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I caught his stare. I exhaled hard. And I turned away to stare out the window.
I didn’t care anymore.
What was done was done.
I’d been denied a phone call to Neri.
I’d been shoved on the first available plane once their doctor had cleared me for travel.
I was here now.
Soaring above Turkey, flying toward a war that I would fight tooth and fucking nail to win. Cem might’ve manipulated officials, bureaucrats, and even the damn prime minister, but he wouldn’t manipulate me.
How many webs did he thread around the world searching for me?
Maybe Emre had been right. Maybe we should’ve kept going to Antarctica.
Perhaps then we’d all be alive.
But I would never have met Neri.
I grunted at the hot strike of agony that always came when I thought about her.
If I hadn’t met her, I would’ve lived a half-life, yet...in some awful screaming part of me, I wished I’d been able to stay strong that night in the Craypot and never kissed her.
She could be with someone else right now.
Someone with a boring name and a boring past.
My chest hurt.
My heart ached.
I could never go back to Australia. I’d been flagged as an overstayer and marked as banished. If I was caught trying to enter, I’d be arrested and imprisoned.
I was banned for life.
So where does that leave us if I somehow survive this?
Glancing back at Roger, who drank from his metal water bottle, I urged, “Let me fly with you back to Dubai. I’ll make my own way from there. You would’ve done your duty in kicking me out of Australia. Why do you care where I go next?”
“I care because I take my job seriously.” He sighed and smiled at a flight attendant who walked down the aisle, glancing at everyone’s seatbelts as we began the final descent. Screwing the lid back on his water bottle, he said, “I’ve grown to like you over the past nine days, Aslan. You’re not a bad bloke. I see how your childhood would’ve been confusing, being raised by the very people who kidnapped you—”
“Not this again. I told you. They did not kidnap me. They saved me.”
“Nevertheless, they smuggled you into a country and then left you—”
“They died. It wasn’t like they chose to abandon me.”
“You’re right. Sorry. Regardless of their relationship with you, I’m sure you loved them. You didn’t know any different.”
My shoulders slouched.
Talking to this man riddled me with frustration.
There were so many arguments.
So many things I wanted to yell.
But it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference.
My thumb ran over my tattoo.
Sharp tears came to my eyes. Neri’s twentieth birthday might be my last memory of her. What I wouldn’t give to go back to that tattoo parlour and run away with her. To never go to dinner. To stay in our apartment where it was safe. To never do something as stupid as thinking we could go out without disaster finding us.
The lines of black ink raised slightly with their final healing now I’d taken the clear bandage off. I traced the lion like it was brail, imprinting the siren’s face into my soul.
I had a piece of Neri with me.
She had the mirroring mark.
That knowledge did its best to comfort me, but there was a splinter in my heart that I couldn’t pull out.
My shell.
The shell she’d given me when she was fourteen was gone.
I’d lost it in the fight.
It was probably driven over by the car that hit me.
I didn’t think losing such a simple thing would hurt me as much as it did, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Couldn’t stop missing it, lying awake in my cell, trapped in a security building somewhere in Brisbane.
I’d thought of it as my good luck charm, but now...that luck was empty.
The familiar darkness full of depression and unhappiness coiled around me. Grief did its best to squeeze me tight, scrambling my focus for what had to happen tonight.
I needed to hide and hide fast.
I needed to disappear and hope to God Cem didn’t take out my disappearance on Neri.
Could I take that chance?
Could I be selfish enough to try?
The plane jerked and roared.
Tyres kissed land with a skip and a hop.
Its wings bowed and shivered, no longer needed in the sky.
I jerked out of my depressing thoughts as the engines snarled in reverse, slowing our race down the runway.
Roger didn’t speak to me as we taxied to the gate.
He stayed quiet while he grabbed his backpack, raised an eyebrow, and waited for me to slip out of our row before following me into the busy terminal.
I didn’t wear handcuffs, but I was shackled to him in so many ways.
He was the only thing keeping me safe now I was home, and my instincts leaped into overdrive.
Waiting in line at border control, I watched him gather all the paperwork on me, preparing to insert me back into Turkey.
