“You believe your ancestors knew this day would come.” Rage curls his upper lip, and the wind blows water up from the sea, pelting our faces.
Noah’s chest rises stiffly, and I know he doesn’t understand what his father is saying. I know he’s starting to see that I have kept things from him, more than I want to admit. Even to myself.
“But your ancestors could have left this place long ago,” Holt says, running his tongue along his broken teeth. “But instead they stayed and let us all suffer. Let us die.”
“They didn’t have a choice,” I sputter, feeling like I’m choking on my own words. I flick my eyes to the sea, the horizon marred by clouds, broken by shafts of strange light—the shadow above us churning against the atmosphere. The anomaly has grown, gotten closer, and it makes the air buzz strangely, my ears ringing even louder.
“They always had a choice,” Holt answers, dragging a palm down the side of his slick hair where the wind has stirred it loose. “They waited a hundred years… for nothing.”
“They sacrificed themselves so we could live,” I say, a rattle in my throat.
Holt shifts forward, licking his lips, like he’s struggling to keep the fury from boiling up inside him. To maintain control. “They sacrificed all of us,” he counters, each word blunt, jaw stuck out. “They made the choice for us. Only the Astronomer could navigate the stars, and only the Architect knew where the ship was hidden.” His eyes vibrate. “They kept it secret, while the rest of us died.”
I keep my mouth shut, anger burning behind my eyes.He’s wrong,I think.Wrong about all of it.But we’re wasting too much time. Again, I feel Noah’s eyes scrape over to me, too many questions in his stare. The missing pieces, the things he still doesn’t understand.
Holt points a finger at his gray, dead eye, and it blinks as if of its own command. “I won’t die here,” he says, repeating what he told me at the schoolhouse. “We’ve waited a hundred years, and I’m leaving this place—for good.” He touches his ribs, pain briefly cut into his face, before he lowers his hand. “You will swim out to that island and find the ship.”
My pulse rises in my throat, erratic, and I glance through the rain to the island—a watery outline, the sea still thundering against the shore—and I try to imagine swimming through the tossing waves, my lungs burning, seawater spilling down my throat. I imagine the feel of the cold water pulling me down,down, into the deep, until—
“I’ll do it—” another voice says. My heart stops, eyes slipping to Noah. “I’ll swim to the island.”
For a moment, Holt goes silent, jaw cleaving left and then right, staring at Noah like he’s trying to decide who he’d rather see drown—who he’d rather watch die. His traitor son or me. But I already know the answer. And after a long, cruel pause, he shakes his head. “No. Only she can do it.” He steps even closer, peering past Noah, right into my eyes. “Only the Astronomer will know what to do.” He tilts his head, patience gone. “You’re going to swim out to that island and find the ship,” he says tightly. “Now.”
I open my mouth to speak, to tell him again that I don’t think there’s anything out there—that the ship is surely long gone—but Holt snaps a hand out and grabs my arm. Squeezing. In an instant, Noah lunges forward, trying to push Holt back, to protect me, but at the same moment, two of the other men are on him, yanking Noah away. Samuel forces Noah’s arms behind his back, twisting, causing a sharp wince of pain to tighten across Noah’s face.
“No!” I cry out. “Stop!”
Holt calmly brushes his damp hair back from his face, then pinches his fingers around my forearm, digging into my flesh. “You’ve made this harder on yourself than it needs to be.” He gives a quick nod to the two men holding Noah, and Samuel pulls a knife from his belt, pressing it to Noah’s throat. A flicker of satisfaction catches in Samuel’s eyes—he’s wanted to do this since the moment Noah shoved him away from me, and now the glint of the blade digs into Noah’s flesh.
“Please, don’t!” I yell, trying to move toward him, but Holt only hardens his grip on me. My jaw aches, pulsing in my skull, and above us, the sky is heavy with moisture, a weight that I can feel pressing down.
But Noah’s eyes find mine, the green in them suddenly like stone, like they’re made of the dark sand beneath our feet, and he’s pleading with me not to fight.To stay put.
“You will swim out there—” Holt demands, pointing at the choppy, thunderous sea. Waves pounding against the shore. “Or I’ll kill him.” His eyes break over to Noah, mashing his teeth together. “And if you think I won’t kill my own son, you’ll find out how wrong you are.”
A swirling, sickening dread tears through my entire body, twisting around my chest.
“No,” Noah replies, tugging against the two men, but the blade is only pressed tighter to his throat, turning the skin red, nearly slicing through. He doesn’t want me going into the sea, risking my life for him, when the tide will surely kill me.
“I guess we’ll find out if she’s a strong swimmer,” Holt says, glancing in Noah’s direction, then back to me. “I’ll send one of my men with you, to make sure you don’t try to leave on the ship on your own—although I suspect you won’t leave your Architect to die. And if you drown while swimming out there, I’ll kill him. If the man I send to the island with you ends up dead for any reason, I’ll kill him. If anything happens other than you finding the ship, I’ll kill your Architect. Understand?”
Noah shakes his head, eyes pleading with me. “You can’t swim out there,” he says, voice stifled by the pressure of the blade at his throat.
Tears gather in my eyes. The pain in my chest, in my crackling ears, is like a thousand bricks, and I don’t know what to do.
But Noah yanks an arm free from Samuel, swiveling around,and lands a blow against his face. Samuel stumbles back, holding a hand over his bleeding nose, spitting the wad of tobacco to the ground, while the other man tries to grab Noah’s arm. Noah ducks, his knuckles colliding with the man’s ribs, then another blow to his jaw. The man drops to the ground, gasping. But the two others who had been standing closest to me dart forward, grabbing Noah around the neck and dragging him backward, forcing him into a headlock. Samuel swipes at the blood dripping down his face, then retrieves the knife where it had fallen to the sand, holding it to Noah’s throat so tightly, I’m sure it’s going to puncture his skin and bleed him out right here. “You done?” Samuel asks.
And Noah stops struggling.
His eyes pinned on me.
Tears streak down my cheeks, and I step away from Holt, slowly, and for some reason he allows me to go. Maybe he knows I’m not a threat, knows there’s nothing I can do. My heart is thudding in time with my breathing, and I move toward Noah—I know I can’t fend off these men, I know I’m not strong enough to fight any of them. But gently I touch the shoulder of the man who’s standing in front of Noah. He flinches, spins around like he’s ready to fight, then lowers his arm. I just need to reach Noah, touch him, make him understand. Because I know now, Holt has taken away any choice I thought I had.
I step closer to Noah, and the men let me. Even Holt doesn’t speak, doesn’t try to stop me—they sense something in my eyes, a calm settled over my entire body, a strange, sparkly quality in the salt air. I move slowly, as if I’m already swimming in the sea.
“Noah,” I say quietly. His eyes are wild, and a single trail ofblood drips down his throat where the blade has begun to dig into the skin. His chest is rising rapidly with each breath, his heart a battering ram against his ribs. “I’ll be okay,” I say. I reach forward and touch my hand to his chest, over his heart. Samuel and the other men have fallen still; even Holt is quiet, watching me.
“You can’t go out there,” he chokes. “You’ll drown.”
