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We stood at the rail. Manhattan rose across the water, glass and steel catching the late light, burning gold. A tugboat nosed across the harbour. Zuri’s hat blew off, and I caught it one-handed without looking.

“Show-off,” she said, laughing.

I set it back on her head and let my hand stay there a moment longer than I needed.

Our suite was on the upper deck. A steward showed us to the door, murmured something about champagne, and left.

She stepped inside, and her breath left her in a rush.

The sitting room was bigger than the whole of her aunt’s shop. A curved sage-green sofa sat on a round rug of plum and moss, heaped with blush and plum cushions. A dark oval table stood by the window, a bowl of grapes at its centre. A glass-and-chrome staircase swept up to the floor above. Beyond the open doors, a balcony held two teak loungers and a view of nothing but sky and sea.

“Is this ours?” she breathed. “Is all of this ours?”

“For seven days.”

She kicked off her sandals and padded across the carpet, running her fingers over the back of the sofa, the cool glass of the banister, the petals of a flower arrangement. Our bags were already set in the bedroom. I followed her in. Cream carpet. Plum armchairs. A king bed with a purple runner and soft white linen, framed by black-and-white art. A bottle of champagne waited in a silver cooler beside a marble-topped table.

The balcony door stood open, and the sea beyond it glittered like a field of broken glass.

Zuri turned, and her eyes shone.

“Tau, I’m scared to touch anything.”

“Touch everything.”

She flung her arms around my neck, hat and all, and I held her with the sea wind blowing through the open door. Behind her, the ship’s horn sounded again, long and low, and the deck shuddered beneath our feet.

We were leaving.

Chapter 25

Zuri

On the second day at sea, I understood what freedom felt like.

It felt like wind. It felt like salt on my lips and the whole sky leaning down to touch the water, and nothing on the horizon but grey-blue waves rolling on and on. The ship was so vast that I could walk for an hour and still find a new corridor, a new staircase, a new deck with a view I had not seen. Nobody knew me. Nobody was looking for me. For the first time in weeks, I could breathe all the way to the bottom of my lungs.

And Tau was there, every step. He still counted exits, I noticed, though more softly now, the way a man checks a pocket he knows is full. He ordered tea to the balcony each morning and tucked a blanket around my knees without asking. He held my hand in the lifts. When I stood at the rail with my eyes closed, his arm was around my waist before I could sway.

Tonight, the sun slid into the sea in a long, burning line, and the sky went violet and then black. We sat on the balcony wrapped in a single blanket, the moon laying a bright path across the water. The wind was cold. His chest was warm.

“Close your eyes,” he said.

I did. I felt his hands at the back of my neck, careful, a little unsteady. Something light and cool settled in the hollow of my throat.

I opened my eyes and looked down.

A small gold lioness lay on a fine chain, no bigger than my thumbnail, her head turned, her tail curled. The moonlight caught every tiny line of her.

My hand flew to my mouth.

“Tau.”

“I ordered it when I collected the rings,” he said quietly. “You touched your throat every day. You did not know you were doing it.”

I had not. I laughed, and it cracked in the middle, and my eyes went hot.

“You noticed that?”