Flight of the King Read Online Free Page A

risk she’d have to take.
    â€œI’ll have to keep the Glass on me,” Gwen said. “It wouldn’t be safe left here alone.”
    At her mention of the Glass, Bailey lifted his head and smiled hopefully.
    â€œDo you want to see it?” Gwen asked him. His smile grew wider. Even the iguana stirred, as if he really were sensing Bailey’s anticipation. Bert licked his lips.
    â€œIf that’s okay,” Bailey said.
    Gwen crossed to the center of the small room, where the ancient oak that supported the tree house sprouted up through the floor. She reached into a hollow knot in the tree’s side and drew
out a parcel wrapped in a piece of wolf’s pelt. The Velyn had given it to her after the Elder’s death—they were the only people in the kingdom she knew of who used fur for any
purpose. It was a sacred, important thing. She unwrapped the pelt, and there was the Glass. Its many gleaming angles shone in the light from the surrounding windows.
    Bailey exhaled as he looked at it, and allowed his tensed shoulders to relax.
    â€œAnd what if someone comes looking for it here?” he asked.
    Gwen held out a tarnished silver coin in her other hand. It was an old beetleback, from Melore’s reign, with an embossed image of a spindly-legged bug on both sides.
    â€œTremelo gave me this,” she said. “If I sense danger, I’m to take the Glass and run. I’ll leave this in its place as a message I’m safe.” She hoped it
would never come to that.
    Phi gazed over Bailey’s shoulder at the Glass, then smiled at Gwen.
    â€œWe’d better get back,” she said. “Want anything new from the library next time?”
    Gwen shook her head.
    â€œNope,” she said. “But if you come across any blueberry tarts, I’d take one of those.”
    â€œConsider it done,” said Phi.
    Bailey eased his way down the footholds first, with Bert riding on his back. Phi paused before following him.
    â€œI’ll see you soon,” Phi said. “And thank you, again.”
    â€œIt’s nice to feel needed,” said Gwen. She felt herself blushing at this confession.
    â€œBe safe,” cautioned Phi, and disappeared through the trapdoor, out into the winter cold.

BAILEY WALKED PHI TO Treetop and then doubled back across the snow-covered campus, which glowed in the moonlight. Past the Scavage field, he threaded
through the trees that separated the Fairmount grounds from the woods. Bert the iguana nestled underneath Bailey’s wool coat, his scaly claws gripping the cables of Bailey’s sweater for
balance.
    When the rigimotive had first pulled into Fairmount that afternoon, Bailey had sensed that Taleth was near. At least, he thought he’d sensed this; he felt a sort of low hum that spread out
in all directions from him, like a faint electro-current charge crackling in the air. Was this how it felt all the time to have a bond? He didn’t know.
    He wondered how different his Awakening would have been if the Velyn, the tribe of his birth, hadn’t been nearly wiped out during the Jackal’s reign. Did Taleth once have family too?
Would he have felt the same strong pull to another white tiger, if they had survived, as he did to Taleth? He had so many questions. He wished that he’d been able to spend more time with the
Velyn and their leader, Eneas Fourclaw, before the Midwinter break. Bailey hoped that the Velyn were still in the woods outside Fairmount, and he carried this hope like a lantern, lighting his way
through the shadowy trees.
    He walked through brambles and over frost-slick stones to the last place where he’d seen Taleth—a small, rocky cliff visible from the highest hill on campus. All around him, he heard
the rustling of winter birds and the darting of white-furred rabbits. Then there came another sound, low and gravelly, as familiar as if it had come from his own throat. He saw an enormous