as well.
I stare at it. “I didn’t… I didn’t know you were there. In the beginning.”
She looks at the photograph and a flicker of emotion streaks through her eyes then vanishes. “Of course I was.”
I look at another photograph. This one only of her. She’s wearing faded jeans and a crop top, smiling knowingly at the camera.
“My best friend took that one,” she says quietly. “Funny to look at it now.”
I’m about to ask who she’s referring to, when she sniffs and points out of the study window.
“That Dryad. She’s your friend?”
“Yes,” I say firmly. “She’s sweet. You’d like her if you met her on a normal day. You know, one where her maker hasn’t been kidnapped by a Siren.”
Opal laughs, bitterly. “I’m sure I would.”
“She’s never had friends before us.”
“And she’s who you’ve been sneaking out to see?”
I feel colour rush to my neck, and I blush furiously. “Yes.”
I say nothing of Blue, the dragon.
“Okay. As long as you’re keeping to the house and are safe.”
“We are,” I lie.
“Good friends are… more precious than anything,” she adds, looking back to the single photograph of her when she was younger. “Don’t let them become living ghosts in your life. Or faces you can’t really remember.”
I look at how tired she seems. “Why are you conserving your magic?”
She touches the satin teal fabric around her wrist, the one the Stranger gifted her. “I’m working on one very big spell.”
“A curse?”
“Maybe.”
“Can I know?”
“No.”
I want to object but don’t let my temper loose. “That shapeshifting thing looked like Grandpa. I hate it.”
“Leave that thing be.”
“Why should I? It’s provoking us.”
“Ramya.”
“What does Portia want with it? Will it do what
she says?”
“Remember when I told you to lay low in Edinburgh?” Opal suddenly says. “I told you what you were doing was dangerous. Not to do it.”
“You didn’t know about Ren.”
“No, I didn’t. I knew a Siren was in town, but I didn’t know it was him, you’re right. I didn’t know Ren. He was ambitious, he was cruel. He wanted power.”
“Same as Portia.”
“No,” Opal breathes, so quietly. “She wants something else. And the best thing you can do is stay here. Not let her get it.”
“Me?”
She looks up at me. “Not exactly.”
“She wants me because I’m sort of like the chosen one. You know? I have lots of potential and power.”
Something is stirring in Opal’s face. “You do. But that’s not—”
“Dinnertime in twenty minutes!” Aunt Leanna’s voice booms from the kitchen, across the hall from the study. I turn back to Opal.
“What were you going to say?”
She shakes her head slightly and smiles. “Nothing.”
