“I love it,” I said, and meant it so hard it hurt.
My mother kissed my forehead. My father cleared his throat like he was swallowing his own emotion. Someone clapped me on the shoulder. Someone else shoved a warm mug into my hands. It was tea, black and strong.
For a few minutes, we were just a family.
Griff started telling a story about the first time I’d tried to fish and fallen into the inlet fully clothed, and everyone laughed, even me. Finn mimicked my flailing arms and nearly tripped over a log himself, and my mother’s laugh rang out clear as wedding bells.
I remember thinking, stupidly, at that moment, that maybe this could last. That maybe Skye really was a pocket the world couldn’t ever reach.
I’d been wrong.
A terrified shout cut through the wind.
The laughter died like someone had snuffed out the fire.
A figure burst through the trees, stumbling into the clearing with sand clinging to his boots and panic carved into his face. It was one of our lookouts, Rowan, wide-eyed, and his chest was heaving so hard he could barely speak.
“Ships,” he gasped. “Off the shore—down by the south inlet. British ships. Guns. An army?—”
He swallowed, staring at us like he was begging someone to tell him he was wrong.
“—and they’re coming here.”
For half a heartbeat, no one moved. The fire still crackled. The kettle still hissed.
My father was already moving.
“Get in your positions,” he barked, voice steady with the kind of calm that only comes from having survived too much. He snatched the bone hook off the log and looked to Griff. “Get the west ridge. If they’re landing just south of us, we won’t have long to prepare.”
Griff’s grin was gone. He was suddenly all purpose.
“On it,” he replied, and then his gaze snapped to me. “Tam.”
“I’m coming,” I blurted, because the knife at my thigh felt like permission and because my legs had started to shake and the only way to stop them was to move.
“No.” Griff grabbed my shoulder hard enough to hurt. “You’re not going.”
“I’m not a child?—”
“You arefifteen,” he cut in, voice practically lethal.
My mother caught my face between her palms, forcing my eyes to hers. Her thumbs swept quickly beneath my cheekbones as if she could wipe my fear away with nothing more than her fingers.
“Listen to me,” she exclaimed, words tight. “Go to the hollow by the birch line. You remember?”
The hollow. The emergency burrow behind the fallen tree, lined with old blankets and kept stocked with dried meat and water. The place they’d shown me when I was eight, when I’d asked why we needed hiding places if Haven was safe.
I remembered laughing back then.
I didn’t laugh now.
“I don’t want to—” My voice cracked and I hated myself for it.
My father stepped in close, hand cupping the back of my head, pressing his forehead to mine. He smelled like smoke and salt and oats.
“Tam,” he murmured, and the softness in his voice made my stomach twist. “You hide. That’s an order.”
Orders. I could do orders.
