I turn away and help with the sails, because if I keep looking at these people, I’m going to dive back into the water and try to drag them all to freedom.
The boat catches the wind, we start to move, and the golden glow of the island shrinks behind us until it’s a distant shimmer on the dark horizon.
Evie stands up suddenly from where she’s been staring up at the stars, and we all look to her.
“I’m going below deck.” Her eyes are fixed on a point past all of us, focusing on a distance no one else can see. “I need to lie down.”
She turns and disappears through the hatch without saying another word, and the absence she leaves behind feels heavier than her presence.
Kieran grabs two water bladders and some of the fish Callie already cleaned and scaled. “I’ll make sure she eats,” he says, although he doesn’t look at any of us, as if admitting he cares about Evie Thorne’s wellbeing is a vulnerability he’s only willing to show in profile.
Then he follows Evie below deck, and I try very hard not to wonder what’s going on between the two of them. I don’t exactly have time to sit down with Evie for an evening of girl talk, and even if I did, I don’t think I could do it without drowning in guilt.
Callie leans against the mast, using it to stay vertical. “I should rest too.”
“Go.” I’m surprised by how gentle the word comes out. “You look like death.”
Her laugh is bitter. “Feel like it, too.”
She staggers over to the hatch, and for a second, I think she’s going to fall. But she catches herself on the railing, takes a breath, and disappears below.
Which leaves me and Logan on a boat surrounded by dark water, moving stars, and the promise of mythological nightmares.
The awareness of being alone with him settles over my skin like static.
“So.” I turn to face him, my arms crossed over my chest because I don’t know what else to do with them. “It’s just us now.”
“Just us.” His eyes meet mine, silver in the moonlight. “Are you okay?”
The question almost makes me laugh. But my throat’s too tight, my eyes are burning, and the only thing keeping me upright is the railing pressing into my lower back.
“We just escaped an island of zombie-witches after I nearly became one of them. My best friend is below deck crying over a brother she doesn’t know is dead. We’re sailing toward a three-headed monster who guards the Pillars of Hercules, and he’ll probably try to kill us.” I take a breath. “So, no. I’m not okay. I’m very much not okay.”
Logan comes over and takes me in his arms, his chest solid against my cheek. His heartbeat is steady and slow, and I focus on that instead of the spiral threatening to drag me under.
“I feel like a monster,” I say, softer now. “I told you to use Oliver to manipulate her, and you did, and now she’s down there thinking there’s hope when there isn’t.”
“The lie was necessary.” He pulls back just enough to look at me. “The world isn’t kind to people like us. We have to protect ourselves and our secrets, even when it feels wrong.”
I want to believe him. I want to let his certainty wash away the guilt that’s eating me alive.
“Is there a line you wouldn’t cross?” I ask instead.
One of his hands finds the chain around his neck, his fingers wrapping around the intertwined rings that hang there.
“No,” he says, simple and final. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to keep you safe.”
I should be reassured. I should feel protected, loved, and cherished.
Instead, ice traces a line down my spine. Because his eyes have gone darker than devotion, and hungrier than love.
It’s the look of someone who wouldn’t just kill for me.
He’d enjoy it.
It should scare me. But my body doesn’t get the memo, because he’s looking at me like I’m the only thing in the universe that matters, and my heart is pounding, and my skin is tingling, and?—
He kisses me.