‘Dad!’ Joe whispered. Then he shouted, ‘Dad!’

Iggie landed in the open garden, flapping hard to keep his balance.

Joe stumbled towards the blue dragon as his vision smeared and blurred.

Nestan was slipping off Iggie’s back. Without his cane, he limped towards Joe with an incredulous look of joy and pain that scalded and soothed him all at once.

‘Dad. I’m so sorry, I’m—’ Joe’s words were silenced by that gaze, then he was caught up in Nestan’s strong arms. With horror and relief, he felt his father’s shoulders shaking with sobs. He’d never even seen him cry before. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ he mumbled, feeling his own tears begin.

‘Jowan. You’re alive,’ his father managed to say, pulling back and wiping his eyes with one forearm. ‘How? I can’t believe it …’ Nestan patted Joe’s face and neck, as if trying to convince himself this was his son and no mirage. ‘My boy …’

‘Dad!’ he said. ‘I’m sorry for everything. What I did—’

‘That doesn’t matter now.’ His father’s eyes were 128bloodshot and tired, but they burned intensely. ‘Nothing else matters,’ he whispered, ‘now you’re back.’

Over his father’s shoulder, Joe saw the iron gate fly open, and his mother ran through it, breathless, red-faced, tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘Joe!’ she bellowed. ‘Is it really my Joe?’

‘Oh, Mum,’ Joe’s voice sounded strangled and strange. He didn’t know if he was laughing or crying. He didn’t know what he was saying or doing. All he knew was that he needed this. He’d missed this: his family, together again, weeping and talking and laughing and breathing, warm and real and his.

129

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Milla let Joe and his parents use her room in the heal­ing house, so that Joe’s return could be kept as quiet as possible, though Milla promised to get the good news to Tarya via their dragons. Thom slipped away briefly to ask his father to visit Sartola on his next fishing trip, so Isak – who had just left Arcosi – wouldn’t mourn his brother any longer. Then Winter took Milla and Thom down underground to see the eggs and show them the warm, acrid water.

Meanwhile, Joe, Nestan and Josi spent the day talking, with frequent breaks to eat the food Josi fetched from home.

‘Oh, Joe, you really thought we could live without you?’ Josi said, her face tracked with tears.

‘I thought you were angry …’

‘We may sometimes be angry, but we will always forgive anything you do.’ Joe’s father’s voice sounded hoarse and choked with emotion.

‘I heard someone say—’ Joe stopped. ‘That … that it 130would be better if I were dead,’ he finished, with difficulty. ‘Someone almost died that day. So I believed it. I thought I should stay away. So I couldn’t make it worse.’

‘Well, that took courage. And surviving like you did …’ The rest of his mother’s words were lost in more sobbing.