The next day, Elva and I spent some time with Veronica in the library. Veronica was nose deep in her books. Elva had begun their time together by flittering through the stacks pretending to be a dragon. Now, she was dozing on a big, comfortable, high-back chair.
Watching her sleep so soundly helped quell some of the rebelling instincts within me. Every once in a while, I would catch myself glancing out the window at the forest.
My instincts were difficult to ignore. But I could do it. For Elva. For Nicholas. For Julian. For everyone, even myself.
Veronica slid me a book across the table we were sitting at. “Read this.”
I looked down where she pointed and read through the passage. In was an innocuous, boring diatribe about the rise and fall of the grain industry in the late seventeen hu
