I skim my gaze back to the sea, wishing there was another way.
Noah’s eyes darken, water on his lashes. “Vega,” he says, nodding behind me.
I hesitate, unsure what he’s trying to say with his half-lidded eyes, a crease forming between his brows, but then I turn, and through the heavy fog and gray clouds, a man is moving up the shoreline.
A shadow through the misting rain.
I blink, certain it’s only a trick of the dull light. But then two more figures appear. A third, a fourth, coming into view, encircling us.
They already made it over the mountains to the beach.
Holt and his men have found us.
Fear is like a rope around my ribs. Cinching tight.
“I was beginning to wonder if you two died in those mountains,”Holt says, striding toward me, hands hooked at his belt, gaze leveled in the damp wind.
I watch as four other men encircle us—including Samuel, greasy hair and twitching fingers and a wad of tobacco in his lip. Beside me, Noah’s shoulders draw back, and I know he’s calculating how many of them he could hold off if he had to, perhaps one or two before they overpowered him. It might be enough for me to get away, but I won’t leave him.
I shoot him a look and shake my head only a fraction of an inch.Don’t do it,I say with my eyes.
“But now here we all are,” Holt muses, a pleased, buoyant quality to his voice. “The Astronomer, and”—his mismatched eyes cut to Noah—“and my own disloyal son, who tried to kill me… more than once.” For a moment, Holt looks like he’s going to move toward Noah, wrap his hands around Noah’s throat, and end it quick. Be done with it. But then his eyes swivel toward the sea. “I’ve waited a long time to see this place.” He pauses, then flashes Noah a look over his shoulder, his gray, clouded eye wincing—beneath his shirt is surely a bandage and a deep wound where Noah’s knife cut into his torso. He’s still alive, but he’s in pain, and I wonder if he’s been taking the pills he stole from my coat. “August never told me how to get here—he didn’t trust me enough.”
I sense Noah wanting to speak, say some sharp-tongued thing, but he resists. Still, I can feel the tension tightening in the damp air, closing around us, and I worry what will happen next—Holt and Noah, all the betrayal and blood spilled between them, and now they’re standing only a few feet apart.
“I understand why you did it,” Holt says now, jaw pushed outtoo far as if it’s on a lever, made of wood and wires, instead of bone. He moves toward Noah and reaches out like he’s going to touch Noah’s face—a father wanting to feel his son after all these years—but Noah shoves his hand away, little pulses erupting at his temples. I can see the fury inside Noah, coiled tight; he wants to lunge at Holt. But still, he holds his ground. “I know August has turned you against me,” Holt continues, shaking his head, tapping his teeth together. As if it were so simple.
I try to imagine Holt as a father, caring for a young son. Tenderness and reading bedtime stories. I try to see Noah in Holt’s face. In his eyes. But he’s not there—no part of him remains in his father’s features. Maybe Noah looks more like his mother. Yet there is fury in both of them. Anger and revenge. A duty, a loyalty to what they believe in, a fight they will see to the end, no matter what. Even if it kills them both.
Noah’s stare cuts into Holt, his hands fisting at his sides. “I left you because I hated what you’d become, not because of August.” His shoulders tense. “I left on my own.”
For a second, Holt actually looks confused, hurt, an ache in his eyes, but then his features harden again. “Your mother died of the sickness.”
“I know,” Noah answers swiftly, as if he doesn’t like being reminded of her death. I want to touch his hand, comfort him, but I don’t dare move. Afraid to draw attention to myself, afraid that they’ll force us apart.
“Then help me,” Holt replies, both of his eyebrows raised, rain streaming over his perfectly combed hair, down the hollow shape of his jaw. “I’m dying just like her, like so many others,” he admits, andhe rolls his neck to the side, as if he’s holding back the pain of the sickness working through his joints, and the pain of the deep gash at his side. “But we can leave this place.”
I look to Noah, unsure what he’s thinking. What thoughts are crashing through his mind. I know this must be painful for him, hearing his father say these things, cracking open old wounds he thought he’d left behind. All of it being torn wide. And another part of me wonders,worries, that Noah might feel some old loyalty, looking into the eyes of his father, hearing his words. Maybe he will agree, he will see that his father might be right, and turn against me.
But Noah glares back at his father. “I won’t help you,” he spits, the muscles along his neck tensing, a look of disbelief in his eyes. “I’ll never be what you wanted me to be—I was loyal to you for too long. I hurt people because of you, because you asked me to. But I knew it was wrong even then.” He meets his father’s eyes. “You tried to turn me into something I wasn’t, a monster like you. But now”—Noah’s hands flex, and I can feel the anger rising from his skin, see the torment in his shadowed eyes—“I know what you really are.” His mouth curls in disgust. “And I was always stronger than you. Even when you thought I was weak.” He exhales but doesn’t blink, doesn’t flinch his eyes away. “And I’ll kill you eventually.”
Holt takes a swift step toward Noah. “Youwereweak. It’s why you left. And now…” He cuts his eyes over to me. “You’re protectingher, over your own family.”
Holt makes a sudden move toward me, but Noah jerks in front of him, blocking him before his hands can claw into me. “Don’t touch her!”
The look in Holt’s eyes changes, turns almost feral, and I thinkhe finally understands how deep his son’s betrayal goes. That there is nothing he can say to convince him, to bring him back—Noah will protectmeuntil the very end. His loyalty to his father is long gone, broken like glass dropped into a fire. Not even a flicker remains.
Holt curls his upper lip and cracks his neck to the side, taking a step back away from me, toward the sea, then pivoting back to face us. “You could have led the Theorists, you could have been something, something powerful.” His mouth puckers down in disappointment, a son with so much potential wasted, and his eyes flash to Noah’s forearm, like he’s imagining the starburst brand that’s hidden there. The mark of a Theorist. “But instead you chose her.” His mouth twitches, and he touches his lower ribs—the place where Noah shoved his blade into his flesh—air gusting from his nostrils.
Noah reaches out, hand finding mine, and he pulls me closer to him. As if to show where his devotion now lies. That he will risk death, his father’s own blade, to keep me safe.
“You never were good at following orders,” Holt says now, a snarl puckering his upper lip. “Too defiant, like your mother.”
“It’s not defiance,” Noah barks. “I just wasn’t a murderer like you.”
Holt laughs, baring his broken teeth. “No, but you’d try to kill your own father. Twice.”
Rain begins to fall heavier, spitting from the sky, and I can feel the change in Noah’s shoulder against mine, the tension coiled down every muscle—if Holt even tries to come toward me, Noah will stop him. He’ll fight back… until they kill him. “And I’d do it again,” Noah says with such grit in his voice that a chill runs down my spine.
