When we’re facing each other, he gets down on one knee.
“Marry me. I know it won’t be legal or anything, but I don’t care about that. We can still pledge ourselves to each other. I want to wait until Mae can be there, but then ... marry me. In an ancient forest or at the top of a mountain. In a rundown shack. Alone or with everyone we know. Just say you’ll be my wife.”
I blink back tears and cup his cheeks, marveling at how many emotions can exist at the same time on this island. It’s brought me into deep valleys, but this is a peak I never knew possible.
“Yes. I will.”
He stands and lifts me into his arms, my feet leaving the wet sand as he spins me. A wolf howls in the distance, and I don’t even have to be able to see into the jungle to know every leaf is gently waving in soft applause.
48
“Commander Ingrid Voss died protecting the soldiers under her command on Island Seven. The island’s air is contaminated, and our men witnessed people dying. We will be maintaining a safe zone perimeter around it.” – excerpt from an electronic message from acting Island Three Commander Chad Portnoy to New America President Soren Whitman
Marcus
It’s bittersweet seeing Nova and Ellison with Sam, the little boy who’s theirs now.
The council voted that the Rising Tide kids would each go to a home, as long as enough people volunteered to take them in. There were more than enough volunteers.
Sam is three, with dark curls and bright-blue eyes. Nova’s been teaching him how to braid cordage. They made a jump rope and Ellison taught him to use it. The other kids line up for turns with it.
They’ve started to intermingle now—the kids who’ve always been in the Dust Walkers camp and the Rising Tide ones. Olin is leaving with us, so new teachers have been joining him for the learning and activities he does with them every day.
Sam is a lucky little boy. Nova and Ellison have more love and wisdom to shower on a kid than anyone I’ve ever known. Ellison and I have known each other for almost seven years. My mom would smile knowing that at age thirty, my closest friend is a forty-seven-year-old woman I don’t have a romantic relationship with.
And Nova. She’s been steadily, constantly beside me for so long that I can’t imagine not getting her thoughts on things. Nova is a woman of few words, but when she does say something, it’s always worth listening to.
Sam looks up at Nova, a smile quirking on his lips. Nova would already take a bullet for the kid. If I have to leave the two people who mean as much to me as Briar does, at least I know they have a loving family.
“Are you ready?” Briar asks me.
I take a deep breath and nod. “Almost. How about you?”
She puts her arms around my waist and presses her cheek to my chest. “I think so. The packing is done and the plans are made. It’s just a matter of making ourselves go now.”
“Are the others ready?”
“Olin’s already on the sub. He said goodbye to the kids and it was hard for him.”
“He knows he can stay if he wants to, right?”
“Yeah. He wants to get back to the ILF. It’s just harder than he thought it would be.”
Ellison and Nova are laughing about something, Ellison smoothing a hand over Sam’s hair.
“I get it,” I say.
“Go talk to Niran. You’ve put it off as long as you can.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
She takes a step back, looking up at me. “Of course you can. That’s all we’re waiting for, and then we can leave.”
“Don’t we still need to change Pax’s mind? I don’t think the two of us in a confined space for that long is going to work out.”
She pinches her brows together, her smile wry. “You can practice diplomacy. Lord knows you need it.”
“Hey, I’m a master diplomat. Thedin my name stands fordiplomacy.”
