In which there are seventy-four carrots and the hair racism gets more bizarre by the sentence. 

Edem was far below, just a speck on his horse, and behind him was Darius Draven, on a strong gray horse his children had never seen before. "Hello!" called Elias, waving from the porch of his penthouse.

"Meet the new head fisherman of Leida Castle," shouted Edem.

"You're working for the castle now?" asked Dale, amazed.

"If his children are helping us now, I assumed he needed a reason to be at the castle, too." Edem patted Camber loudly. "Come on down. We got you all horses."

This just literally makes no sense. Drag the whole family to the castle so these underage minors can accomplish some prophecy Brim decided to hand off to them. 

"From where?" asked Elowyn as they began to descend one at a time.

"I have connections," he said, vague as ever. (AKA I had no clue myself.) 

"Thank you for the tea!" shouted Hollis as he hit the ground.

The horses were tall Highland Draughts, twice as heavy as Caper. Two stood riderless. Ren's was a gray speckled female with a rounded snout which she nuzzled into Ren's hands, looking for food.

"Her name is Silverwood," Edem said to Ren, reaching over to pat the horse.

Gabriel rode Caper. Dale received a heavy black horse called Arthur, and the little boys doubled up with him and Ren. They camped overnight in the desolate lands of the northernmost bit of the Low Country, and the dark air was scented with salt, salt from the ocean the four younger Dravens had eaten out of their entire lives and never seen. Refugees slept across the river. They had a boy Patch's age. The two little boys watched each other for a long moment before climbing into their separate tents.

Sable had come along with Darius. She stretched out in the moonlight, snoring softly. Patch and Hollis curled up on either side of Ren and went right to sleep but Ren lay with her eyes open. Hours later she crawled to stick her head out of the tent opening. Gabriel sat by the fire, keeping watch. He was tossing a small stone and catching it with his eyes nailed into the refugee camp.

In the morning, the campsite was sopping with dew. Ren fed Silverwood by hand while the little boys stroked as much of the horse as they could reach. "Is she for us to keep?" Patch asked.

"Are we moving to Terradon?" added Hollis.

Ren touched the horse's nose. She had thought about the prophecy all night long and could not make much sense of it.

"I have no idea. We'll do whatever the rest of the family does."

Yes, because God forbid Ren think for herself. 

They packed up and mounted, riding off into the warming sun. But there was a pleasant ocean breeze now. Sable lifted her face and sniffed the air in pleasure. (This is so cute in my head right now. I want to hug Sable/Maple.) "You finally get to see the Terracotta Sea," said Darius to his younger children.

"Why is everything 'terra'?" asked Hollis. "Terradon, Terracotta..."

Because Night couldn't think of anything else. 

"Because of the Terra vikings. They ruled nearly everything a thousand years ago."

It all burst forth into view late that afternoon. As the sun rays pierced the bay, a million oysters glittered on the surface. The city was crowded with towers and buildings of every color known. From this distance they looked like splashed paint, shaded by the hill on which Leida Castle rested. Beyond it all was the ocean. They maneuvered the horses down and around tight alleyways, passing townhouses and fenced yards where children stopped their play to stare at the travelers. "I see it now!" said Patch as a stone structure in a grassy field became visible.

"That's just the folly," said Elowyn. "We played in it when we were little."

At the real castle, the trolls pushed open the gate so that the motley company could ride beneath the arched carriage-way on the cobblestone pavement. Red-coated guards bowed and came to take the horses.

"Nice, humble place they've got," commented Dale to his siblings, helping Patch down.

They were led by aids into the echoing hall. The six Dravens hung back. The younger ones shamelessly gawked. Their expressions stared back at them on the marble ceiling, the mirrored walls, the glossed floor.

"Imagine living in this," whispered Gabriel.

"Imagine cleaning it," said Ren doubtfully.

Recognize that? From here on you're going to realize there were some copy/paste maneuvers when I wrote The Book of Secrets. 

Servants hovered on all sides. The Dravens' bags were taken to the guest rooms. Sable was confiscated and delivered to the kennel. And then down the staircase came Winter, holding up the train of her golden dress, rushing to meet her children.

"What took you so long?" she asked, touching Wescott's arm.

"We picked up a few new friends," said Edem, handing off his weapons to his page.

Winter shifted her gaze. She saw the dark-haired Dravens, and her expression of relief changed to a new concern.

