybe we haven’t defeated her after all, only played into her vicious, waiting hands.
Then a thought hits me. “But...she didn’t account for everything.”
Just saying it aloud feels wrong. Madame always accounts for everything, but...she clearly never expected him to find the cave with the flowers. For all we know, that’s not even where she got hers. It’s possible she doesn’t even know that cave exists.
Einar looks up at me with a wary sort of hope, and I explain.
“When you were at the caves, you said that there were no petals, right? Just a thorny briar?”
“But it isn’t the petals we need now,” he says, standing and moving toward his wardrobe. Then, he pauses. “But, they were impossible to get to. The dragon was blocking the entrance.”
I shiver at the memory of the flames that engulfed me. “Then we need to go when the dragon is awake,” I force myself to say. “During the old moon.”
Einar glances out the window at the crescent moon, his hand stilling on his cloak. Finally, he nods and closes the door to the wardrobe.
“That’s at least eight days away...but no one else is in immediate danger, as far as I can tell.”
“I’m not sure we have much of a choice, anyway.”
“True,” he concedes. “The only other time is during the migration, but no one knows when the beast leaves. Only when it arrives.”
With that settled, he sketches out exact measurements and the order in which he made the cure. Then he adds a few notes on the effect it had on Sigrid as well as the time it took before the cure was finalized.
The quill pen is still moving when I speak.
“I’m coming with you,” I say, and his hand freezes.
Einar slowly turns to face me. His features are hardened, but there is the barest hint of fear behind his glacial eyes.
“Zaina--” he begins.
I hold up a hand to stop him. “Hear me out.”
He nods reluctantly.
“You said the dragon protected me, right?” I remind him.
“Yes, but--”
“Then I think that is reason enough that I should be the one to go into the cave and get the thorns.”
Einar stares at me, his knee bouncing slightly in the chair before he shakes his head. “You have no way of knowing if that was a one-time thing.”
“Are you saying my heart has gotten less pure in the meantime?” I arch an eyebrow.
I see the moment he realizes he is stuck between taking back what he said in my room that day and acknowledging that I am in as little or less danger from the dragon than he is.
