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The ball is open. And he’s pointing a gun at my head.

CHAPTER 3

The Man from the Sky

Looking down the barrel of his gleaming gun, it feels very real to me that these could be my last moments alive.

He knows how to kill someone.

Of course he does. He’s a soldier.

And I’m a moron.

“I saved you,” I say, carefully. “I mean you no harm. I’m speaking Rhavnan to you.”

He doesn’t answer me. Just continues watching me, his finger on the trigger of his gun.

I take a risk.

Steadily – very, very steadily – I pull myself up onto my knees, my palms out wide.

He flinches, as if I’ve surprised him, and for an awful second I’m certain he’s going to shoot. Can picture it. My ending. The suddenness of it. The blood.

Old Mother and Eric would never know what happened to me.

But he doesn’t.

So, with my arms still out, I stand all the way up.

It feels like an age goes by before he says, simply, “You’re Rhavnan.” His voice is low. Faintly husky.

Finally.

“I’ve been trying to tell you.”

He lowers the gun. But not by much.

“How are you Rhavnan?”

“My father is Rhavnan. My mother is Hevallan⁠—”

“How are you of Rhavnan blood, and here?” He gestures with his gun to the sweeping beach, the gold and brown debris from the ship, the dark, weathered cliffs. “In this place? Not a hostage? Free?”

It’s a question I’ve often asked myself.

I don’t know how much I should tell him. But I also want him to trust me.

I offer him what I can.

“I was a hostage. But an exchange was made. My mother thought a Hevallan village would be safer for me and my brother than the—” I cut myself off. Don’t tell him everything. “—Than Rhavna.”

His eyebrows furrow. I wonder what he’s thinking.

But then his expression settles into a cool composure. As if there are no thoughts in his head at all.

“That all explains how you are here. But not how you are alive.”

I shrug. “I’m just a nobody. I’m not in their interest to kill.”