Chapter 2 Deryn, Fire & Meeting Fate
DERYN, FIRE the years had left deeper grooves in the floorboards, and the smoke painting the brick hearth was darker, but nothing else had changed much.
She really didn’t know why she was here to begin with.
Her sisters were back in the pretty stone house with the phthalo green door, sleeping or fretting and brooding.
Rhiannon would wake soon; it was Ceridwen’s job to worry anyway, and Seren brooded with the best of them.
So why was being around them so suffocating right now?
Why was the family reunion, twenty years in the making, driving Deryn out and into the soot-covered night?
She could smell the fire in the air of the island. Dragons was small enough, and the cliffs sheltered Crow’s Nest, ensuring that what happened on its tidy, cozy, cobblestoned streets remained there—like the smoke, like ash. Like heartbreak. Or cowardice.
Deryn shivered as she reached for her beer and took a deep sip.
On top of homesickness for a place that no longer existed, not fitting in with the family who loved her, and being back in the space where she felt both alone and too exposed, Deryn still saw the dark amber eyes in the crowd, looking at her, assessing her.
She hid her face in her palms and, as her therapist once taught her, made a mental list of everything that overwhelmed her.
Then, overstimulated as her mind was, it prioritized the entries.
The woman. THE woman. Was she indeed THE woman, or was Deryn too hyped up on adrenaline and magic?
She needed to leave Dragons. Halloween would be over soon enough, and then she’d be gone. Hopefully. Fingers crossed. And she’d be able to breathe again. Maybe, maybe, maybe Ceridwen didn’t really need her all that much for all that long?
She missed her sisters and her aunt like she missed a limb. And yet felt like she didn’t belong among them at all.
The thought that she might’ve finally encountered her destiny over the flames of her sister’s ruin was not one Deryn wanted to entertain, no matter how gorgeous the woman was. Or how familiar.
And yet… She still felt those eyes on her, lit by fire and rage, wide and stunned, just like her own. Did they both recognize each other? And wasn’t that as good as a confirmation that—