“Your boots should be fine. Do you need help with them?”
“I can do it,” I say and crouch down, sliding a small thin pair of stockings on my feet before slipping into the boots. I lace them up quickly and stand, waiting for the next direction.
“You good to walk?” She says, eyeing me suspiciously, as if I’m going to fall over at any second.
“What, are you going to carry me too?” I say, my words dripping with contempt. “I ate, remember? I’m fine to walk.”
She nods. “Alright. If you start to feel dizzy, just let me know.” We cross the room and she bends down to pick up the lantern. “I know this is a lot, but if you just?—”
I don’t stay to hear the rest of her sentence.
I run.
All it took was her looking away for a split second to put into play the plan I had been concocting the entire time I showered, because whether her intentions were pure or not, she made one crucial mistake.
She left the door open.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Shit!”
Sig curses behind me, but I don’t look back. As fast as my weak legs will take me, I sprint through the gap in the door, fueled by sheer willpower. The pattern I spent the last eight days memorizing repeats in my head. I know it forward and backward, and backward is what I need right now.
I follow it, counting the steps and rounding the turns. Sig’s footsteps pound behind me, but I have a few seconds head start. Hopefully, it will be enough.
“Cap!” she shouts, but I don’t let it break my focus.
I keep running.
Ten, eleven, twelve.
The suns blind me as I step through the opening above the stairs, causing me to pause. Green and purple spots cover my vision and I try to blink them away. The sudden brightness is disorienting after being in the dark for days, but I can’t let it stop me.
I lift my hand to block the light just enough to assess where I am and where to go from here. Figures stand around the area, unmoving, and I can feel their eyes on me. The scenery is completely foreign and I quickly try to make sense of it. Everysurface is wooden, as far as I can see. The floor is the same familiar wood I just slept on for days, and the walls, the steps, the rails, are all the same. A large, round pole juts up through the center of the floor, with…sails?
Am I on a ship?
That’s why we could never find them. The Castaways live on a ship, in the middle of the fucking water. We’ve spent all this time searching the land, and they aren’t even on it.
I don’t have time to figure out anything more. Sig is on my heels, and I can’t let her catch me. Sprinting straight for the rails that line the sides of the ship, I glance around for Fin, but he’s nowhere to be seen.
I warned him. I told him I might not be able to take him with me if I escaped, but I would come back for him and bring everyone else with me.
I can’t throw away this opportunity. I need to get off this ship. Now.
Lifting my foot to the top of the rail, I hoist myself up and stand, throwing my arms out to keep my balance as I stare down into the rolling water below. My throat dries as I assess the risk of stepping off. I still can’t swim, and the waves passing by the ship do not care about that at all. I don’t have a choice. The only way to get off a ship is through the water.
Gods, please let me survive this.
Digging the toes of my boots into the rail, I leap into the air, only to be yanked backward sharply as powerful hands wrap around my waist and pull me in the opposite direction.
“Where,” Weston grunts, “the hell do you think you’re going?”
My back slams into his chest as his arms wrap around my middle. He pins me to his body and stumbles backward with the momentum.
“Let me go!” His arms tighten around me as I try to push them away.
“I don’t really feel like jumping in after you again,” he says, grunting from exertion. He fights against me as I kick and scratch at him, but he doesn’t let me budge. Despite being weak and exhausted, I am still holding my own, not making it easy for him to keep me here.
