“Go back to your suite, Avery,” he says gently, almost pleading. “I’ll be in touch when I can. I promise.”
* * *
The hour that follows is agony.
Alessandra paces the length of our suite. I sit on the couch and watch her, too exhausted to move and too anxious to rest. The sandwiches she brought sit untouched on the table, the soup long since gone cold.
My mind keeps drifting back to Tobias, no matter how many times I try to steer it elsewhere. I keep replaying how his eyes went soft with recognition when I admitted I didn’t trust my own memories, and how when he promised he’d be in touch, he sounded so certain that I felt it in my bones.
I press my fingers against the inside of my wrist, where my pulse is running faster than it should be. When did the grief of Oliver’s absence start sharing space with how seen I feel when I’m around Tobias? The two shouldn’t coexist. One should cancel out the other.
But here they are, existing side by side, and the guilt of feeling both at once is its own kind of punishment.
When the knock finally comes, Alessandra and I both jump.
She reaches the door first, yanking it open to reveal Headmistress Constance Holbrook in her usual severe black dress, her silver hair pulled back tight.
“I understand there’s concern about Callie Bennett’s whereabouts,” Constance says, brisk and professional.
“She’s not here.” Alessandra curls her hands into fists, as if she’s barely controlled. “Open her door and prove me wrong. I want to be wrong.”
Constance studies Alessandra, then nods once. “Very well.”
She crosses to Callie’s door and presses her palm flat against it. The sigil on the frame flares bright orange, recognizing the Headmistress’s authority, and the lock clicks open.
The door swings inward.
Callie’s not there. Her room, however, is a mess.
The wardrobe’s open, hangers askew, with gaps where clothes should be. A drawer’s been pulled out and not fully closed, revealing nothing but shadows inside.
“She packed.” Alessandra gazes around the room as if looking hard enough might make Callie magically appear. “And she left. How did sheleave?She can’t fire travel. How can she just begone?”
Constance moves through the room with practiced efficiency, opening drawers, checking the closet, and running her fingers along the window frame. Her brow furrows deeper with each passing moment.
“I’m going to personally conduct a search of Hydra Hall.” She turns to face us, and her thumb presses against her ruby ring, twisting it a quarter turn before she catches herself and stops. “If Callie still can’t be found, I’ll begin a formal search of the island. I assure you—we will find her.”
“And if you can’t?” I ask.
“We will.” Constance straightens. “Now, get some rest. I’ll send word the moment we know anything.”
Then she’s gone, and Alessandra and I are alone in the suite, staring at Callie’s empty room, listening to the silence where answers should be.
JADE
It’s beenthirty minutes since we emerged from the waterfall. In that time, no waves have rocked the boat, and no monsters have risen to tear us apart.
There’s just gray everywhere, like we’re sailing through a void.
“We need to eat,” Kieran says from where he emerged from below deck with a satchel of supplies and a freshly cleaned blade on his hip, his eyes scanning the horizon like he expects a monster to materialize at any moment.
Callie’s laugh is brittle. “We’re sailing through monster-infested waters and the first thing you want to do is have a picnic?”
“We don’t know when we’ll have another chance.” He sets the satchel down near the forward mast. “Starving won’t help us fight what’s coming.”
He has a point. My stomach has been growling for the past hour, but acknowledging hunger feels wrong when I should be focused on survival. When Sam is dead because of me. When Elizabeth is dead because of me. When Oliver is?—
I stop and force myself to move to the others, settling onto the deck near the mast. Logan appears at my side a moment later, close enough that our shoulders brush. The contact sends warmth spreading through my chest, and I lean into it without thinking.
