Bianca couldn’t believe her eyes.
How could Peregrine get this high? Bianca had never imagined anyone could rise this far above the ground. What kind of summoning technique was this?
When he was fourteen, his father had pulled him out of Callum Hall because of her mistake. Peregrine had never received another formal education in familiars.
So how had he learned to do this?
And more importantly...
Why was he doing it?
Bianca hugged him tighter. If he had brought her this high only to push her down, she wasn’t going without a fight.
"Wasn’t it your birthday wish to touch the clouds?" Peregrine asked.
Her head was spinning from fear, confusion, and the thin air. Yet his voice reached her clearly. His heartbeat was steady beneath her ear, his hold just as firm.
Bianca slowly looked at him. Her arms were beginning to ache from clinging to him for so long, yet he was still holding her with one arm as though she weighed nothing. Even up here, she could feel the warmth of his body.
Then she remembered.
She had told him that.
Her gaze drifted past his shoulder. They were surrounded by clouds.
"I did..." Her voice shook with disbelief. "When I was eight."
That had been her eighth birthday wish. The last birthday she had celebrated with anyone.
No. Not the last birthday. She remembered Louis. There had been one birthday with him, too. Still, Peregrine and Louis had been the only people who had ever remembered her birthdays.
Not even her parents. Her mother might have remembered, but she had never been able to stand against her father.
The corner of Peregrine’s lips lifted slightly as he looked down at her.
She was hugging him like a baby koala, her cheeks flushed from the cold, droplets of water clinging to her damp hair.
And those eyes... Those beautiful blue eyes were filled with wonder.
This was what he had wanted to see.
He hadn’t cared about what anyone said about Julian Pembroke or the rumors surrounding them.
This was what he had worked so hard to learn.
To hold his bumbling girl above the world and finally let her touch the sky.
He had always been able to float a few feet above the stone, but this high? It had taken years of silent, brutal practice. It was only in the past year that he had finally mastered the technique, learning it on his own with the guidance of his dragon familiar.
All for her.
"Happy birthday, Bianca."
Bianca went still.
This had always been her twenty-third birthday present. The Treasure of the Sea necklace had only been an extra. She had never told him what she wanted for her birthdays. She had only ever said this one wish aloud.
It was years late. But he had finally given it to her. And to Peregrine, that was enough.
Bianca peeked over his shoulder again, and slowly, the realization settled over her.
"Today is my birthday..."
She had forgotten. Her maid must have been trying to tell her that morning.
Her eyes returned to Peregrine. He was simply looking at her, his expression unreadable.
And in that stillness, she saw him...
She saw the fourteen-year-old boy who had once stood beside her without a scar on his face. The boy who had always been there, even when he grumbled at her. The boy who had called her "bumblebee" because, in his words, she was always bumbling around.
Before she realized what she was doing, Bianca reached for his cheek. Her fingers barely touched his skin before her gaze fell to her hand.
The ring.
She looked at the amber gem, the black coral strips, and the diamonds set like wings. Her breath caught.
It looked like a bumblebee.
Her eyes filled with tears. Her lips trembled. And Peregrine... He was looking at her exactly as he always did: expressionless and unreadable.
Yet something inside Bianca softened. Her heart ached with a tenderness she didn’t know what to do with.
And then, before she could stop herself, Bianca wanted to kiss him.
"Want to walk on it?" Peregrine asked.
Bianca snapped out of her thoughts. "Walk?"
She looked around them. The clouds beneath them were nothing like the soft, fluffy masses she had imagined as a child.
"It doesn’t look walkable," she said. Her arms tightened around him anyway.
Peregrine glanced down at her. "You wanted to walk on clouds. You assumed they’d be bouncy, like a heap of cotton."
"Clearly, they are not!"
The clouds were wet and misty, brushing against her skin like cold vapor. There was nothing solid about them.
"Why don’t you try?" Peregrine asked.
Bianca panicked.
She immediately wrapped both arms around his neck and awkwardly crab-walked around his body until she was clinging to his back.
That was safer. At least, she thought it was. She hung onto him, panting, until she realized something strange.
Her ankles weren’t hurting anymore. Bianca glanced down. The cuts were gone too. Even the scrapes on her skin had healed.
Had Peregrine cast a healing spell on her while she was "dreaming"?
Before she could ask, Peregrine suddenly dropped. Bianca screamed at the top of her lungs and clung to his neck.
"What’s happening? Are we falling?"
Peregrine simply turned in midair, and suddenly Bianca was beneath him.
She tried to wrap her legs around his waist, but she couldn’t hold on. Her arms slipped from his shoulders too.
She was falling.
"Peregrine!"
Her scream vanished into the clouds.
As she tumbled through the thick mist, she saw Peregrine dive after her. He caught her hand and pulled her back toward him.
"I’ll catch you. Trust me."
Bianca stared at him.
Trust me.
Slowly, she loosened her grip, the first time. The next time, she let go of his hands herself.
She fell.
Her back faced the earth far below, her eyes fixed on the sky above. Her skirts billowed around her, her hair fluttered wildly in the wind, and for one breathless moment, she wasn’t afraid.
Her heart soared.
The feeling was liberating.
Mist rushed past her, cool against her cheeks. Sunlight streamed through the clouds, breaking into faint rainbows around her.
And then there was Peregrine.
He caught her, again and again.
Bianca laughed.
She laughed so freely that she forgot to be afraid, forgot the court, the monastery, Isolde, Julian, and everything that had hurt her.
Peregrine watched her laugh without reservation, just as she had when she was small and round and always bumbling around him.
He had missed that laughter.
Bianca passed through the cloud again and began falling beneath it.
Peregrine dove after her.
But this time...
He couldn’t move.
His heart dropped.
Why can’t I move?
Below him, Bianca continued to fall.
She was smiling. She didn’t know he wasn’t going to catch her this time.