The ancient thing splinters, groaning, then tips like a felled giant, quaking the ground as it assaults the jungle floor and rips a luminous hole in the shadows.
I fall to my knees, heaving breath, trying to keep my itching skin from splitting. I tilt my head, looking through the gapped canopy, studying the smattering of stars like a hunter stalks its prey.
They want me to bend.
To break.
Well, I want them to blink out until there’s nothing up there but a sea of suffocating blackness.
“I won’t do it,” I say on a low, maniacal laugh. “I’d sooner watch the world burn.”
No response.
They’ll regret their silence soon enough, taken from someone who knows. Regret is a poison I’m forced to drink daily, but not for the right reasons. Not because I hid Orlaith from herself—I could never regret that. And if she knew why, her anger would sputter into understanding, but then I’d lose her in a heartbeat.
Forever.
I know her too well to tempt her with the truth. To admit that we’re a disaster in slow motion. Existing on a fault line destined to split.
No ...
What I regret is letting her believe she doesn’t hold my cold, crippled heart in the palm of her hand. Because she does.
She always will.
Ithread between the pedestrians walking the esplanade, my cap pulled down low enough to cover my eyes.
The shadowed dents beneath them.
I frown, thinking of how I slept all day, only to wake feeling more tired than I was when I crawled into bed at dawn.
My thoughts turn to Kolden’s absence; my disappointment at finding a stand-in guard when I peeked out the door, putting a stop to any midnight tunnel digging without drawing suspicion. But with one plan thwarted, I’d quickly made another: to sneak out once my evening meal had been cleared away. A meal I rarely indulge in due to my lack of desire to be poisoned to death.
With feet planted on the Bulbs and Botany welcome mat, I retrieve a big, soft parcel from my knapsack. Zane’s cloak—wrapped in a piece of sparkly gold material taken from the underskirt of one of my gowns I’ll probably never wear, complete with a curtain-string bow and a note tucked into one of the breast pockets:
I rap my knuckles against the door, then dart down the esplanade that weaves around the shore, shops and people growing more sparse the closer I get to Gael’s shorefront community.
The street ends at a pair of ornate gates, a stern-looking security guard standing sentinel in the light from the lantern hanging at the entrance.
Whistling a tune, I nod in his direction, push my hands into my pockets, and turn to walk the perimeter, scoping the seemingly insurmountable wall beneath the curve of my hat. The well-lit path veers to the right, and I see a tree that’s woven up the side of the wall like a parasite.
That’ll do.
Glancing over my shoulder to check I’m alone, I swing myself up, teeth gritted when the rough bark bites into my blistered fingertips. Pulling myself onto the ledge, I drink in a blow of sea breeze, then crouch amongst the foliage to peer down at the ornamental houses and quiet streets. Such a contrast to the bustle of town.
Some of the houses are brightly lit from within—a sure sign that people are home for the evening, and I realize with a twinge of trepidation that I could easily be seen.
Clusters of trees hug the wall’s interior, branches sweeping the top, offering me some protection from the flickering lantern lights dotted at regular intervals. I scurry toward the first, pausing amongst the leaves, heart hammering as I hug a branch and spot the familiar glass and stone façade of Gael’s home not too far ahead.
I take a deep breath and peel from my cover, slinking into a shadow between lanterns, then another, and another. Looking down onto their manicured backyard, I see a bloom-speckled lattice bolted to the wall, excitement zapping through my veins in hot bursts.
Almost there.
With a final scan of the quiet streets, I dart into the lantern light, drop to my knees, and clamber down the lattice, leaping onto a thick, spongy bed of well-tailored grass, its blunt tips shoving between my toes as I dash behind a bush.
I scan the vast windows of the opulent home. Remember Gael telling me her room is on the top floor—four stories up.
I see with relief that it’s the only one brightly lit.
