But if Emma is there, it will be twice the miracle. I cup my hands around my mouth. “Emma! Are you out there?”
My dread only deepens when I’m answered with thunder. But a chance flare of lightning, struck against mountainous clouds, illuminates the spiny silhouette of Blicktenner Castle ahead on the cliffs. I run for it.
Rain pounds against the broken balustrades. The supposedly-haunted ruins perch perilously on the cliffs. Some of the walls and old towers have already fallen into the sea over the centuries. Arms of stone still reach off the edge, hanging into dead space, the hungry sea thrashing below.
“Emma!” I shout, swinging the beam of my torch as I step into the hollow ruins. “Emma!”
“Malcom!”
Terror roots me to the spot. The voice, the fear and urgency in it—is what launches me back into action. “Emma! Where are you?”
“Malcom!” Her voice is thick with tears, but this time I can pinpoint its origin. “Help!”
I rush through broken archways, lunging over collapsed walls and broken columns. In the following flash of lightning, I spot her, cornered by debris, her feet inches from the plunging cliffside.
I freeze a few feet away, Emma framed in my torchlight. She’s crumpled against the wall, hair drenched and plastered to a face pale white with terror. Her hands are braced against the last standing wall, and she’s making herself as small as humanly possible.
“Don’t move,” I command, spreading my palms so she can see I mean her no harm.
“The wall,” she gasps. “The rain was so thick. I—I needed cover, shelter, so I rushed in here. The ground caved.” She’s practically hyperventilating, her eyes round and animal-terrified in the dark. “These stones fell, and—oh, God, Malcom. I don’t want to die like this. Please.” A sob breaks out of her. “Please, help me.”
Emma.Everything in me clenches. A horrible helplessness settles over me, and suddenly I’m five years back in time, sitting before Sampson as he tells me:My son is dead, Malcom. Your father is dead.
“Malcom,” Emma sobs. “I know we’re not allies. I know we’re not friends, and that I’m supposed to hate you, and I’m supposed to be nothing to you but an opportunity. But please, please. Save me.”
Save me.
No—I’m not helpless. Emma is not dead yet. “Stand still,” I say, my voice emerging steady and soft. “Stand completely still.”
She nods frantically, tears spilling down her cheeks. She is devastatingly beautiful. Broken. And I’m a killer. A monster. A destroyer.
I cannot remember the last time in my life someone needed me to help or care for them.
An eerie calm falls over me. I kneel and place the torch on the ground, so its beam falls on her. “Do you see that stone there?” I point, and she manages a nod. “I’m going to get closer. And when I tell you to, I want you to jump over that stone.”
She pales. “Jump? No. No, Malcom, it’ll collapse, I won’t make it—”
“I’ll be right here to catch you.” Doubt, angry and miserable, crosses her face. “I will,” I assure her. “Trust me.”
Silence falls between us. I carefully begin closing the distance, utterly aware that one wrong move, one wrong step, could shatter the fragile earth beneath our feet and send us both to our horrible deaths. So I move slowly, rain crashing down around us, the sea and sky roaring.
And all at once, I’m close enough. “Emma,” I say softly, meeting her eyes. She’s shuddering with cold, utterly soaked through. “Are you ready?”
“I can’t do it,” she chokes out.
“Yes you can. All you have to do is jump. I’ll catch you.”
She takes a ragged breath. “Do you promise?”
When her eyes meet mine, my breath catches. In them, there’s more than fear and hatred and panic. She’s considering me. Really considering me.
Do I deserve her trust?
“I promise,” I say to her. I open my arms. “On three.”
She squeezes her eyes shut.
“One,” I say, and she opens them. “Two.” She braces, standing slowly upright. “Three.”