"Darius Draven of the Low Country, our new fisherman," said Edem pleasantly, "and his children. Dravens, this is Queen Winter Huntian."

Before any of the Dravens could speak, Winter turned to her own children. She held their faces. "You're filthy! And you must be so tired. And starving. I was just about to fire up some steaks."

"Brilliant," said Wescott. "I'm dying for a bit of meat with fat on it."

Winter hurried back up the stairs without another word to the visitors. Elowyn looked at them and rolled her eyes. "She's painfully shy, just a bit."

"She'll fit in with half my family all right," said Gabriel.

Ren was brought by Elowyn to a high-ceilinged room with thick red tapestries on all the walls and a bed so high not even Hollis could climb up on his own. In the bathroom was a green marble floor with a bathtub carved into it. Three bay windows looked out onto the courtyard, the water, and the city. The little boys ran to peer out of each one. "This bed is big enough for the whole entire family," said Patch as Ren set him on it.

"It doesn't have to be," said Elowyn, smiling. "We have more than enough beds."

A scaly green creature the size of a housecat launched itself from a corner and clawed at Patch's hanging feet, which he quickly pulled up onto the bed. Elowyn kicked the creature and it bit her shoe. She booted it hard into the wall and it squeaked and dove beneath a dresser, where its two glaring yellow eyes could be seen.

"House dragons." She shook her head. "Just kick them good."

Hollis, watching the water through one of the bay windows, turned around. "Can we go outside?"

"Yes! Wait till you see the folly," said Elowyn, jumping to her feet.

The four of them emerged into the warm, bright evening, listening to the lap of the bay and the street noise at the marketplace. "Do you have more horses than the ones you came on?" asked Ren, speaking directly to Elowyn for only the second time.

"We have seventy-three horses," replied Elowyn.

"Woah," said Patch quietly.

"Can we see?" Hollis asked.

They went into the never-ending stables with sunlight cresting the bottoms of dozens of dusty windows. Caper was in one of the front stalls. When he saw his family, he made a pleased sound. Silverwood was chewing hay and looked up with bright eyes when Ren approached.

Hollis and Patch went back and forth, climbing on the stall doors to visit horses, Hollis telling a story about Old Caleb's horse who stood on two legs to eat apples off a tree. "We can feed them, if you want," Elowyn said. "Maybe not apples, but bits of carrots. We can get them from the kitchen."

They peaked the hill to the ground-floor kitchen, where the shutters were thrown open to the pleasurable evening. "Can we have seventy-three bits of carrots, please?" Hollis called.

A round-faced, sweaty cook came to the window. "Who are you?"

"Visiting friends," Elowyn answered for him. "And we need seventy-four bits, actually."

"Not for the horses, no," answered the cook, who knew Elowyn well. "But I'll give you carrot tops."

Through the window she passed a bucketful of the remains of more carrots than the Dravens could afford in half a year. "Mind your friends. They're awfully dark-haired," said the cook as Elowyn took the pail.

"What's that mean?" Patch asked.

"Nothing," said Ren, her face looking hot as she walked on. "It means nothing."

Back at the barn, they were greeted by a meandering orange cat. The boys set off dutifully to feed as many horses as they could while the girls waited in the door. Ren didn't know what to say so she kept petting the cat. (This is still Ren. And also me always.) 

"Can we see your dog place?" asked Hollis from somewhere deep in the stable. "I want to see how many dogs you have."

"And then play in the folly," added Patch.

They hiked across grassy fields to the kennels on the other side. The sun was beginning to hang near the horizon. Far below the hill on which the castle stood, the bay was still and gentle. The kennels were noisy. Patch leaned over to let a puppy lick his face but Ren and Hollis went straight to Sable. A loud striking of a bell sent all the dogs barking.

"Seven o clock," said Elowyn, covering her ears. "Dinner time. We'll have to save the folly for tomorrow."

"I wish Sable could come," said Hollis resignedly.

"She can. Dogs can come in. When I was little, I slept with a different dog every night."

Standing, Ren seized Sable by the twine she wore as a collar. She had already planned to sneak her inside later. "Let's eat."

