Free The World Above by Cameron Dokey Page B

She cocked her head to one side. “Though, if it’s not presumptuous of me to say so, I think I can see your father in you as well. Something about the determined set of the chin, I think.”
    “I wish I’d known him,” I said softly. “And I wish I’d taken time to know my mother.”
    “At least you can do something about the second,” Shannon said. I felt a sudden burst of affection sweep over me for this girl I barely knew. Not only had it been the right thing to say, it had been the right way to say it, simple and straightforward. Practical, just as I was myself.
    She is right
, I thought. I could still get to know my mother better. And hadn’t Mama said I had my father’s nature? My ability to plan, my single-mindedness when it came to getting a job done. I was Duke Roland’s child. I was his heir, his firstborn. Who knew what I might discover if I stopped comparing myself to Jack and simply tried to know my own self better?
    Jack
, I thought.
    “We have to find our brothers first,” I said.
    “Thank you,” Shannon said quietly.
    I turned back toward her in surprise. “For what?”
    “For not saying ‘save,’” she said. “Even though it’s what we’re both thinking.”
    “What I’m thinking is that we’ll do whatever it takes,” I said.
    With gentle fingers, I reached to cover my parents’ portrait.

 

T WELVE
     
    “I’ve been thinking it over, and I’ve decided we should take the shortcut,” Shannon announced early the next morning.
    We had talked far into the night, trying to determine the best way to locate our brothers. We would head for Guy de Trabant’s fortress, of course. But unlike Jack and Sean, we would go on horseback, though even that would take time. Shannon estimated five full days. What if Jack and Sean needed help
now
?
    Perhaps it had been seeing the portrait of my parents, or seeing how much Jack looked like our father, but a sense of urgency now seized me and would not let go. I had tossed and turned as I slept, anxious and edgy. My skin crawled with impatience. I had already waited nearly four whole weeks before following Jack to the World Above. Traveling another five days before I could learn about my brother’s fate seemed . . . wrong. Even worse, it seemed dangerous.
    Too long.
The thought pounded in my head to the rhythm of my heart.
Too long. Too long
.
    “What’s the shortcut?” I inquired.
    We were in the stables, readying the castle’s one remaining horse. Even in my haste to be gone, I eyed him dubiously. He was ancient and swaybacked. Surely there was no way he could carry us both. But Shannon had assured me that, like the rest of my father’s subjects, the old horse would prove steadfast and loyal. His name, as a matter of fact, was Verité. Truth. Appropriate, there was no denying it. Shannon tossed a blanket across Verité’s broad back, then added our saddlebags before she replied.
    “Through the Greenwood Forest.”
    I caught my breath. “But I thought you said . . .” My voice trailed off.
    “I did,” Shannon answered. “I know. But I still think it’s the right choice.”
    The Greenwood lay like a great green divide between de Trabant’s lands and ours. The boundary that marked the place where our lands had once ended and Duke Guy’s began was somewhere deep inside the Greenwood itself, Shannon said, though she had never seen it. The place was marked by an ancient oak. My mother had grown up not far from the Greenwood. Rowan, her nurse, had built her house along its outskirts, though she, and it, had vanished long ago.
    As Rowan herself had predicted, it hadn’t taken Guy de Trabant long to figure out where my mother had gone. But by the time his soldiers reached the wise old woman’s cottage, neither Rowan nor my mother were anywhere to be found. When word of my mother’s escape reached Guy de Trabant, he’d flown into a rage and ordered Rowan’s house burned to the ground. No one had seen her since.
    With Rowan’s