Behind them, the tower stood silent and still, its doors open to the world for the first time in twenty-one years. The sun continued its arc across the sky, painting everything in shades of gold and green. And somewhere inside those ancient walls, an AI watched its screens and sensors and readouts, tracking the movement of two figures and one small glider as they explored the world that had been waiting for them all along.
She didn’t look back.
But he did, just once. And he could have sworn he saw the lights flicker in the observation window—a soft, gentle pattern that might have been farewell.
Or might have been a blessing.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Liora couldn’t stop touching things.
The bark of trees—rough and cool and textured in ways she’d never imagined. The leaves that brushed against her arms as she passed—some smooth, some fuzzy, some with tiny serrated edges that tickled her skin. The soil beneath her feet—warm where the sun touched it, cool in the shadows, sometimes soft and sometimes packed hard with the weight of ages.
She’d been walking in circles around the tower clearing for what felt like hours, cataloging sensations the way she’d once cataloged weather patterns and plant growth cycles. Baylin followed her patiently, never rushing her, never suggesting they move on. He just watched, his green eyes soft with something that made her chest flutter every time she caught him looking.
But eventually, even her boundless curiosity began to settle into something calmer. The initial shock of freedom faded into a warm glow of contentment, and she found herself standing at the edge of the clearing, staring out at the jungle with a different kind of longing.
“What do you want to do first?”
His voice was low and warm, close enough that she could feel the heat of him at her back. She turned to face him, her heart still racing from the sheer impossibility of being outside, and felt the answer rise up in her before she could even think about it.
“The ocean.”
His eyebrows lifted slightly. “The ocean?”
“I’ve watched it my whole life.” The words tumbled out, eager and breathless. “From my bedroom balcony. I’ve seen it change colors with the weather, watched storms roll across its surface, counted the different shades of blue it turns throughout the day. I’ve imagined what it might feel like.” She reached out and gripped his arm, her fingers pressing into the hard muscle beneath his skin. “I want to touch it, Baylin. I want to know what it’s like to stand in the water and feel the waves.”
Something shifted in his expression—a softening, a deepening of that look he’d been giving her all morning.
“Then that’s where we’ll go.”
The path down the cliffs was treacherous.
She discovered this quickly, her bare feet slipping on loose rocks as the ground tilted sharply downward. The tower had been built at the top of a steep escarpment, which was part of what had made it so isolated—and what had given her such a spectacular view of the distant coastline. But what looked like a gentle slope from above was actually a series of sharp descents and rocky outcroppings that required careful navigation.
He went first, testing each foothold before letting her follow. More than once, he turned back to catch her arm when shestumbled, his grip strong and sure. Pip abandoned them both early in the descent, gliding down to the beach in lazy spirals that made her briefly, irrationally jealous.
“The tower’s defenses must have included the approach routes,” he said as they navigated a particularly narrow ledge. “Anyone trying to reach you by land would have had to climb these cliffs. It would have been nearly impossible without the right equipment.”
“Is that why no one ever came?” The thought had been nagging at her since they left—the realization that the outside world had existed just beyond her walls all along, full of people who might have found her if the circumstances had been different.
“Partly.” His hand found hers, steadying her over a gap in the rocks. “The jungle is also dense and hostile. Most creatures avoid this area because of the predators that hunt near the base of the cliffs. And the tower itself was designed to be nearly invisible from a distance—the stone matches the surrounding rock formations, and the vegetation has grown up around it over the years.”
“But you found it.”
He glanced back at her, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “I’m very persistent.”
The cliff path opened up onto a narrow beach—a strip of pale sand wedged between the rocky escarpment and the endless expanse of blue water. The sound hit her first, a constant rushing roar that was nothing like the distant whisper she’d heard from the tower. Then the smell—salt and seaweed and something wild and alive that she couldn’t name.
And then the size of it.
She stopped at the edge of the sand, her breath catching in her throat. She’d seen the ocean every day of her life. She’d mapped its moods and memorized its colors and tracked the movements of the creatures that lived along its shores. But standing here, with the water stretching out to the horizon in every direction, she realized she hadn’t understood it at all.
It was vast. Impossibly, incomprehensibly vast. The sky was huge, but it had boundaries—the horizon, the canopy, the walls of the tower. The ocean had no such limits. It just went on and on, blue fading into blue, until it merged with the sky at some distant point she couldn’t quite see.
“It’s so big,” she whispered.
He came to stand beside her, close enough that his shoulder brushed against hers. “It is.”
