Who knows?
All I knew was, an hour later, I was as awake as I’d ever been in my life, waist deep in cool water in the pitch black, edging the sailboat toward the mouth of the cove. Slowly, because I knew that there were guards there, but I also knew that they watched the sky and the water far, far out, because those were the only ways anyone could get to the island.
The sailboat proved too heavy. And that’s when I remembered the raft at the back of it.
I was never particularly resourceful, but out there in the pitch black, I managed to wrestle the boat free from the deck and get it into the water, and then I even thought to take water and a lifejacket with me. The raft had a motor, which I felt I would figure out how to use.
I even tied the sailboat to a rock—not very well—before leaving.
Last thing I needed was for him to get mad that I’d wrecked his boat.
And then, in the pitch-black night, as scared as I’ve ever been in my life, I paddled out to the open water.
Very promptly, I regretted what I had done.
The water outside the cove was choppy and tossed me around so that I lost my sense of direction almost immediately.
The lights of the house appeared first on the left, then the right, and I paddled, spinning, and lost my way completely.
Dark clouds had been enclosing all night, and now they swallowed the sea in every direction—including the dim lights of the fishing village.
The house was suddenly very far away.
I could go back, I thought.
But then I would be dead.
The thin line of the horizon began to turn navy blue, and my heart filled with hope. The storm would pass, in the daylight I would be able to see the ocean, and then I would know which way I had gone, and I would make it to the fishing village.
Only the sky grew light so slowly, and when I could finally see all around me, I spun and spun my gaze around, twisting to see in every direction, the boat swirling on the still water with my movement.
There was nothing in sight at all but ocean.
“Okay,” I said quietly to myself, the seriousness of my situation slowly washing over me. How stupid had I been? I didn’t know anything about the water, or boats, or where I was, or... anything. IhadwatchedDeep Water, though, and right about now I was pretty sure that’s what I was in.
Deep, deep shit.
“Okay,” I repeated, as my eyes welled up with tears.
What were my choices? Row, and maybe row out to sea, further away than I wanted to go? Or just float, and hope I washed up somewhere?
Really, this had been so, so stupid. What had I been thinking? The lights had seemed so easy to follow.
I cried for a while, and then I ran out of tears. The sun started blaring down on me, and I felt terrible. I was thirsty but I didn’t dare drink any water until the last possible minute. I was probably getting a sunburn.
I’m not the kind of girl to just give up, so I tried to pull myself together. The whole reason I was out there, I reminded myself, was because I thought Alaric was going to kill me. So if Ididdie out there—which was looking and feeling much more likely with every passing second—at least I’d done it under my own terms.
And also, I thought smugly, he would probably never know that I had died out there in a boat, and so maybe I would at least have the small victory of him thinking I had gotten away.
Time passed, and it got hotter and hotter. I dug through the contents of the boat and found a small shelter, which killed some amount of time while I figured out how to set it up. I sat under it for a moment and was overtaken by panic again. So I started digging through the supplies and found a pair of binoculars, a first-aid kit, a flashlight, and a fire extinguisher.
Great.
I took out the binoculars and brought them to my eyes to scan the horizon. I moved in a slow circle even though I thought things were hopeless. And sure enough they—
I squinted.
Far, far away, though I would never be able to say how far because the distance were so distorted at sea, I saw a speck of slightly darker gray-blue than the water. The water and sky blended and made me dizzy as I stared at it, trying to determine what it was, and as it stayed steady, with sharp angles that could not be anything but rock or metal, my heart went sailing to my throat and then back down to my feet.
