The Nightmare Garden

20 Aboard the Munin

ONCE I’D BEEN settled in blankets aboard the Munin by my father, I pressed my forehead against the porthole and watched the true aurora borealis as we turned south. It was bright and sharp and unpredictable, like Dean. I could almost think he was out there, rather than strapped in the hold of the Munin.

Someone sat down across from me and pressed a mug of something warm into my hands. Eventually I looked up and saw my brother.

“So,” Conrad said. “It looks like despite your best attempts, you didn’t manage to kill yourself. Dad says you have some frostbite but you weren’t out there long enough to get hypothermia.” He took a sip from his own mug. “I know you probably hate me for ratting on you, Aoife, but …” He sighed. “I’m your brother, and I’m not going to stop looking out for you just because things change.”

“How are we flying?” I said, because it was the only thing I could think of to say. “We should be icing up and crashing and dying.”

Conrad blinked. “The Munin has a deicing system. Valentina designed it, I think.”

“Oh,” I said. Dean was dead. Dean was dead and cold and it was my fault.

Archie came and stood by Conrad, putting a hand on his shoulder. “You doing all right, kiddo?” He shook his head. “Stupid question. Of course you aren’t. You going to be okay to go back down the coast, or do we need to set down once we’re out of the Arctic Circle?”

“She’s covered in blood,” Conrad pointed out.

“It’s not mine,” I said. The words came out flat and toneless. It was how I felt, as if something had stepped on me and stopped my heart from beating right along with Dean’s.

Archie squeezed my hand. “I’m furious with you for running off like that, and for running to the Brotherhood,” he said quietly. “But that doesn’t matter now. Are you going to be all right, at least?”

I couldn’t muster the energy to outline the many ways in which I was not, so I just turned my face back to the porthole.

I couldn’t reverse the mistakes I’d made. Crow had taught me that much. But I could make up for them. From that moment on, I vowed, I would. Dean wouldn’t have died for nothing. I wouldn’t be remembered as Aoife Grayson the destroyer. I’d be Aoife Grayson the girl who tried with every bit of herself to put right what she’d made wrong.

That Aoife Grayson might have a chance. Not the liar or the deal maker or the dutiful daughter, but the Aoife Grayson who took it upon herself to move ahead, rather than trying to reverse the present into the past—that Aoife Grayson I could live with.

“Do you want anything?” Conrad asked me as he took away my stone-cold tea.

I kept looking at the dancing lights and saw how, bit by bit, they were being blotted out by the encroaching storm I’d called forth. I shook my head and made myself look at my brother, my interfering brother, who was only trying to help me. “I want to go home.”