Too Late for My Shifters' Regret novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: North

"That isn't a ring," I said.

"No."

"Half the academy thinks you're proposing."

"Let them." He didn't get up. "The Reach has a hatchery cut into the cliff, with warm sand and eight hollows in it, and seven of them have been empty for five years. Four eggs are going home. They'll need warming every day until they hatch. Pip will need a mother who knows her." He held the seal up a little higher. "The Reach needs a keeper. Not a bride. A keeper, with my seal, whose word counts as far as mine does."

The arena had gone quiet enough to hear the gulls over the walls.

I had the Crown Charter in one hand.

Free of my father.

Free of every contract anyone had ever signed for me.

Free to go anywhere in the kingdom.

"I said I'd never go north as anybody's bride price," I said.

"I know. I was there."

"I'd go as the keeper."

His gold eyes didn't move from mine.

"Then go as the keeper."

I took the seal off his palm.

It was heavy, and warm from his hand.

"Ask me the other thing later," I said.

The corner of his mouth went up.

"How much later?"

"I'll let you know."

My roommate made a noise.

I slept a whole day and a night after that, in the infirmary, in the bed nearest the kitchen door.

The cook sat on a stool beside me the whole time and fed me porridge every time I opened my eyes.

When I could finally stand, she gave me a parcel tied with string.

"Every recipe I've got," she said. "You'll ruin them. Write and tell me how."

I gave her a third of the Charter's two thousand crowns for a new oven.

She called me an idiot and cried into her apron.

My roommate cried too, but she'd been crying for two days straight, so nobody counted it.

"I'm coming at midsummer," she said. "With the fox. Have a room ready. With a window that opens."

"I'll have it ready."

We left from the arena at dawn on the third day.

Cassius went down on his hands in the middle of the sand and came up black and enormous, and lowered one wing to the ground.

I climbed up between his shoulder spikes with the basket of eggs strapped to my front.

Pip rode in my braid.

The whole academy came out to watch.

I looked for Jory and didn't see him.

Then Cassius opened his wings, and pushed, and the ground fell away.

I screamed.

I couldn't help it.

Then I laughed, and couldn't stop that either.

The academy shrank to a gray thumbprint.

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