I lash out, but maybe I hit my head harder than I thought earlier, because my limbs don’t go where I tell them to. It’s more of a weak flail than a blow. The Byrnisian catches my wrists easily and hauls me upright.
The last thing I see as they drag me from the room is the little girl’s eyes, wide and sad.
I expect to panic, but instead something in me goes numb, leaving my head clear and calm as Mirror Lake.
As Whit took me from the antique store, it was like I was hovering outside my body, witnessing everything that happened from some distance. Whit dragging me up the stairs, the awkward negotiation of space as he tried to steer me through the antique shop’s narrow aisles. In a moment of surging spite, I slammed my shoulder into a shelf full of antique dinnerware, sending a cascade of rose-patterned plates and teacups and crystal to the ground in a crash. That earned me a bunch of oozing, stinging cuts on my calves from the scattering porcelain and Whit’s sweaty hand clamped down on the back of my neck. But it made me feel momentarily better.
Now, Whit doesn’t speak as he propels me out the back entrance, past my bike and toward that dingy tan station wagon. No one is around but a cow, watching curiously from the adjacent field. I want to try to yell anyway, but Whit has a jackknife. He holds it open, close to his waist, semi-concealed but ready to strike. He’s visibly nervous, sweaty, his eyes shifting ceaselessly around.
If my hands were free, I could take him, maybe. At least I’d have a chance. But there’s no give to the duct tape. Maybe I could try to bash my head against his, but that sounds like a good way to get stabbed—and then, shitshitshit, he’s opening the trunk, shoving me in. Pain blasts through me as I land hard on my side. I find my voice, scream through the gag, but the lid has already slammed shut and closed me in hot darkness.
Mixed sweat and tears trickle down my face, burning my eyes, as somewhere another door slams and the car vibrates to life. Where is he taking me? He has instructions to kill me, so why didn’t he do it there in the antique shop? Will Marcus, the Heiress, Brekken, Taya—will anyone ever learn what happened to me? And the kid, Sura, in the cellar. Does anyone else know she’s there? Or will I doom her too when I die?
I can’t measure time by the dark and the heat and the rumble of the road. I can tell the car is climbing; I feel the slope of the mountain, the popping in my ears. We must be getting closer to Havenfall; that’s the only place higher up than Haven. Maybe the guy has had an attack of conscience. Maybe he’s taking me home. A slim hope, but I have to take what I can get.
When the trunk opens, though, I don’t see the inn, just blue sky and the tops of mountains and trees. It takes a minute for my eyes to adjust to the light, but when they do and I realize where we are, horror fills me all over again.
The lake. The station wagon is backed up onto the bridge. Whit faces me, an arm’s length away, his knife held up to my throat.
He’s still sweating, some kind of battle going on in his eyes. His gaze keeps flicking between me and the knife. If I could speak, I would beg him to let me go. But I can’t, and if the bad angel wins, I don’t want his face to be the last thing I see.
Instead, I turn my head and look at Havenfall across the water.
All the chaos inside hasn’t touched the place’s beauty. It stands tall, proud, wood and slate and glass gleaming in the summer sun. Too far away to see in the windows, but I hope that inside, peace and safety will eventually return. I visited Marcus this morning and he looked better, his skin seeming to glow with health. He’ll wake up. He’ll get things back up and running, and even if it takes the Silver Prince’s guiding hand in the meantime, that won’t matter as long as everyone is safe.
And I guess this isn’t the worst place to die.
“Goddamnit,” Whit mumbles.
I dare a glance at him. Try to find the humanity in his shaking hands, shifting eyes. It occurs to me, calmly and distantly, that I’ve thought about things the wrong way. The difference between monsters and people—it’s not a divide between Solarians and humans, or anything like that. It’s what we do. And this guy is toeing the line. I widen my eyes, trying to speak to him that way. Trying to keep him on this side of the light, because I have to.
“I can’t do this,” he mutters, and pushes me into the lake.
21
I hit the water face-first, pain, shock, and cold enveloping me in an instant. Panic fills me up, pressing at the inside of my skin as water presses from outside, pushing the air out in a cascade of bubbles tumbling upward, a useless scream. I should have taken a breath before. I didn’t. I twist around and the sunlight spirals around me, growing fainter and fainter.
Don’t let the scary thoughts in, Dad says in my head. I feel small again, automatically trusting the words of anyone who’s bigger than me. Dad, Marcus, the Silver Prince, Mom, Nate.
Nate most of all, Nate who would still be alive if I had been braver.
I’m sorry, I tell him, and water spills into my mouth. His gaze in my head softens. Forgive me.
But then his face dissolves and resolves, the little boy gone and replaced with someone nineteen, gorgeous, scowling. Taya. Something about her has always reminded me of Nate, I realize. The fire they both share. It’s not your fault, dumbass. Nate would want you to live. So live. Fight.
And suddenly there’s something else there under the panic. Rage, blossoming like a mushroom cloud, sending heat down my limbs into my numb fingers and toes. The water erupts into bubbles all around me, suddenly hot like fury spilling out of my skin. A burning feeling races through me, echoing the heat in my lungs as my air runs out, and suddenly the duct tape around my wrists and ankles comes free. Before I even realize it, I’m kicking, tearing the gag out of my mouth. The water around me is churning, swirling like the mouth of a volcano. I’m out of air, and the vacuum of my chest aches, screaming at me to open my mouth and inhale, water be damned. My vision is warped, white lights dancing across my eyes, but I attack the water, following the direction of the bubbles, until my head breaks the surface.
Sunlight and air scald my face, my eyes. I drag the air down, coughing and spitting in my effort to get as much in my lungs as will fit. Above the wild drumbeat of my heart in my ears, I hear the growl of a motor, and I turn around in time to see the station wagon disappear over the crest of the road, gravel spraying in its wake. The sky above, framed by treetops and ice-capped mountains, has never looked so blue or so beautiful.
I tread water for a minute to make sure he’s gone, and then swim for shore, my teeth chattering as the remnants of terror and adrenaline work their way through me. I crawl up the gravel slope, under the bridge where no one will see me, and pull my legs to my chest, trying to breathe, trying to think. The lake and the woods are calm and quiet, ill suited to the storm of fear and rage and confusion rampaging inside me.
The Solarian girl. The Byrnisian man. Whit, shoving me off the bridge like a sack of unwanted kittens. The knowledge that if I were underwater for a minute longer, I would have passed out, I would be dead.
My arms still smart from whatever happened in the water. I push my remaining sleeve up and look down at my skin, expecting to see redness and burns. But instead it’s pale, covered in goose bumps, unharmed except for a blossoming bruise around my wrists from pulling against the tape. The tape itself is gone. My phone is gone, somewhere at the bottom of the lake probably. But something else presses into my bicep from underneath the rolled-up sleeve. I reach in and extract it.