Flynn settles in to row, leaving me free to cover our retreat if necessary. I touch his shoulder to get his attention, since he can’t see my face. “The shuttle’s pointed north, and we’re about half an hour west of the island. Can you find it again in the dark?”
“I can navigate Avon with my eyes closed.” I can hear the smile in his voice. The same arrogance that used to drive me up the wall is now making my own lips twitch. We have a plan, a destination; we’ve got hope.
“Good. Maybe we can lose them in the fog. But if not…”
Flynn reaches up to squeeze my hand. “If not, we just have to hope we find our proof before our people find us.”
There are engines echoing through the swamp, and distant lights, and the splashing of poles and oars—in the dark, without any reference points, it feels like both armies have us surrounded. I let Flynn guide us, trusting his almost supernatural ability to navigate without stars, without compass, without anything except the bond he shares with Avon. His adjustments to our course are quick and sure.
We slip through the reeds in tense silence, waiting. Watching. I keep my hand on my gun, always. Now and then I think I see the wisp, a dim flicker of light out of the corner of my eye, always dancing out of reach, but I can never be sure. My mind is still surging, confused. Fragments of the little girl I was keep surfacing, pulling with them flashes of pain, of happiness, of despair, all the colors in my mind I’ve been ignoring since I was eight years old.
It’s well into the night when the boat finally crunches up against solid ground. Flynn jumps out, landing knee-deep in water, and steadies the boat as I climb after him. We operate in total darkness, not able to risk a flashlight, moving by feel and keeping track of each other by the sounds of our breathing. I hear Flynn turn away to face the center of the island.
“Flynn, wait.” I reach out and touch his shoulder. “LaRoux’s been able to force these creatures to do terrible things. They’re responsible for the Fury. They’re what took over Commander Towers’s mind right in front of me. They’re what sent me to your caves when McBride massacred those people.”
“I know.”
I can’t stop the fear coursing through me, no matter how I try to shove it down. I can handle getting shot, blown up, beaten to a pulp while tied to a stake, because through all of that, I’m still me. “We’re walking into the center of it all, into a place that’s already taken over my mind once. What’s to say they won’t do it again?” If I wake up someplace again, covered in blood, with no memory of what happened…
“I won’t let it happen.” Flynn’s voice is hard.
“You can’t stop a thing by willing it not to happen.” I can’t help the note of fondness that escapes alongside my exasperation. “Flynn—promise me something.”
“What is it?” He sounds wary. I think he suspects what I’m about to ask.
“If—if it happens again, just know that it’s not me. I’m not in there. That—that person who ordered us to turn ourselves in wasn’t Commander Towers, and I had to disobey her. And if it happens to me, then it’s not…It’s okay.”
“Okay?” Flynn’s voice is stiff. “Okay to shoot you, you mean.”
My heart tightens. “I don’t know. Maybe.” I can feel his anger and frustration radiating through the darkness, and part of me longs to reach out for him. If our positions were reversed, I don’t think I’d be able to listen to this either. But it has to be said. “Yes,” I whisper. “That’s what I’m saying.”
“Then I can’t promise you that,” he says tightly. “And don’t ask me again, Jubilee.”
“You can’t afford not to! This isn’t about us, this is everyone, all of my people and all of yours. This is worth dying for, Flynn, this chance to save Avon. We can’t afford to let anyone stop us. Even if that someone ends up being me.”
Flynn doesn’t answer in words. Instead he reaches behind his back to pull his stolen Gleidel from his waistband. Then there’s a loud thud as he tosses the gun into the bottom of the boat.
“Flynn, you can’t—”
“I’m going in there,” he says, as fierce as he’s ever been. “But I’m not shooting you, no matter what happens.”
I want to argue, I want to tell him he’s being sentimental and foolish, that this is what I was trying to avoid when I stopped him that night in the back room of Molly’s. That choosing me over everything else is weakness. A few weeks ago, that’s exactly what Captain Lee Chase would’ve told him. But I can hear the strength in his voice, and in the choice he’s making. Because it’s not that he’s choosing me, a girl he met less than a month ago—he’s choosing a world in which no one has to die.
I want that world to be real. I want it so badly my pulse quickens, the air sharpens. Captain Lee Chase never goes anywhere unarmed; it’s against her nature. My hand’s gripping my Gleidel so tightly I’m half afraid my skin’s going to fuse with the metal.
Lee doesn’t leave her gun behind—but maybe Jubilee could.
I exhale slowly, easing my Gleidel out of its holster. It fits so easily in my hand, its cold weight so comforting, so familiar. I swallow, then toss it down with Flynn’s.
When I lift my eyes again, Flynn is no more than a silhouette. He moves toward me, taking hold of my arm and pulling me in against him. He doesn’t speak. Our brief time together, the extraordinary circumstances that made us allies—there aren’t any words to give it shape. He could tell me he loves me, but he doesn’t know me the way a lover would; he knows the shape of me, though, the curve of my heart, as I know his. He could tell me he doesn’t want to lose me, but we’re both already lost, and only the tether between us keeps us from drifting out into the black.
I hear him draw a quick, shaking breath, and then his mouth finds mine. His kiss is fierce, his fingers splaying across my back, pressing me close. His lips this time ask for nothing, no demand for fire or for possession, nothing like the way he tasted in the back room of Molly’s, turning my bones to ash. He’s just kissing me, holding me, searing me into his memory. I lean into him, making his arms tighten around me in response, and we stand there, the water quiet around our ankles, as though all of Avon is holding its breath.
When we let each other go, we don’t speak. Instead Flynn braces his foot against the edge of the boat and shoves, sending it drifting back out so anyone who finds it won’t know where we are. I watch it cut through the mist until the fog closes back up around it and it’s gone.
She’s had this dream before, too. This one starts with fire, but she’s not afraid. It sweeps through the shop like it’s alive, but when it reaches her, it feels like nothing more than a summer breeze, pleasant and warm. She can control the fire, she can make it go where she wants, and she can keep it from consuming a single mote of dust in her mother’s shop.
She tells the flames to pull back, to return to being a merrily crackling fire on the hearth. But this time the fire doesn’t listen.
The girl tries again, and again nothing changes; the fire flares instead, and this time it burns her hands. She feels no pain in the dream, but she’s afraid. She knows she has to run, but the fire is all around her now, and there’s nowhere to go.
Her only choice is to let the fire take her.