There was no reason for Rohan to be thinking of Savannah now. None. What was done was done, and in all likelihood, Savannah Grayson would never know just how well he’d played the hero. Rohan was certainly never going to tell her.
“Just out of curiosity…” Rohan cast his focus outward, raking his gaze up and down the man opposite him, over burn scars, white with age, on Toby’s chest. “Whatdoyou intend to do when the door opens, Mr. Hawthorne?Ifit opens.”
“It’s hardly likely to be me.”Toby turned away from Rohan and toward the wall of blades. “That’s the exact phrase your duchess used when I asked her to save my daughters. She indicated that only one of them needed saving, and then she said,If you’re looking for a savior, it’s hardly likely to be me.That phrase—it’s something my mother said to me once. I broke out of a room just like the one we woke up in, a replica she musthave built at some point. I assumed the maze chamber was my father’s doing, and my mother played along with that assumption and said,It’s hardly likely to have been mine.”
“Not an exact match,” Rohan commented.
“Because the duchess indeed will not be the one to save either of my daughters. However…”
“You think it was a message from your mother?” Rohan considered that.
“I think that my mother expectsoneof my daughters to make it through this,” Toby said roughly, “and that she knows for a fact that I would die for either of them. I think my mother knows me well enough to know that if this door opens, I’ll run—but not to safety. Eventually our path out of this hellhole will fork, Rohan, and you and I will part ways, because if there’s any way for me to run toward what matters instead of away, I’ll take it.” Toby’s eyes closed, just for a moment. “No matter the cost.”
Rohan thought about Katalin Aquila Reyes telling Toby that his Hannah was dust on the wind.
He really means that—no matter the cost.Rohan shouldn’t have cared that Toby Hawthorne was in the state of mind to bargain with Death himself, and Rohan certainly shouldn’t have taken a step toward Toby to press the metal quill, the closest thing to a weapon Rohan had, into Toby’s hand, arming him the only way he could.
“In case you run into resistance,” Rohan said nonchalantly, “heading into the fray.”
Toby clapped a hand around Rohan’s forearm and held it. Just…held itfor the longest time, like Rohan was the one dangling over the edge of the cliff and Toby would not let him go.
“The world and the whole damn sky,” Toby said.
And then without warning or preamble, the entire wall of blades swung outward.
When the doors open, run.
Toby dropped Rohan’s arm, and Rohan ran. Chamber after chamber, door after open door, Rohandid nothesitate, not even for a second, noteven when the last chamber let out into a small cavern off which there were two natural tunnels.
Rohan went left. Behind him, Toby went right, and less than a minute later, when the first explosion sounded from the depths, like the distant rumble of thunder, Rohan didn’t let himself think about what that meant for Toby Hawthorne.
And then there was another explosion. And a third. And then…
A chain reaction. Like dominoes falling one after another.It wouldn’t be long now. Alone in the world, Rohan ran full blast into darkness, toward life, as stone began to audibly crack all around him.
As the world began to crumble.
Chapter 92
GIGI
Being woken up by a phone call in the dead of the night was very rarely a good thing. With Savannah still asleep beside her, Gigi braced herself as she answered. “What happened?”
“You need to turn on the news,” Knox said softly. Knox Landry was not soft. He wasn’t gentle.
“The news?” Gigi barely managed to form the words. “What is this, nineteen eighty-seven? What do you meanturn on the news?” There was bad, and then there was…bad.
Really bad.
Turn-on-the-newsbad.
Gigi’s chest tried its best to strangle her heart, but she persevered. “Just say it, Knox. Whatever it is, just say it.”
Knox’s next breath was audible. “I can’t.”
The story was everywhere. The footage was everywhere—on television, online. They were calling it a natural disaster.
Cliffs collapsing.
