His features soften so much I see the dimple pucker his cheek.
For a moment he’s the Baze that lured me out from under the bed and told me not to cry. The one who made my first paintbrush, taught me how to write my name, and how to crochet my knapsack.
“I love you too, Laithy.”
Then he’s gone.
* * *
Kolden holds the door ajar until we hear the heavy pound of boots, the sound dispersing into a scuffing echo while my heart labors. While that dome inside me creaks and groans, like something’s trying to wrestle free.
He gives me a terse nod and pushes the door open.
I tuck Baze’s parting words inside my chest as we spill out into the quiet courtyard and creep around the inside edge, past blue-stone columns and golden urns. Kolden slips down the short archway that leads to the palace gate, and I hear the heavy grind of it lifting, then scuffing sounds. A baritone grunt.
Another.
A few moments later, he pops his head around the corner and ushers us forward.
I herd everybody down the tunnel, past two unconscious guards lumped against the wall. One by one, men, women, and children step through to the puddled grounds beyond, the shielded bowls of flaming oil giving off just enough light to guide our way.
A child has stopped, hands in the air as he reaches for raindrops tangling with his fingers, making my throat cramp with a swelling ache …
It’s the look offreedom—so pure and rich it could bring me to my knees.
Kolden leads us over the grass and around a hedge, then along a shadowed path that melds into stone steps that snake around the island. A sheer wall of choppy rocks lines our left, and a steep fall to our right meets the heaving sea below. The final sweeping stretch until we reach the ship visible in the distance every time another bolt of lightning cracks across the sky, a single blazing lantern hanging from its mast.
The sign that we’re safe to board.
It’s almost over …
Something warm swells within me as Zane and I take the rear, the rest of the party keeping a brisk pace. Like they can taste the sweetness of their impending freedom on the rising winds.
Another crackle of lightning scribbles across the sky, uncomfortably close, almost like it’s reaching for us. Some of the children scream, a blast of wind battering us so hard it hits with a burst of seaspray ripped off the roiling ocean, salting my lips.
“It’s going to be a rough trip out of the bay!” Zane yells, his cape billowing in his wake. “Good thing Uncle knows the waters so well or we’ll all be shark chow!”
By the light of another lightning strike, I watch his cloak break free from around his neck, then flutter over my head. He slams to a stop and spins, dashing after it.
My heart lurches, as if trying to punch free of my ribs and chase him.
“Zane!”
Fuck.
I hand my wooden sword and knapsack to one of the men ahead of us, then sprint after Zane, the clip in my hair falling victim to another violent gust of wind. “Leave it,” I yell over the howling gale, watching the cloak tumble through the air until it tangles with the corpse of a small, gnarled tree partway up the bank, hanging off its spindly branches. “I’ll get you another.Come on!”
He stops at the base of the bank, looking between me and the cloak before he clambers onto the rain-slicked rocks and begins to climb.
“Shit,” I mutter, glancing back at our group now stretching down the pier’s length, some scaling across the unsteady gangplank.
I come to a stop beneath the tree, the sodden cloak flapping in the wind. “Zane, please. We don’t have time.”
“I’ve almost got it!” he belts out, gripping hold of the tree, leaning forward, trying to bend the branch enough so he can flick his cloak free. He finally manages to snatch it—
The branch snaps.
Zane plummets, screaming.
