Holt takes two quick steps toward Noah, his shoulders rolledback, a look in his eyes like he’s lost all restraint, and he raises his arm, as if he’s about to hit his own son, drive his fist into Noah’s skull. But Noah lifts his chest and steps forward too, willing his father to throw the first punch. Urging him to start a fight that Noah will finish. Because although they are the same height, Noah is undeniably stronger, younger, the muscles in his arms and shoulders flexing in anticipation, itching to end it with his father once and for all.
But Holt must see that he’s outmatched, outweighed, and with a deep, unhealed wound in his ribs, it wouldn’t take much for Noah to knock him to the ground, to end his life before Samuel and his other men had a chance to pull Noah off. Holt taps his front teeth together and makes a sound of irritation from his throat. “I trained you well,” he says, licking his front teeth. “Never back down from a fight.”
Noah doesn’t reply, just stands his ground. And I hate that it’s come to this, hate that he must face his father and be willing to kill him. I hate that I brought him here, and that now he must defend me; I hate that we’re not back at Maybelle’s Hotel, his hands against my skin, breath against my ear, where I should have told him the truth. Should have told him everything, and then he could have decided if he still wanted to bring me here, to see it through.
But Holt clicks his gaze to me—past Noah—as if Noah is no longer an obstacle he’s concerned with. No longer his son.Nothing at all.“Now, little lady…,” he says, calling me the name he spoke at the miners’ camp when he stole Odie, when he thought I was simply the daughter of Pa. “You will get us out of this godforsaken place.” The scar at his throat flutters, voice rattling up from the sick, dying cage of his chest, and he casts his eyes out to the sea. “Tell me where it is?”
I breathe in the rain, feel it dampen my throat. I don’t answer him.
The smirk on his lips disappears. “No more silence,” he barks, a cruelness finding his eyes. “We’re past that now. Tell me where the ship is.”
“I don’t know,” I answer coldly, clenching on the words.
He laughs, a quick sound. But his eyes are dark, darker than the sky, darker than I remember from the schoolhouse. Death is waiting inside him—rotting, sneaky. Not long now. “You’re the Astronomer,” he growls, as if he hates the sound of the word. “You know everything about this place. I bet you even know more than yourArchitecthere.” He no longer calls Noah hisson, no longer looks at him as if they share the same blood. “I bet you’ve kept all your secrets from him, forced him to bring you here, and now you’ll leave him. Quick as anything. As if he means nothing to you.”
The bitter taste of anger expands in my throat.No,I think.No, no, no.And I feel Noah’s eyes flick to me briefly—he doesn’t understand, doesn’t know what Holt’s saying.
But I do.
And my head pounds, tilts, the guilt spiking up behind my eyes.
Holt’s mouth peels up into a triumphant grin—he likes this, likes watching me twitch beneath the weight of his words. “He doesn’t know that you came all this way, and all along you planned to leave him, does he?” His smile only widens, and I know now that August told Holt more than he had time to tell Noah. Holt knows more than I ever wanted to believe. And the knowing makes him dangerous. “She lied to you,” he says, turning to Noah, dead eye winking out of time with the other. Wanting his son to see thathe never should have trusted me. That I will betray him just as he betrayed his own father. “She used you to get here, and then she planned to save herself.”
“That’s not true.” I clench my teeth. And Noah’s eyes swing to me again, looking for answers, looking for me to deny it, but I can’t meet his stare.
I never wanted it to happen like this, never wanted to reach the end, the sea, and feel my heart cracking wide at the thought of leaving Noah behind. I wanted to tell him the truth—myself. But now there’s no time.
“Tell me,” Holt demands now, eyes skipping back to me, an impatient edge to his voice—like he’s grown tired of his own games. “Tell me where the ship is.”
I hold down the breath in my lungs, feel my chest heaving with the pressure, and without meaning to, without thinking, my eyes flick out to the sea.
To the small, rocky island in the distance.
Holt’s gaze follows mine, and a smirk rises from his lips. “Good.” He nods and takes a step closer to me—as if I belonged to him, as if he could snatch me from Noah whenever he wanted. Quick and sharp.
But I press myself against Noah, my heartbeat against his side. Knowing that if I’m pulled from him, it will feel like being pulled from my own body, pulled from my own beating heart.
Holt grins, as if he’s watching a frightened animal skitter away from his grasp, and I hate the feel of his dark, grisly eyes on me, the awful slant of his mouth as he bites down, grinding against his teeth, and nods to one of the men behind us. I don’t even have time toturn, to react, before there are hands on my shoulder, yanking me backward, out of Noah’s grasp.
“Don’t fucking touch her!” Noah shouts, turning in an instant and ripping Samuel’s hands free from me and shoving him back. Samuel staggers a moment, stunned, then reaches for the knife at his waist, dark eyes suddenly leveled on Noah.
“Stop,” Holt commands, flashing Samuel a warning look. Samuel hesitates, anger cutting across his face, before re-sheathing his blade and spitting onto the sand at his feet. Noah steps in front of me, a hand at my waist, ready to fight, his eyes darting to the other men.
“We all want the same thing,” Holt says now, a calmness to his voice I don’t like, and he wheels his gaze back to me. Yet I know what he says isn’t true. He wants to save himself, only himself.But I’m trying to save everyone. A knot binds in my stomach, and I tilt my eyes up, the watery sky shimmering at the edges, along the rim of the atmosphere.
We’re running out of time.
“You’re going to swim out there,” Holt says, blowing out an irritated gust of air, and points a finger out to the island, waves crashing against the shore.
Sparks lick at my vision as I stare through the rain at the rocky island. “I don’t know if it’s out there,” I say truthfully, meeting his eyes, needing him to believe me. “It might have sunk, or washed away with the tide. It’s probably long gone.”
“Bullshit.” Holt lifts his chin, the red puckered skin of the scar on his neck almost looking like an open wound, and I cringe, imagining blood gushing from it, a wide cut stretched ear to ear.He’s unwilling to die.“It’s still out there,” he says, a certainty to his voice, a desperation. It’s something he needs to believe to give meaning to all the awful things he’s done. To bring meaning to his wife’s death, to losing his son to August. “It might be hidden, but it’s still there. I know it.” His gray eye, the same color as the flat, razed skyline, blinks against the wet air. “You’re going to swim out to it, and find it.”
“No,” Noah interrupts, stepping closer to Holt. “She’ll drown.”
One side of Holt’s mouth inches upward into an amused, animal-like grin, and he cranes his head up to the rainy sky. “If she does, then maybe it was fated in the stars.” But his words are scoffing, doubtful. “Isn’t that what you believe?” His eyes fall to me. “That your story has already been foretold?”
I don’t answer him.
