“Thanks for reminding me.”
My breath catches and my chest swells. This is it. This is how I can get back to Dane. Getting the Castaways to trust me is just the beginning, but if I can do it, the next step in my plan can unfold. If Weston can trust me to come back, I can convince him to let me leave. I can convince him I am going to steal the dust, but instead, come back for Fin with Dane in tow. Sig is right. I am the best way to get close to Dane, but there is a huge flaw in Sig’s plan.
They don’t know the dust is almost gone.
Even if they get ahold of it, there isn’t enough to get all the Castaways off the island unless Dane has figured out how to replenish it since I’ve been gone. By the sound of the conversation between him and Storm, though, replenishing it isn’t his focus. His focus is on finding me.
I can use this.
Weston might be convinced to send me if I let slip that the dust is running out, and he might be willing to send me sooner.Not to mention that telling them this crucial information will give me more reliability, letting them trust I’m on their side. If I play this correctly, they’ll never know I heard this argument, and it will feel like their idea all along.
By the time they realize I have been lying to them the whole time, it will be too late.
I’ll be back where I belong.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The days until my next shift are long and slow. Since that night together, it has been easier to spend time with the girls, either on deck or in the lounge, in the evenings. Weston never brings the shifts up to me again, and after his reaction to our return, part of me is waiting for him to take back his permission for me to leave.
But it never comes.
Instead, I wake up the morning of the shift to my dagger waiting for me on the bedside table, and complete avoidance for the rest of the day.
Dusk is falling when I head to Sig’s room to see if she’s ready to leave. She wasn’t at dinner tonight with the rest of us, I assume to get some extra rest before we are out all night. I knock a few times and wait, sliding closer to her door as a few of the Castaways trudge down the hall from the crew’s quarters, carrying a big crate between them with a smile on their faces.
There’s shuffling from behind the door before it opens wide, and I pull back, shocked to be looking up into Jorn’s smiling face.
“Ready for your shift?” he says.
“Uh, yeah?” I answer, confused why I’m answering him and not Sig.
“Have a good one,” he says as he slips out the door and past me, heading toward the stairs.
I peer inside the doorway to find Sig, tucking her shirt into her pants, and raise my eyebrow at her.
“What’s that look for?” she says as she reaches for her belt and wraps it around her waist.
I shrug one shoulder. “Nothing, nothing. Just…observing,” I say innocently.
It never occurred to me that any of the Castaways weretogether, but by the look of Jorn’s smile and Sig’s state of undress, I am rethinking that assumption. Maybe they weren’t actually together. Maybe it is just what happens after being stuck here so long, but either way, it’s definitely different from the situation back at camp.
She stands and strides toward me, grabbing her sword and sliding it into the scabbard on her belt.
“Let’s go,” she says as she brushes past me. I hide a smirk before turning on my heel and following her up the steps.
The torches are already lit on deck, the sky now fallen dark as Stassia and Auralie wait for us at the gangway. They stroll down it as Sig and I cross the deck, and my skin tingles with the weight of eyes following me. Glancing over my shoulder toward the quarterdeck, I find Weston, arms crossed and jaw clenched, as he watches me leave. Fin bounces around his legs, talking animatedly until he sees me and runs up to the railing.
“Bye Lennox! See you in the morning!” He stands on his toes and waves wildly at me, and I wave back with a smile.
My eyes flicker back to Weston’s, waiting for him to comment or challenge me leaving like the last shift, but he doesn’t move, doesn’t say a word, and I can’t read the emotion behind his stern face.
His emotions are not my problem tonight.
I turn my back and amble down the gangway, but I can still feel him watching me the entire way to the portal.
Sig’s comments must have gotten to him, but truthfully, I don’t care what made him let me leave without creating a fuss. I need to get off the ship and feel like I am doing something productive again, not wasting away scrubbing the deck and letting time pass for eternity. Besides, tonight is the night to enact the second part of my plan and find the right time to tell Sig about the dust.
The tunnels drop us out in the canyon near the end of the river, the stone bridge Dane walked me across on my first day off just ahead of us. Goosebumps cover my arms as I scan the water, remembering the monsters up the river that wanted to make me a meal, but when I ask, Sig assures me they don’t come down this far.
