The Shadow Prince by Bree Despain Read Free Book Online Page B

do this. As much as this store is your life, music is mine. And just as much as it would be impossiblefor me to stop singing, it would be even more impossible for me to watch you lose this place. Not when the solution is so easy.”
    “Leaving your home is that easy for you?”
    “No, that’s not what I mean.” I squeeze her shoulder. “It’s going to be okay, Mom. I’ll be back for Christmas break.” I glance at Joe and he nods, confirming that this would be part of the plan. “You don’t have to worry about me.”
    “Bad things happen out there. Believe me, Daphne, I know.” More remorse wafts off my mother, and I know she’s thinking of her one excursion outside of Ellis Fields as a teenager—spring break, her senior year, with some high school friends. That trip was how my mom ended up with an ex she barely knew, and a baby she’d never planned on. Not to mention one of her best friends had run off to New York City with some guy, never to be heard from again.
    “Some good things happen out there, too,” I say, and give her a look that says, “How else would you have gotten me?”
    All the stiffness in my mother’s face melts away. Water fills her eyes and she grabs me in a close hug. “I know,” she says. “You are my everything. That’s why I don’t want to ever lose you.” Her grip on me tightens. “Please, my little sprout, stay here.”
    I bite back the urge to tell her that I’ve changed my mind, that I am never going to leave, but I can’t fight the tears that roll from my eyes as I let my mother hold me like I was a little kid who’s fallen and skinned her knee.
    “We now have thirteen minutes until we need to leave,” the glossy woman says.
    I break away from my mother’s hug. Anguished notes fall off her like teardrops as she realizes that her pleading won’t keep me here.
    “You know, you could always come with me,” I say. “Open up a new shop in California?”
    She shakes her head, with a sad little smile. “Who would take care of all of Ellis’s strays?”
    I’d known she’d never go for it, but I had to at least ask. “Okay, then, cross my heart and hope to die, I swear I will never run off with some random guy.” I make an X over my chest, and my mother laughs tearfully at my corny rhyme.
    “Twelve minutes,” the woman says and takes me by the elbow again. I have no choice but to let her drag me out of the office.
    We pass Jonathan, who gives me a sad frown, and CeCe, who acts as though she wants to try to stop me, but rethinks it when Glossy Woman throws her a look that could melt ice. Indie, ever oblivious, gives me an enthusiastic double thumbs-up.
    The wall of heat outside the oasis of the shop’s AC hits me and I suddenly feel overwhelmed—not just by the prospect of packing up my life in such a hurry, but also by knowing that, in twelve short minutes, I have to figure out how to say good-bye to the only life I have ever known.

chapter five
HADEN
    Morning has arrived by the time someone comes to fetch me. I’m not surprised that it is Brimstone who finds me in the screech owl roost in the tallest tower of the palace. I know she’s coming, because the owls become agitated, screeching and puffing out their feathers as she slinks into the room. She’s a tiny little thing, but a good deal bigger than the puff of fur she’d been when I rescued her from one of the owls’ clutches when she was only a few days old. As a runty newborn, she’d been tossed out of the nest by her mother, left to die in the Wastelands. That’s why I’d saved her—and that’s why she rarely left my side and could always find me no matter where I was—we’d both been rejected by the only family we’d ever really known. That made us kin.
    Brim meows like she’s scolding me and hops onto my lap as I sit on the window ledge.
    “I know,” I say, stroking my hand over her gray fur so she won’t get angry. “I should have told you where I was going.”
    I slide one of my