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Water is not my friend.
Water killed Rory.
What if the wind gusts and the bridge upturns... with me on it?
“We don’t have all day.” Fox clicks his fingers before my face. “Let’s go.”
“Let me go,” Rory rasps, smacking Cloud’s tattooed hand gripping her throat.
Her body hangs at an odd angle, her legs flailing against the airship’s hull. When we went overboard, he grabbed anything to stop us from falling. His other hand latched around my wrist, my dead weight almost yanking my arm from my socket. Black feathered wings beat frantically behind him, blocking the sky and gusting wind against our faces.
“No!” My shriek becomes a wail. “Not her! Me!”
“You know it should be me,” Rory hisses, taunting him. “Kill me.”
We’re both about to die, dangling hundreds of feet over a lake, and she refuses to look at me.
Dread unfurls in my stomach. I know what this means.
No personal connections, she always taught me. Emotions cloud judgment. Avoid forming personal attachments that could compromise your mission.
She’s distancing herself.
I see it. Cloud sees it.
The force of our weight mottles his face. Veins bulge in his temples. Dark, curly hair flicks in his eyes, but it can’t hide his fear of the inevitable—one more breath and he will slip.
“Maybe we’ll land in the water,” I shout at Rory, tears streaming down my face. At least we’ll fall together.
The hopeless look in Cloud’s eyes tells me everything. Even if we survive the impact, something lurks in the depths of this lake, something horrifying no one wants to face. If we fall, we die.
Rory suffered too much. I would never have survived Nero’s deadly games without her. Would never have grown into the warrior I am. When no one else could, she sacrificed everything to help me escape.
Desperate whimpers erupt from my lips. I try to pry Cloud’s fingers from my wrists, to kick against the ship’s hull, but Rory sees what I’m doing.
“If you hate me, then kill me!” Her voice is a choking gurgle, her throat collapsing under his desperate grip.
He roars his anguish in her face. It’s so powerful, so deep-seated with rage that it vibrates the air. But he doesn’t let go. His black feathered wings continued to flap. He continues to hold us both, paralyzed by indecision.
The airship jerks to the side as it’s boarded. Cloud’s grip slips. I drop an inch. My scream dies in my throat when hetightens, catching me again. My socket pops, blinding me with pain.
Warning shouts from the deck behind him—the metallic click of mechanical guns. Nero is here. To take us back. To make us pay for our betrayal. How dare we escape him? How dare I fail and cause so much death.
Cloud’s mistake is looking over his shoulder. He should have been watching the woman he held by the throat. She grips his forearms and hoists herself with the same impossible strength a mother summons to protect her child. The action yanks him down. His head lowers for her to whisper something in his ear. Their gazes clash. His flares wide, lips part, and then she plunges her dagger into his tattooed hand.
Agony crumples his face as she falls, dark hair streaming like ribbons. But she doesn’t flail. She doesn’t scream. She holds his gaze until the deep-blue water swallows her whole and my heart is ripped to shreds.
She didn’t look at me.
I am nothing.
I am jerked from my nightmare when Fox tosses me over his shoulder and walks toward the rickety bridge.
Chapter
Seventeen
WILLOW
