20. Max
Max
My sister’s eyes went round with surprise, then joy, the moment she spotted me stepping out of the van.
We’d driven from the border to the train station under half an army’s escort.
Drakken had met Aelindor’s elite column on the interstate between New Mexico and Colorado, set Missy down into the keeping of a Spartan detachment, and turned straight around for the south in case the border war broke.
They’d brought her the rest of the way to the station.
My sister had been waiting here anxiously ever since, the smallest person on a platform full of giants.
“Max! Max!”
Missy peeled out from between the Spartans, tears already streaming down her face, her little legs pumping, the cub clutched to her chest.
I was running too.
She crashed into me as I crouched and opened my arms, and the whole world narrowed to thirty-odd pounds of sister.
“Oh my god, you’ve grown so big!”
She hadn’t.
My arms learned it before my eyes caught up. Years of mine rations had kept her small. Her cheeks were thin. Her collarbones stood out. Someone had scrubbed her clean and combed her dark hair, but none of it hid what I could feel through her shirt.
He’d kept her like a jewel and fed her like a prisoner while he strolled north to collect me.
But her eyes—those hadn’t lost one candle of their light. They blazed up at me, fierce and wet. Ross poked his horned little head out of her arms to see what all the crying was about.
He growled.
“I’ll grow even bigger, Max, like you!”
I crushed her against me, my chin on her hair.
“And we’ll never be separated again?”
“Never again. Let’s go home.”
“Ross can’t wait.” She kissed the lion cub on the crown. “Can’t you, Ross? But you must behave.”
The cub whimpered.
Missy took my hand as I stood, and Ross moved to ride her shoulder like a tiny figurehead.
The three of us walked toward the heirs who were waiting for us by the van.