Chapter Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Eight
“Where’s Jax?” Fern muttered. “If she hasn’t been barbecued, I’m hiring her to follow you around and thump you on the back of your head for the rest of your life. Three conditions, my ass.”
“Hear him out,” someone in the gathered crowd called.
“Yeah,” someone else shouted. The voice sounded strangely high-pitched and familiar. Any second now they’d launch into a sales pitch, but for the moment they were helping Juniper. “Don’t let our town burn down!”
Fern grimaced, but her face smoothed over. “Behave,” she said, and then she leaned over and pinched Edward.
Pinched. Pinched a prince.
The prince told her, in a hushed whisper, that he wished she would go fuck herself and that she’d always been like this, but yes, fine, of course he would behave.
Edward’s eyes were vibrantly blue, and Fern’s eyes were a deep brown, but their gazes felt identical when they turned to Juniper.
“Why exactly are you our only option?” Fern asked.
“Because she’s a kid,” Juniper answered. “And she knows me, because Mo and I took the time to feed her and talk to her and treat her like a person. Just like any of us would do with each other, whether we’re sidhe or human or bruggane or anything else.”
Even, Juniper thought reluctantly, if you were Bill Bronson.
“It’s true!” one shopkeeper squawked.
“Yeah,” another voice called out. “Send him!”
Maybe Filleadh was rooting for Juniper, or maybe Filleadh just wanted to make sure that someone who was not them was going to go after an angry dragon.
“My conditions, then.” Juniper breathed out. “One,” he said. “After this, Bear is free to go. The dragon. Who is a little girl. No punishment, no constables, no taking her to the capital city.”
“What?” Fern looked at Edward.
Edward looked at Fern.
“I could just let her burn all this?”
“No,” the gathered people coursed.
“Fine,” Fern said. “Bear goes free.”
“Two: Mo goes free,” Juniper said. “You’re holding my best friend in your jail. He didn’t do anything—”
“He tried to—” the prince said, but Fern shoved him and he fell silent.
“We agree,” she said.
“And three,” Juniper said. “I go free. No more head thumps, no more threats. No. More. Quest. All three of us get to go home.”
“Seems fair,” someone shouted from the crowd. “Now can we focus on the priority? Which is our village.”
“That’s not how the government works,” Juniper told the person shouting from the crowd. “Fern? Edward? Do you agree?”
He probably should call them Your Highnesses, because this was really pushing it.
But, hey. You only walk the shores of the realm once, as the saying went. YOWTSOTRO, for short, since acronyms were all the rage these days.
“We agree,” Fern said.
“Good,” Juniper said. “Now I need as much cheese as you have in your village. And some meat, too. But especially cheese. Understood?”
People scattered to get buckets of water, cheese, and anything else as Fern started shouting orders about fighting the fire.
And Juniper?
He ran straight toward the middle of town, where Bear was perched on top of the tallest building, the Nameless Inn.
It was only three stories tall, an old stone building that was unlikely to burn.
She was trembling, but she was still breathing fire.
“Bear, I’m coming!” Juniper called.
Oh, what he would give to have Mo at his side, that quiet, steady assurance that everything would turn out fine.
Juniper ran past bruggane women playing dice, and through an absolute thicket of those part-sidhe men who were now arguing over bottomless mimosas. Was anyone actually participating in the quest they’d all signed up for?
They were all just sitting there. And when the town was on fire, no less.
Juniper did, for just a moment, think about asking the bartender if he could use the dumbwaiter to send Juniper up. Because. Three flights of stairs? Oof.
But no, Juniper was embracing living through hardships without complaining (too much). He was locking in. Circling back, aligning, optimizing as hard as he could. He was taking the stairs at a dead sprint.
“Why is that guy screaming as he runs?” One of the sidhe men set down his mimosa to watch Juniper climb the stairs.
Juniper was winded by the time he reached the second floor.
He was crying by the time he reached the third, but only a little, in a badass, manly sort of way.
He ran through the nearest open door, apologizing breathlessly to three carnally engaged mercenaries (with the door open? Really?) as he went. When he clamored out onto the balcony, Bear had gone all the way to the topmost spire.
“Bear,” he called hesitantly. “Bear, can you please fly to me? Right here?”
From the balcony, the roof slanted upward steeply, some of the tiles already gone. There was a gaping hole in one part of the roof, probably from Bear. And if he wanted to reach her on that spire, there would be some climbing involved.
Juniper whimpered, just a little.
Bear turned her head to look down at him, but her only response to his words was to send a ball of fire in his direction.
Juniper ducked back inside, searing heat just narrowly missing him. The mercenaries were still going at it behind him.
“Bear!” Juniper bellowed. “I can help you.”
“Could you please keep it down?” one mercenary asked. “We’re kind of having a moment here.”
“The town is on fire!” Juniper yelled at them. “The dragon is here.”
In response, Bear sent another flash of fire past the window.
The naked mercenary shrugged his shoulder with an air of boredom and went back to what (and who) he was doing. “It’s a stone building,” he said. “I think we’ll be fine.”
Juniper cursed roundly. Of all the rooms he could have run through to find a balcony— For. Fuck’s. Sake. “Bear,” he called again.
He peeked out onto the balcony. She was still fully in dragon form, but her eyes were wide, and he could see a tear sliding down the scales that covered her face.
Juniper took a deep breath and stepped back out onto the balcony, hands raised.
He knew, at last, exactly how to do this.
The path was made by walking.
And by all that he loved, Juniper was finally ready to walk it.
He was six, alone in the woods.
He was climbing the rooftop, step by slow and painful step.
He was seven, sleeping under a bridge.
He was clinging for dear life to a rooftop that could give way at any moment.
He was nine, holding Mo’s hand while they splashed in the shallows.
He had reached the bottom of the spire.
He was sixteen, watching the sun reflect from Mo’s eyes and thinking how could he be worth a man like that?
He took the first step, hands shaking only a little.
He was nineteen, and all alone.
He was climbing, he was climbing, he was climbing.
There was a kid at the end of this who needed saving.
“Bear.” Juniper’s voice was so soft he was not sure she could hear it above the roar of the village—flames crackling, buildings caving, people shouting. “Bear, you’re not alone.”
Her head whipped toward him, heat rising. She was gathering her fire, because she was so scared she thought she needed it.
“I’m sorry,” Juniper told her. “I’m sorry for everything that’s happened. You didn’t deserve to be hurt. You should have been cared for.”
Somewhere in the woods near Tús, a six-winter-old boy who had never been told that in his life was listening to them now, too. A seven-winter-old beneath a bridge was leaning forward, desperate for it. The nine-winter-old. The sixteen-winter-old. The nineteen-winter-old.
“I’m going to take care of you now,” Juniper continued. “You don’t have to be alone. I’m here.”
He braced for a searing wall of flame, but none came.
Instead, the heat lessened, a cool breeze reaching him now.
Bear’s scales were shifting, her claws receding, looking smaller as she went.
“That’s it,” Juniper said softly. “That’s it, Bear. You’re going to be okay. I’m going to take you home.”
There were more tears on her face now. Maybe his, too.
“I’ve got you, Bear,” he said.
And then she was just a child, clinging desperately to the spire, not a scale in sight.
He climbed the last rung and threw his cloak around her, and then wrapped one arm around her. She clung to him tightly. She may have even asked him if he’d brought her any cheese.
“I’ve got you,” he said again, while she buried her face in the side of his neck. He said it to her, over and over again, and he said it to little Junebug, too, just in case he was listening. “And it’s time to go home.”