Chapter 54
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
SOFIA
Sofia didn’t remember the flight. It should have taken hours, yet she blinked and they were already landing along the snowy slopes of the nesting grounds.
The dragons circled anxiously, and she knew the moment Chalia’s parents noticed her absence, a roar sending snow skittering down the slope and birds in the distance shooting into the air.
“She was not supposed to get involved. She was not supposed to be fighting!”
Guilt and shame sliced through Sofia like a blade.
Jacinta pulled her from Jobin’s back, holding her weight as she stumbled, her mind too numb to understand what the other woman wanted from her.
“Sofia, hun,” she said, pressing a hand to her cheek and forcing her to look up at her.
“This isn’t the end. We’re not giving up on this and we’re not giving up on them.
” She looked at her, watching for some recognition.
Sofia tried to nod—tried to say something—and though her jaw worked, nothing would come out.
Her chest felt emptier than it ever had before, something missing within her.
Jacinta was still talking. “I need you to know that. Okay? We’re going to kill those bastards and get our people and the dragons back. ”
Sofia swallowed. “I know,” she said at last. The words were a hoarse whisper, scraping against her raw throat. She’d pushed her lungs harder than she should have and hadn’t noticed until now. Her chest was aching, and she coughed.
Jacinta seemed to take her answer as progress.
“Sof,” Javi said from behind them. “We didn’t leave everyone behind.”
She blinked, turning to look at her friend.
Standing behind him, looking gray and worn, her father stood.
Her breath caught in her chest, eyes burning.
This close to him, she saw every wrinkle and white hair along his temple that hadn’t been there when she’d last stood face to face with him as a child.
He was only an inch taller than her, his brown eyes meeting hers, wide with wonder.
She didn’t move as he stepped forward, a hand coming up to cup her cheek. He ran a finger across her brow, over her nose, counting her freckles and tracing her cheekbones.
“You’re truly her,” he said, his voice cracking. “Our Sofia. You—I thought maybe he’d lied.”
Her throat bobbed, and hot tears burned at the back of her eyes.
“You died. We got the papers. We mourned.” His own eyes gleamed with tears he didn’t wipe away.
“I’m sorry,” she bit out, the words cracking. Her face crumpled, and tears spilled across her cheeks. “I couldn’t go back home. I didn’t want to put you in danger.” A sob broke from her. “It didn’t even work. I still hurt you. I—”
He didn’t let her finish, wrapping her in a hug and pulling her so tightly against him her breath caught in her chest. She didn’t care. She could suffocate here, feeling his heartbeat against her ear.
He was alive. He was alive, and he was here. For everything else they’d failed, she was smelling the salt of her father’s skin for the first time in almost ten sun cycles. She sobbed, not bothering to choke the tears back, and she felt her father shaking with his own sobs.
Only when her stomach hurt, her eyes burned, and any tears had been wrung from her, did she finally pull away.
Her father’s face was pale, eyes bloodshot, but she didn’t care.
She let her eyes trace over his face once more, memorizing it.
Memorizing every new wrinkle and white hair.
Did she remember whether he’d had brown eyes?
She didn’t know, but she looked at them now, noticing the barely green ring around the iris that matched her own.
He stared back at her. Perhaps memorizing the same details or simply soaking her in, she didn’t know.
“The wind is picking up. We should move into the caves,” Javi said, placing his hand softly on her back. “You need to warm up.”
Sofia knew her toes were numb and her face burned with the bitter air, but she couldn’t find the energy to care.
Javi didn’t wait for permission, though, pushing her gently and leading her to turn around.
Her head whipped around, but her father was there beside her a moment later, wrapping her hand in his.
His skin was icy, and it made her speed up her steps, finally recognizing the wisdom in Javi’s words.
The slope was nearly empty, the others having entered the cave already or run off to plan for the next steps.
For the first time ever, Sofia didn’t care.
She didn’t want to plan. She wanted to talk to her father—or the stranger he’d become.
There would be time to plan after—time for thinking about how she’d burn down the army for what Harlow had taken from her.
The weight of the world pressed down on her, and she found herself reaching out to Chalia—an automatic reaction—looking for comfort or strength.
Instead, there was an emptiness at the end of the tether.
Nausea roiled through her, and she bent over, vomiting acid and bile into the snow.
Her father’s hand was on her back, and Javi was whispering soothing words beside her.
She waved a hand, swallowing back another wave. “I’m fine.”
“You’re anything but fine,” Javi said.
“I can’t feel Chalia.”
