Chapter 36
Chapter Thirty-Six
Briony
“Are you sure?” Beaufort asks hesitantly.
“I need to.”
“Come on, then, dear,” Mrs. Tudor says softly to me, holding out her hand. I take it, letting her guide me into the warm kitchen, Fly following right behind me.
There’s a body laid out on the kitchen table – the one we sat around only last night – an old blanket pulled right the way over it.
The sight of it makes both me and Fly gasp and I’m forced to swallow down more tears. I want to be strong. I want to do this properly.
Mrs. Tudor lets go of my hand and pats me on the shoulder, and I take Fly’s hands in mine. His are cold and trembling and he leans into me as if at any moment he may collapse to the floor.
Mrs. Tudor walks around to the head of the table and takes a grip of the old blanket.
“Ready?”
I squeeze Fly’s hands and nod.
Carefully, gently, as if not to disturb a sleeping child, Fox’s mom draws back the blanket and Clare’s face comes into view.
Her eyelids are closed and her face, pale like porcelain.
It’s like I found her sleeping this morning on the sofa.
It could be as if she’s sleeping now. Just one little nudge, a whisper of her name, and she’d wake up.
“Oh, Clare,” Fly murmurs next to me. “We’re going to miss you so much.”
I open my lips to speak, to say the words I need to say, but my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth and my jaw refuses to move.
“I will miss how much you made me laugh,” Fly continues, eloquently. “How fiercely you believed in things and how you could always solve every problem – or at least you’d try with a book and a lot of determination.”
I nod in agreement.
This feels unreal. Like I’m not really here. Like I’m watching the scene play out somewhere outside my own body.
“I know you believed in Briony, in me, in all of us and this cause, and we’re going to try our darnedest to make things right because we know that’s what you’d’ve wanted us to do.
” He leans forward and kisses her cold forehead and for a moment all I can do is close my eyes and breathe.
When I open them again both Fly and Mrs. Tudor are looking at me with sympathy.
“Cupcake, is there anything you want to say?”
I swallow and try again. “I haven’t had many friends in my life, Clare, and I never knew what I was missing until I met you and Fly. You have no idea how my life changed just knowing you. Just loving you. I will miss you. And I don’t want to say goodbye.”
Mrs. Tudor draws the blanket carefully back over Clare’s face and she disappears from view. It sets Fly to sobbing again, and the older woman guides us both out of her kitchen.
“What will you do with her body?” I ask her, the words making me sick.
“We can bury her in the graveyard,” she says, “give her a proper service.”
“She should go home to her parents,” I say, “it’s what she would have wanted.”
Mrs. Tudor looks to her son and I can almost read her thoughts. Transporting Clare’s body back to her parents will be tricky, if not impossible.
“I need to tell her parents, I have to go to Granite,” I tell them all. My eyes flick to Fly. His bottom lip trembles in response. “I need to tell them what’s happened to her. I owe it to Clare.”
“Okay,” Thorne says, before Beaufort can cut in and argue with my plan. “I’ll come with you.”
“We’ll all come with you,” Beaufort adds.
“No,” I say firmly. “I’ve already lost someone I love today.
I’m not prepared to risk you all. The rest of you are going back to the academy, and you’re taking Fly with you so that he’s safe.
Blaze too. Barney,” I turn to Mrs. Tudor, “can he stay here, just for the time being, until all this is over?”
“Of course, he can, dear. He’d be very welcome.”
“The two of you aren’t going off alone,” Beaufort argues.
“My best friend just died. I’m not losing you or Dray or Fly or Blaze.”
“But you’re prepared to lose Thorne?” Dray says, with a little dark humor.
“I don’t know where I’m going,” I say. “I’ve never been to Granite before, and I need someone to help me.”
“You’re sure about this?” Beaufort asks.
“One hundred percent.” I hesitate. “But someone needs to tell Damien.”
“Damien?” Beaufort asks.
“Clare’s boyfriend,” Fly explains. “I’ll do it.” But it’s clear he’s in no state for anything like that right now.
“No, I’ll do it,” Beaufort offers.
“Really?” I tilt my head to one side.
“What do you mean?” he asks.
“I don’t know, you’re not exactly…” I chew on my lip. “You will do it gently and carefully, right, Beaufort?”
“Of course,” he says, clearly a little insulted.
“Doesn’t matter how he says it, Little Kitten, still gonna suck.”
My lip trembles and I nod. “And you’ll take Blaze with you?”
“If he’ll come,” Dray points out.
“He will,” I say. “I’ll come with you out to the forest now and explain everything to him. Stars,” I mutter, swallowing down more tears. “He loved Clare so much. How do I even explain it to him?”
Dray pulls me toward him and hugs me. I hug him back tight. He liked Clare and I know he feels her loss too.
I spend some time talking with the Tudors, explaining about Barney’s likes and dislikes, while the others pack up the stuff, Beaufort carefully tucking the two firestones inside his coat.
Fly isn’t much help. He’s still huddled by the fire.
I didn’t know it was possible for one person to cry so much.
Every so often he stops, seems to regain his composure, and then the next second he’s dissolving into tears all over again.
I’m barely holding it together myself, and I can’t look his way or toward the kitchen.
If I catch sight of my friend or the body on the table, I know I won’t be able to go on.
The others ply Fly with drink, water, and the odd snack, checking in with him every so often and I’m taken aback by how much these men have changed.
Or were they always like this – caring, kind, considerate – that I just never saw it, blinded by my own prejudices?
Either way, I am more than grateful for these men.
Finally, we’re ready to go, Mrs. Tudor making us all promise we’ll be safe and that we’ll be back soon.
Of course we all promise, like she asks.
And we all know we have no right to make those promises, because who knows what is going to happen to us next.
I just hope with every ounce of my magic, every bone in my body, every part of my soul, that Dray is right, that no one else will be hurt.
Everyone in Slate Quarter knows we’re here now, but we still use our magic to hide ourselves. None of us feels like conversation, being accosted, or sidetracked. We’re all lost in our own thoughts as we walk along the paths back down to the forest.
The night sky is covered in a blanket of thick cloud, the darkness even more impenetrable than usual, as if the sky itself is mourning, an idea that’s only amplified as freezing rain starts to streak down through the trees and batter our heads.
Blaze must have known we were coming. He’s sitting upright, large golden eyes wide open, sniffing at the air. He sniffs around all of us. He sniffs at our feet, our bodies, our heads. And I can’t help feeling he’s searching for Clare, that he already knows something’s wrong.
“She’s gone, Blaze,” I say, almost choking on my words. “Clare’s gone.”
He halts his sniffing and meets my eyes with that golden gaze of his. He lets out a low whine and paws at the ground. He’s as sad as any of the rest of us.
“I know, buddy,” I say. “I know. It sucks so hard.” I shake my head. “And I don’t want her to be gone either. But I need you to go with Fly now, and Beaufort and Dray. I need you to go back to the academy. I’ll be there soon.”
The dragon whines again. But I don’t have the stomach for arguments right now. I take hold of Thorne’s hand in my right, and, with the rain streaking down my face and soaking into my jacket, tell them once more to look after each other, and then, in a rush of air, I displace out to Granite Quarter.