In the everyday dining room there awaited an eye-popping spread—steaks, lentil and vegetable stew, creamed kale, glazed carrots, potatoes, tropical fruit with honey, and three kinds of bread, with all the coffee, chocolate, and ginger beer in the world. Winter sat between her two children, glancing stiffly at the guests. Although Darius ate in a separate wing with his fellow fishermen, Elowyn had invited the rest of the Dravens to dine with her family. Once facing the food, they did not pay much attention to the fact that they were sharing a table with the king of Terradon. They were too hungry.

Conrad had downed his first mug of foaming beer before noticing anything unordinary. "Who is this?" he finally gasped, coming up for air.

"Just some friends of Edem. They'll be gone soon," said Winter in a rush.

"Actually, their father is employed with us now," Elowyn corrected.

Winter fired back, "If they're part of the staff, then what are they doing seated at our table? You may have noticed not even Edem eats with us."

"They're mine and Wescott's friends."

"They're you're friends," stated Wescott around the food in his mouth.

An uncomfortable silence promptly followed. The only sound was the noisy chewing from Conrad and his sons.

"We'll eat in our own rooms tomorrow," said Dale.

"It will look good for us to have Low Countrians here!" Conrad smashed his cup to the table, startling Wescott into dropping his fork. "What have I always said?"

"Here it is again," Elowyn said to Ren, holding her forehead.

"Gone are the days of blonde hair as the superior feature!" declared Conrad in a scripted way. "Now come the days of the dark-haired. By entertaining Low Countrians at our table, we are showing kindness and tolerance to a similar race—the Bellicans!"

And HOW, exactly? How?! This makes no sense whatsoever. In the new version, it's true that Bellicans intermarried with Dellians to create the modern-day mixed race, which is what the Dravens are, but here, I didn't even bother explaining it and it's just weird. Plus, you can't base races off of hair color. Like, what the heck. I didn't even separate races by skin color in the new version. Both countries have light and dark skin. 

"Showing kindness and tolerance to the ones who bombed the school my brothers should have been in," Gabriel clipped.

And now off-brand Gabriel (I shall now refer to him as off-brand Gabriel because this guy is a disgrace to the real Gabriel's good name) gets into a shouting match with the king, because it happened in the Lego game, and, yeah, let's just throw it into the story. 

"Those are a mere FRACTION of the Bellicans!" Conrad brought his fist down onto the table. "And do you think they are doing it out of malice? No! They are young and bored, wanting attention. Tired of the status that light-haired people have held for so long."

"Then why do they keep attacking us in the Low Country? Half of us look just like them."

"Gabriel, stop," said Dale.

The king went on, "Easy for you to say, with your nice red hair. You don't know the struggles that exist."

"I don't know the struggles? I live with dark-haired people. And you don't care about the Low Country, you just care about your Bellicans. You treat us like gnats. You dump all your—"

"Stop!" yelled Dale.

"STOP!" Wescott roared, leaping out of his chair. He looked from Conrad to Gabriel. "It's not the Bellicans who are planting bombs everywhere. It's the Bellican terrorists. And they're doing it because they hate the free world. The ordinary Bellicans have nothing to do with it. Why do you think they're fleeing here?"

"They're fleeing here because your uncle refuses to stop the rebels."

"It is not your place to talk about the king!" shouted Wescott.

"You don't like him, either!" Gabriel shouted back.

"GET OUT!" Conrad pitched a goblet of wine between the two boys. It shattered against the wall. "GET OUT, before I have you both killed! Not in this castle does anyone speak ill of me or the Bellicans."

Wescott and Gabriel, all too happy to gratify, charged out of opposite doorways. Dale followed Gabriel, equally glad for an excuse to leave.

You can literally feel the awkward here. 

In disgust, Conrad threw his fork onto his plate. Then he picked it up and threw it again for dramatic effect. "Nothing good has ever come out of that blue-collar scum." He forced his chair away from the table. "Boys, come on!"

His boys stopped what they were doing and instinctively followed their father's voice. The dining hall succumbed to a stunning level of silence.

With all that chaos behind them, Winter turned mildly to her daughter. "How is the stew? I couldn't get it to thicken. There's just no way to get a lentil stew to thicken."

"Bread crumbs," said Ren, stabbing Gabriel's uneaten steak with a knife to transport it to her own plate.

"What?" Elowyn asked.

"One time, when my stew was too thin, I just crushed up some bread. No one could guess."

For the first time, Winter fully regarded Ren, her pale blue eyes alert with interest. "Bread crumbs?"

