‘Careful not to crush my paperwork,’ he murmurs.
‘I don’t think it’s the paperwork I’m crushing,’ I reply.
‘Now put your arms around me.’
‘Why do I get the impression you’re enjoying this?’
Atlas snorts. ‘Do you want to fall back in?’
I wrap my arms around him, my fingertips barely touching as they stretch across his back to meet each other.
‘Atlas?’ I say.
‘Hmm?’
‘If you’re still the praying type, now would be a good time to, you know . . . pull some strings.’
He bursts into laughter, his lips grazing my shoulder. Then his voice changes.
‘If we survive this,’ he says, ‘we have to convince Cindra to help us. We can’t give up, Viv. The alternative is—’
His voice breaks as his fingers press into my skin, clutching me tightly. Tears spring to my eyes at the emotion in his voice.
‘I know,’ I soothe.
This is how we stay, our frozen bodies slowly warming each other, until the fire and the fighting stop. At some point, the tip of his cold nose on my neck makes me jump and for a second I panic, thinking he’s fallen asleep and we’re about to go over. But his hand rests on my back, his fingers drumming the rhythm of a tune I can’t hear. A seagull flies past, settling on the grassy clifftop above, and looks down at us with a beady eye. I feel oddly vulnerable.
‘We’re going to have to get back in the water,’ I say, my voice thick with cold. ‘We can’t climb, so we’ll have to swim. So much for asking God for help. He could have at least sent a—’
‘Boat?’ Atlas says. He nods towards the water. ‘Look.’
I turn slowly to look over my shoulder. A small rowing boat is coming towards us, surrounded by the cool morning mist. I squint in the sombre light and see two figures.
‘Whoisthat?’
‘I think it’s Ruth,’ Atlas says.
Ruth and the girl rowing behind her angle the boat as close to the cliff as they can and gesture up to us. Atlas helps me turn around and I take a deep breath before jumping into the sea.
The freezing cold makes my body cry out but hands grab me before I can choke on water, pulling me on to the boat. I gasp in shock as I sit on one of the benches and watch the girls pull Atlas on board.
‘Here,’ Ruth says, throwing a sheepskin shawl at me.
I mutter my gratitude and wrap it around my shoulders.
‘Thanks,’ Atlas says as he pulls his own on. ‘Things were starting to look—’
‘Bleak?’ Ruth says with a smirk. A dracovol scurries out of her furs and comes to sit on her shoulder. It lets out a loud screech.
‘Our night watch spotted you, but it wasn’t safe to come out until now.’
She picks up her oars.
‘Did Jasper reach you?’ I ask her.
‘Yes,’ she says, a little indignantly. ‘And Freddie’s group. I almost shot them dead. You weren’t supposed to tell them about the tunnels.’
‘I didn’t mention the tunnelsspecifically,’ I say. ‘You didn’t turn them away, did you?’
