Silva roared, a sound of pure animal rage. He stumbled backward, his hand flying up to cover his mouth and nose. “TheSussuron!” I yelled, my voice raw, breaking the spell.
Luzia was already there. She darted past the staggering man, snatching the ornate woodenSussuronfrom its pedestal. Silva reached for her, his movements suddenly clumsy, his fingersgrasping at the empty air. He sank to his knees, shaking his head as if trying to clear water from his ears.
I grabbed Luzia’s arm, pulling her toward the door. We didn’t look back. We burst out of the humid greenhouse just as a high, piercing alarm began to blare. Silva’s men would be coming after us. They wouldn’t let us get away a second time.
Floodlights on the surrounding buildings snapped on, bathing the compound in a harsh, sterile white light and erasing every shadow. Shouts echoed from the barracks, no longer muffled, but sharp, distinct commands cutting through the din.
“Perimeter! Seal the river access! Get the boats!”
Our escape was a heart-pounding, frantic dash through the waking nightmare. We sprinted for the river, for the dark promise of the water. We hit the bank at a full run and dove, plunging into the shocking, familiar cold as the first searchlights sliced through the night above us, their beams carving frantic patterns across the churning water.
I broke the surface, gasping, choking on air and water. My arm was locked around theSussuron, holding it above the current. Luzia surfaced beside me, her eyes wide in the strobing darkness, her hair plastered to her face. The alarms shrieked behind us, a sound that promised pursuit. Looking back at the shore, I saw a figure emerge from the glowing doorway of the greenhouse. Even at this distance, I recognized Silva’s rigid posture. He raised an arm and pointed directly at us, giving a command.
No hand would be reaching down from the bank to help us. There was no promise of safety, only the river, the jungle, and the chaos we had unleashed.
The river’s icy shock stole the air from my lungs. Fighting against the current, my chest began to seize. A desperate scramble brought me onto the muddy bank, where my body immediately gave out. Each breath became a useless, high-pitched wheeze as the asthma took hold, choking me. Then Luzia was there, her hand pressing firm and steady on my sternum, a solid anchor.
“Breathe with me, Caio,” she commanded, her voice cutting through the alarms. Under the pressure of her hand and her magic, my ragged wheezing slowly, painfully, began to find air.
There was no time.
The air Luzia had forced back into my lungs felt thin and useless against the wall of sound rolling across the river. The baying of hounds, the roar of boat engines firing to life, the clipped commands of men—it was the sound of a closing trap. Searchlight beams tore through the jungle canopy, turning the oppressive darkness into a strobing, disorienting hell.
“This way!” Luzia’s voice was a raw whisper. Her hand clamped onto my arm, pulling me from the exposed riverbank and into the undergrowth.
The jungle swallowed me whole. There was no path, only a chaotic tangle of roots that tripped me and thorns that tore at my clothes. Branches whipped my face. Behind us, the hunt grew louder, more organized. The dogs were on our side of the river now, their barks no longer a general din but individual, hungry sounds. My panic had a sharp, analytical edge. I clutched the ornateSussuronto my chest like a shield, its sharp corners digging into my ribs with every ragged breath.
“Higher!” I gasped, spotting the dark silhouette of a ridge through the trees.
Luzia moved ahead, her grace mesmerizing as I stumbled. I followed, one hand gripping roots, the other still protecting theSussuron. My shoes, useless on the slick moss, betrayed me. My grip failed. For a heart-stopping second, I dangled by one hand, my body a pendulum swinging over the chaos below. I clawed my way onto the ledge beside her, my body screaming in protest. The sounds of pursuit had faded, but so had the adrenaline. Allthat remained was the crushing weight of what we had done, and the terrifying, silent question of what came next.
CHAPTER 26
Luzia
The roar of their engines was an obscenity in the sacred quiet of the night. The dogs were a chorus of mindless aggression. The jungle felt different with the beams of their searchlights slicing through the canopy like the angry eyes of false gods. They were turning my home into a cage.
Every snapped twig under my feet, every rustle of leaves, was a language I knew. But now, the sounds behind us—heavy, clumsy boot falls and shouted commands in Portuguese—were a crude interruption—a desecration.
I scrambled up a rocky incline, the sounds of the hunt funneling into the gully behind us, Caio moved close to me, but I knew he was struggling. They were close. Too close. I could hear one man cursing as he slipped. I found a ledge and flattened myself against the rock, pulling Caio down beside me. Below, maybe fifty steps away, two figures crashed through the undergrowth, their rifles held ready.
And the fury in my chest boiled over.
This was my home. I knew how to make a deadfall trap from a fallen log, how to use hanging vines to choke a path. These men were loud, blind intruders. They deserved to be swallowed by the jungle they so clearly disrespected. My eyes scanned the ledge above them. A large, precariously balanced rock sat there, loosened by the recent rains. It would be so easy—a hard shove, a moment of satisfying justice.
My muscles tensed. I was already moving, my hand reaching for a smaller stone to hurl at the bigger one, when Caio’s hand shot out and grabbed my wrist. His grip was surprisingly strong.
“Luzia, no,” he hissed, his eyes wide with alarm. “We run. We don’t fight them. We can’t win that way.”
“They are hunting us like animals!” I whispered back, my voice shaking with rage. “We are not animals. We fight back!”
“It’s suicide!” he insisted, pulling me away from the ledge, back from the precipice of my anger. “We escape. We survive. That is how we win.”
He was dragging me away from the edge when the shot rang out.
It wasn’t a targeted shot. It was a wild, suppressing fire, a bullet fired blindly into the darkness to flush out its prey. It was a sound of pure chaos, an ugly crack that didn’t belong here.
The sounds of pursuit seemed to fade, replaced by the drumming of my heart and his pained, ragged breathing in my ear.
