Page 83

Three Hours Till Dawn

LONAN

She knows.

Saints help me, she knows.

Chapter Forty-Five

I’ve always hated the sea. As a child, I had nightmares of drowning. I refused to learn to swim. My father used to talk about taking trips to the shore when I was small, and I always refused to get near the water.

“Strange child,” he would say with a hearty laugh. “No one hates the sea. The sea gives us life.”

But then my mother and I would share a conspiratorial glance. She understood. We were forest creatures. The sea was the unknown. As mysterious as the realm of the Saints, as terrifying as death. We build ships and hoist our flags on their masts as though we can tame the waves. There is no civilizing the sea. To its depth, it is savage.

I open my eyes to total blackness. My feet dangle below me. Or above me? I’m weightless. What’s worse—I can’t tell where the surface is. The water around me is ice-cold—cutting through my skin like knives, so sharp it paralyzes my muscles, refuses to let me move.

Where is Lonan?

I force my body to turn. I force my eyes open, the cold water stinging them unbearably. But the water is pitch black. I gulp, searching for breath. Water rushes into my mouth, pours like ice down my throat. My body is desperate for oxygen—my muscles achy and burning as my limbs weaken.

I’m falling.

The edges of my brain grow fuzzy and numb. And then a tug—an arm around mine. I force myself to kick my feet, to fight. And then we burst from the surface of the sea. Merciless waves toss us, and wind whips our faces. I forget to hate Lonan, instinctively clinging to him, tearing at his clothes, his face, his hair. I accidentally shove his head underwater as I try to keep my face above the surface.

He pops back up out of the water gasping, and then he grabs my hands in his, forcing me still, forcing me to kick my feet to stay afloat. “Breathe,” he tells me. “Breathe. Slowly.”

It doesn’t matter in this moment who he is, what lies he told. Living, swimming, staying afloat. That’s all that matters. When my breath evens out, he gives my hand a squeeze and nods behind him. I blink and realize that the ship is there, the one from the painting. On the deck, a fire has broken out. Sailors scurry about to dampen it, but the waves are enormous. They toss the ship back and forth, some large enough that the sailors slide along the deck.

Lonan grabs hold of the back of my dress, pushing me toward the ship. I get the idea and start to cartwheel my arms and legs. With every movement, my limbs ache to stop, burn to give way to the freezing temperatures. With every monstrous wave, we scale a new mountain, each one nearly pulling us beneath the dark and frigid waters.

No one is coming to save you.

Survive.

These are the words that have kept me going through so much. And they keep me going now.

For the first time tonight, I lose track of time as we pull ourselves through the water toward the ship. I don’t care how many strokes it takes or how tired I am. I care that we reach the edge of the ship’s hull. For a moment, the surge of water threatens to submerge us again, dragging us under the heavy belly of the ship, but on the crest of a wave, a lifeboat that hangs overhead dips low enough to kiss the water. Lonan grabs hold of the edge and pulls both of us into it.

We lie there and breathe for a full minute.

“You,” he finally says, “are insane.”

I don’t have a quip for Lonan right now. I’m nearly positive I’m hypothermic. On the upside, I’m sure the ocean water has finally washed the night’s dried blood from my limbs.

I’m not sure why I jumped into the painting. In that moment, my only goal was to get as far away from Lonan as possible. But I was compelled, almost pulled toward the ship. And even now, lying in its lifeboat, there is something drawing me deeper. It’s instinct, not logic.

Lonan gets to his feet and hoists the lifeboat up higher with the rope-and- pulley system attached. His movements are so natural that I realize this isn’t his first time at sea—there is so little I know about him, what he’s done and hasn’t done, what occupies his summers and holidays. He’s a well of secrets.

When we’re level with the deck, we fall more than climb over the ship’s rail. I’m in a tangle of frozen limbs with Lonan, and I pull myself away as quickly as I can. Even with all the animosity and distrust I feel, there’s still that draw—the hunger of the monster within me and something deeper I won’t acknowledge. None of the sailors notice us, either because this is another vision and they’re oblivious to our presence, or because they’re too preoccupied fighting the fire, which seems to have sprung from an overturned barrel and shattered lanterns.

The cold is so bad that I can think of little else.

“Come with me,” Lonan says in my ear over the howl of the storm.

He seems to know where he is, where he’s going. I should find this disconcerting, but I’ve had so much tossed at me that I listlessly follow him into the bowels of the ship. He pulls me down a hatch, the steps of wooden stairs slick with rain that barrels in each time the hatch is opened. Beneath, oil lamps line the hall, and Lonan pulls me aside into the shadows.

He reaches out to me, whether to wrap an arm around me for warmth or reassure me with a hand on my shoulder, I’m not sure. But I back away from him, even in this small space, wrapping my arms around my frigid torso. I might die of hypothermia, but the thought of getting close to him right now is so much worse.