"Yes. But if you have no bread, you can make a sauce of butter and flour. I do that whenever I can. It adds flavor."

"We have stew almost always," put in Hollis, who was on his third cup of hot chocolate, something he had never had.

Winter looked slowly from Hollis to Patch and then back at Ren. "Well, it's too late for this stew. It's not terrible, is it? A bit of a milkshake-like consistency, if you will."

"What's a milkshake?" asked Hollis.

Winter looked faint. "Oh, my," she said, and after dinner, Winter, the girls, and the little boys congregated into the kitchen, where Winter prepared vanilla and mint milkshakes on a hand-cranked machine.

In this version, Ren and Winter bond over cooking. It gets even weirder. 

In the morning, and the following mornings, the Dravens met the new life that had been thrown upon them. They rose from their bedrooms at eight each morning, hours later than they had ever slept, and dined in a breakfast room extended on stilts out over the bay. Palace breakfasts were not a thing to miss. Pork chops, fried potatoes, corncakes with berries, oranges and bananas shipped in from the Eastern Shore. After that, with Darius off to haul in fish, and Dale accompanying him, Ren and Gabriel went through a series of physical assessments. They ran horses through mazes, they fought each other; they swam the bay, shot arrows, hurled spears. Edem sat leisurely upon Camber's back, watching. "Again!" he shouted after every joust, every race, every dive. "Faster. Harder. Look alive."

Well this isn't a cliche AT ALL. 

Gabriel stopped short after one particularly hard contest, in which he and Ren had accomplished nothing but breaking a sword. His coppery hair was flat and damp. "Explain to me why Dale gets to skip all these glorious excursions."

"Dale's time will come," Edem said, and had them start again. This time, as Gabriel came on Ren with his sword, Ren merely turned Silverwood around and retreated.

"What are you doing?" Edem shouted after her. "You think you can outrun him? You'd be left for the wolf-dragons to clean up after."

Both Ren and Gabriel stopped. "What's a wolf-dragon?" Ren asked.

"It's a misnomer, actually," Edem said. "They're part wolf, part dragon, and part human."

"Oh," said Ren, not understanding at all.

"I bought a horse from one once. I was ripped off. The most swaybacked thing I ever rode." He thrust his sword in Ren's direction. "Never trust a wolf-dragon."

In this version: "Never trust a wolfdragon, kids!"

In the new version: Kids literally follow a woldfdragon across the country. 

Wescott and Elowyn joined most of the activities. They were quick and skilled, having been trained their entire lives, but Ren and Gabriel were hardy and seasoned hunters. On only the third day of training, Edem initiated a minute-scale battle, with the two Huntians as one army and the two Dravens as the other. Gabriel and Wescott had eyes only for each other. They clashed on and on until their muscles ached, sword hitting sword with a merciless clang. Gabriel was driven back bit by bit until he ran into the bay.

It was the look of triumph in Wescott's eyes that he could not stand. It touched the hot, hating core of himself. He set himself loose and ran, not caring if he drove his sword straight into Wescott. Wescott jumped away so quickly they both tripped. He went at Gabriel head-on and they fought all the harder. It reached a climax when they abandoned their swords altogether. Wescott went for Gabriel's head but Gabriel punched him in the throat.

Elowyn and Ren, who had called a truce between each other nearly half an hour ago, stood by and watched. Edem finally intervened. He came up on Camber and knocked the boys apart. "You two are going to be fulfilling this prophecy together."

Wescott was panting wildly. The place where the troll had slashed him last week had opened up again. "It was my father's prophecy. They shouldn't have anything to do with it."

"It belongs to the world," Edem said. "It was originally given to your father, to Gabriel's mother, and to me. But it determines the existence of the free world."

I didn't realize prophecies can be fought over like the last slice of pizza. 

The boys had nothing to say to that. Gabriel dumped his helmet onto the sandy ground.

"You got lucky," Wescott snarled at him.

"We'll be playing capture the flag tomorrow," Edem said to Ren in a much calmer tone. "Any of your other brothers who want to join can."

The two little Dravens spent each day exploring Huntian property as they pleased, coming inside often to sample the day's cooking. Patch had evolved out of all shyness, running at Elowyn's side as she walked Quill to the stables. Winter stood at the top of the hill and waved a greeting to Elowyn.

"Is she your mother?" asked Patch.

"Yes," said Elowyn.

"What does she do?"