Javi was silent for a moment. Two. She wondered if he’d simply let the silence stretch between them so neither would have to acknowledge what that might mean.
“She might be too far.”
Sofia nodded. She normally couldn’t speak to Chalia over such a large distance. But there was something more. The distance felt different this time. It felt hollow—infinite.
She shook herself, pulling up and swallowing hard.
“I’m okay.”
Perhaps Ian was right—she was terrible at lying. Thinking of him brought another wave of nausea and pain.
It was only another minute before they made it to the cave. They stayed in the outer cavern. A large fire roared at the opening, keeping the wind at bay.
Javi brought furs for her father to sit on, and she noticed the stiffness in his joints as he carefully sat himself by the fire. She didn’t know if it was age or the cold. And that thought alone made her eyes burn again. She knew so little about the man before her.
She opened her mouth as if she might ask him. But ask him what? Who are you? What do you do in your free time? Do you still love cooking stewed beans, but hate the cleaning process?
Did Mom still love sitting by the fire and weaving, or had her hands grown too tired for that? Did she still look up at the moons when they rose over the horizon as if she’d forgotten the magic of seeing them appear?
She wouldn’t anymore.
So instead of asking any of the thousand questions that pressed up against her lips and clawed at her throat, she only said:
“I’m so sorry.”
Her father had the gall to look confused. As if he didn’t understand the dozen reasons she had to apologize to him. “Mom—”
“Was not your fault,” he said, his own voice pinched with tears and exhaustion. “That man couldn’t force me to blame you. She would have been so proud of you. She would have been so proud to see you fighting.”
Sofia shook her head, eyes staring into the fire until the heat burned.
“She hated the resistance. She wanted me to follow the rules.”
Her father laughed, and the sound was both so familiar and yet so foreign. He grabbed her hand, lifting it and tracing over the stub of her ring finger, eyebrows furrowed and lips tight.
“She used to pass information along to them when she could, before she’d lost her job in the royal district for lingering too long in rooms and watching too closely.”
Sofia felt something inside her twist. “She never told me she worked in the royal district.”
“She lost the job before you were born. And then when you came—she didn’t want to risk it anymore.
She refused to risk you for their fight.
After everything she’d given for the resistance, she—” he stopped, looking around, but Javi was the only one in the chamber and he was lying on the ground, seemingly ignoring them, “—well, she said they’d never given her a damned thing back.
She said that all we had was you and she’d do whatever she needed to protect you. Even if it meant giving up on them.”
Sofia felt her thoughts swarming like moon wasps in her skull. Her mother had given up on the rebellion for her. And then what had Sofia done? Gone and broken her heart and joined the resistance without ever knowing. And her mother had died knowing she’d been alive and had abandoned her.
The heaviness hit her again, and she felt her shoulders slumping, her entire body cracking under the weight of everything. Her father took her by the shoulder, pulling her down until her head was resting along his thigh, his hand running through her hair.
“She would have been proud of the choices you made,” he murmured. “I think she was proud in those last moments. She always loved you more than words could express.”
She closed her eyes, pushing away the tears. Her chest hurt too much to cry. She felt as if she were six again, her father comforting her after her first day working in the chief commander’s manor.
She remembered that day vividly, walking up to the royal district alone because her parents didn’t have permission to pass through the gate.
It had been her first time crossing the wall herself.
She’d seen the upper city from a distance—the towering turrets of the castle and the ivy-covered walls.
But up close, seeing the clean, straight lines of everything and the pressed clothes of the people, she’d felt herself breaking.
Because for the first time in her life she had realized there was another option.
There were people who didn’t have holes in their shoes and dirt smudged across their faces because they couldn’t afford the cost of the bathhouse every week.
Here jewels gleamed, smiles shone, and eyes passed over her as if she were nothing.
That night, she’d cried in her father’s lap as her mother cooked dinner and complained about him coddling her. She’d thought her mom cruel at the time. Only later did she realize how her mother was protecting her in her own way. They’d always tried to protect her.
Could she truly throw her life away—a life they’d given so much for?
She would destroy the army. She would destroy Harlow.
They’d proven he wasn’t infallible. Javi had broken her father out because Harlow hadn’t guessed everything.
And now she knew she would bring down the wrath of the dragons on his head to protect the ones she loved.
But maybe she needed to fight for herself, too.
Perhaps she deserved to live a life with the ones she loved.
She deserved the future she was helping build.
Sofia felt herself drift away, her father humming a song her mother had loved.