A pain shot through him. The thought of Drock never returning with news was high on his mind. The fact that he might never see Thisbe and Fifer again was a little too much to take. But what was he going to do? Sit around in the cavelands with a bunch of forgetful, roaming ghost dragons and wait for something that might never come?

Or… was there another option? Dev had developed a kinship with this land and palace, decrepit though it was, in the short time they’d been here. What if…?

“Of course. Dev,” said Astrid, remembering. “My special friend Dev. Short for Devastation. Yes, you are a gem, I think. Or at least leaning that way, as my senses tell me.”

“Oh, really?” said Dev, tapping his lips. “Thank you.”

“Well, climb aboard. We mustn’t dally. It’s a half day’s journey if memory serves. Home awaits.”

Dev’s heart sank as he stood next to the dragon. His feet felt like cement. But when Astrid knelt down, Dev did as she’d asked and climbed aboard. Once he was settled in the cushiony hollow between her wings, he gazed at the grounds. The spider-webbed garden was horrifying. The foxes barking and scurrying around the main-floor staircase were unsettling. And the palace was doomed to collapse entirely after a few more years of neglect. Yet he couldn’t take his eyes off it. From Astrid’s back he could see a river snaking through the back property, swollen as if it had recently rained here. The picture of the river reminded Dev of the third image in his mind from the ancestor broth, and he wondered again if it was trying to tell him something about his past. He knew that having a river nearby was the most important thing about settling down. He’d always known that. But Drock might be coming back for him in the cavelands. And here, if he stayed, he’d be all alone. Conflicted, Dev closed his eyes and brought the image of the beautiful palace to the forefront of his mind.

Astrid, with her great wings outstretched, began to run and flap them, creating a whoop-whoop-whoop sound as they sliced the air. She lifted off with Dev aboard. He opened his eyes and turned to look over Astrid’s side at the broken-down palace, so different from the image in his mind. Yet he couldn’t shake the strong pull of it. He couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Astrid cleared the treetops and kept flying. Dev’s chest tightened, and the ache in his ribs, which had been forgotten most of the afternoon, returned. He turned to watch the grounds grow small but felt his eyes closing again, as if unable to look. A sick feeling rumbled through his gut. In that instant he knew that, despite everything, he belonged here. Not in the cavelands. Not in the forest or in Grimere or anywhere else. And maybe that meant he’d be alone, like old, gray Ashguard Suresh, the curmudgeon. Maybe it meant Dev would become a curmudgeon too, but none of that mattered. Astrid was taking Dev away from the only place that had ever felt like home to him, and everything about that was dead wrong.