Cursing under his breath, Gray flicks a switch to cut off the chopper’s comms. “What makes you say that?” He gives me a displeased look.
I don’t intend to betray Kallister’s confidence, so I provide something adjacent to the truth. “I saw him last night at the railroad station with Adrienne. They were trying to stay hidden, but he passed by a window.”
“Have you told anyone what you saw?”
“No, and I’m not going to.” I hesitate. “Is this what you guys have been arguing about all day? The mission she’s proposing? Because whatever it is, I don’t know if I would trust Travis.”
“I don’t disagree,” Gray says gruffly. “But he did keep his end of the deal at the Jubilee. He gave us access to his father. He sacrificed part of his base.”
“Not for us. He did it for himself.”
“Yes, but just because his motives are selfish doesn’t mean they can’t benefit us.”
“Maybe.”
“Let’s table this,” he says, flicking the radio channels back on. “I need my comms.”
Message received. No more talking about Travis.
As usual, we’re flying blind in the darkness, trusting his instruments to get us there. Whereverthereis. When we land, I’m still not entirely sure where we are. Until he opens the chopper door, and I hear it—the ocean. We’re on a cliff, I realize.
All I see is dark, hilly terrain. I gingerly walk across the rocky ground to peer over the edge of the cliff. The waves below crash against jagged boulders, sending sprays of salt water into the air. When a blue glint at my feet catches my attention, I crouch down to find twisted dark-blue spears protruding from the open side of the cliff. Daggerstone. There’s blue daggerstone all over the rocks.
I straighten up, gazing at the water again. This ocean is different from the one in Tierra Fe. That sea was calm. This one seems angrier, a roiling mass of black water, violently churning. It’s hard to make out anything else, but in the flashes of moonlight reflecting off the rocks, I’m startled to see something in the shallows. What looks like chunks of stone walls and the corner of a metal…roof? I wish it was daylight so I can figure out exactly what’s jutting from the frothy surf.
“Where are we?” I ask Gray.
He comes up beside me, blond hair blowing from the breeze off the water.
“See that?” Sliding his hands in his pockets, he tips his head toward the cliffs, the angry water. “That was Valterra Ridge.”
Chapter 51
That’s the last thing I expect him to say. The last thing I expect to see, because the view in front of us is nothing like the digital photos I’ve seen of Valterra Ridge.
I wrinkle my forehead. “I thought it was supposed to be a crater.”
“The crater’s somewhere down there. An earthquake shaved off another big chunk of the cliff years ago.”
Right. I remember reading that in the excerpts from my mother’s file. The bombings had been followed by an earthquake that destroyed what was left of the Ridge. An entire community decimated. An entire village swallowed whole by the sea. Well, almost whole. I stare at the dark water and the scattered remnants beneath it.
“It’s probably better that the crater is underwater now,” he muses. “When I was younger and I’d fly past here, you could still see all their bones.”
I shudder. “You’ve been here before?”
“This was my home.”
A gasp slips out. “You’re from Valterra Ridge?”
Gray nods. “Born and raised on the Ridge.”
“You survived the assault,” I say slowly. “Like Luisa and her family?”
“Her parents were the ones who got me out,” Gray admits, andnow it makes a lot more sense why he’s so close to Beatriz and Seth. Why they treat him like a son.
“You had a family here?” My heart squeezes at the notion.
“My mom and dad. Two older sisters.” Pain etches into his face. “Dad died in the first air strike. Mom and my sisters were killed in the ground attack.”