She walked into the stable and sent a backwards glance at Patch, smiling at his hair blown every way by the wind. "Takes care of us," she said. "Cooks for us. And she likes to sing for fun."

"Because you were born from her?" he asked. "Is that the only way to have a mother?"

"Yes. Well, no. Some people are adopted. That means their mother didn't birth them."

Elowyn untacked Quill while Patch climbed up on a stall door. "You know the geese here?" he asked. "They're the same geese that come to my house in the winter."

"That's right. They fly south for the winter. Have you ever seen a pelican?"

"A Bellican?" he repeated.

"No, a pelican. Would you like to go to the beach and see one?"

In their four days in Terradon, the Dravens had yet to venture beyond the bay. Elowyn, Ren, Gabriel, Hollis, and Patch left the city behind and headed towards the Eastern Shore and the ocean, a ten-minute journey on foot from the castle. As soon as the cobblestone road gave way to a sandy path, they all removed their boots. Gabriel challenged Hollis to a race and they were off, Patch darting after them.

The tranquil Oyster Bay seemed like a puddle once they laid eyes on the Terracotta Sea. It seemed to contain everything, all the anger and power and secrets that had ever touched the world. It was a constant, raging motion, bashing itself into the coastline and then lurching backwards to do it again, sucking in the shore and swallowing it. Ren stood on the hard-packed white sand and felt the roar beneath her feet.

"So many living things we don't know about," said Elowyn, staring far out to where the water turned black on the horizon. "So many places."

They stood together, hearing the little boys laugh as Gabriel hit them with sheets of ocean water. Then they ran in and joined them, splashing them. On the sandy bottom, everything was tossed back and forth. Tiny silver fish bobbed side to side. Holes bubbled up and then receded as tiny creatures burrowed into their homes. It was hard to stand. Patch fell and came up soaking wet and then Hollis threw himself down on purpose. An especially large wave doused him all over.

"Hey," he said, spitting out his first taste of saltwater, "is this where salt comes from?"

"Sure is," said Gabriel.

"But how do they get it out?"

Everyone looked at Elowyn. She had to consider that. "They get it from where it dries on rocks, I think. They have big salt rigs in the middle of the ocean."

Elowyn and Patch looked for the pelican she had promised him, but only the seagulls were out today, blending in with the white shore. Elowyn ran straight into the crowd of them and they scattered every which way on their stick legs, squawking but not really afraid. Patch tried it himself. One chased him back halfway up a dune.

When they reluctantly disentangled themselves from the tempting heat and water and sand, they walked back to the city the long way, following the ocean. Hollis and Patch filled their pockets with interesting finds. Elowyn and Gabriel walked a bit ahead, still barefoot on the sidewalk with their hair full of salt and wind. "It's an okay city," Gabriel remarked out of nowhere, looking up through the barred porches of apartments.

"Not what it used to be," said Elowyn.

The came to the top of the road and looked at the spread of city life that lay before them. The stone road with sand in the cracks, colorful cement buildings going up and up connected by clotheslines on which laundry fluttered. Three children chased a ball in front of an oncoming horse. And in every corner camped a refugee.

Elowyn laughed shortly. She shook her head. "It will never be ours again." Her voice had a bitter edge. "The Bellicans will take it from us, or my cousins will rule it forever. But it won't be ours."

Gabriel looked at her. There was still sand on her hands and she was squinting in the sun. Her nose was covered with freckles, her blond hair straggling, damp and curly.

"I think it will," he said.

"What are you two talking about?" Hollis asked.

Elowyn paused until the others rejoined them. "I'll show you the fountain where people throw coins."

"People throw money into a fountain?" asked Ren, looking critical.

They looped around the city square and shopfronts as many times as they could before the city clock chimed seven times and the evening meal was served at the castle. Afterwards, they all went to their separate beds with the bay windows thrown open to the lap of the water and the brilliance of Terradon at night. Each townhouse was a flickering pillar of lamplight. The pubs were noisy and shoppers still flooded in and out of the all-night stores. The Dravens lay awake as long as they could, looking and listening. The only one still thoroughly unimpressed with the city was Ren. She felt she could not breathe the air. 

So nothing of consequence happened in this chapter whatsoever. 

You still here? How? Honestly when I first started posting this I had this freak-out, worried that the new version is not improved, but this is just so pathetically cliched and bad I'm not even worried about that anymore.