“Guess that’s how you got past my guard,” I muse while she reaches in and around the corner, pulls out two blazing lanterns, and thrusts one in my direction.
My gaze bounces between it and the heavy intention in her powder blue eyes, realization slamming into me. “No.Hellno. I am not going down there,” I whisper-yell.
Even if I kind of want to.
She gives me a wide, toothless grin, then tosses my cupla down the tunnel. I gasp, lunging forward, listening to it tink, wincing a little with every shrill bounce. “I can’t believe you just did that.” She waves her hand at the darkness, and I chew my bottom lip, looking between her, the lantern, the shadowed hollow. “Fine,” I snip, tucking my blade into the back of my pants. “But only if you go first.”
She flashes me another wide, toothless grin before stepping into the gloom.
Checking over my shoulder, I flip my hood and follow.
* * *
Ilocate my cupla partway down the coiled stairwell, brushing it off and checking it for damage before clipping it around my wrist. Hattie continues, and I waver, glancing back up the stairs …
Fuck it. Might as well keep going.
I charge after Hattie.
The stairwell smoothes into a tunnel that seems to go on and on, finally ending at a wooden door Hattie pushes open. A burst of fresh air batters my face, and I pull a deep breath, struck with a cacophony of sounds within the midnight jungle: chirping crickets, the whisper of leaves brushing against each other, the distant boom of thunder. I step out, drawing on the rich smell of damp underbrush, digging my toes into the soil as a cool wash of calm bathes my insides.
Hattie’s hair trails her like braided moonlight, and I dash forward to catch up, following her down a shadowed track littered with fallen branches and shards of blue stone. Inquisitive stares nip at my skin, casting it in prickly paths that make my heart race.
Irilak.
Three lithe shadows stalk the edge of our glow, and a clicking presence darts behind me. I whip my head around in time to see a baby one flicker close to my lantern light, then burst back, like it’s playing some sort of game.
I smile, wondering …hopingit’s the pack from the village we passed through.
Their presence falls away as we push free of the jungle onto a wide, flat clifftop that drops into the ocean.
Soft grass cradles my bare feet, the wind punching my hood back, and a beam of moonlight pours through the split clouds, highlighting the lone tree perched on the cliff’s edge—an aged knot of gnarled wood with a spindly reach.
A lone sentry to the view far below.
Thousands of glowing jellyfish litter the heaving ocean—a living, breathing night sky turned upside-down, smudged only by the mound of a small island in the distance.
“It’s beautiful,” I whisper, stepping toward the tree, my words snatched by the wind like a stolen secret. Peering over my shoulder, I see Hattie watching me from her flickering web of light. “Do you come here often?”
Her soft smile doesn’t match the teary glaze of her eyes when she offers me a nod, her disfigured hand pressing against her chest.
“It … helps your heart?”
Another nod, and my throat aches, eyes sweeping shut as I breathe deep …
She’s sharing her special place with me.
Perhaps she can see I’m hurting, too.
I open my eyes, about to thank her for her gift, but she’s already edging back up the trail.
Instead, I whisper it to the wind.
Placing my lantern on the ground, I study the tree, then grip a sturdy branch and pull myself up. Settling on it, I lean against the trunk, taking in the ever-moving constellation of life below.
They look so free down there, floating around without a care in the world.
Jealousy bursts in my chest.
