“You’re thinking about him,” she said.
“How can you tell?” Thomas managed a thread of a smile.
“Your face,” she said. “I know how you feel. When I see Brendan Brightwell again, I’ll kill him. Betrayal is a serious thing, in my part of the world.”
She watched Thomas’s hands flex on the iron railing. His deep-seated innocence had been battered, if not broken. “Mine, too,” he said. “God help them if we come face-to-face with any of the Brightwells again, then.”
“Yes,” she said. “Even Jess, if he had some part in it.” She had a strong suspicion that Jess had everything to do with this, and for that, she wasn’t sure if she could ever forgive him. If Jess had arranged all this, he’d hurt Thomas, of all people, and she felt a great, banked fury for that.
Thomas met her gaze for a second, then gave her a quirk of a smile, very different from the usual full-souled one she loved. “The storm looks bad,” he said. “She’d be a fool to sail into it.”
“Anit is not a fool,” Khalila said. “But she will want to deliver us quickly to Alexandria. We are not an easy cargo, and we’ve already been delayed. We’re lucky to have this much freedom, to breathe the air and walk the decks.”
Thomas shrugged and gestured at the heavy, heaving sea. “Where else could we go?”
She didn’t miss the dark look in his eyes or the way he lingered on those waves, as if he was thinking about the peace that might be had under them. Khalila silently slipped her hand into his and held it. She knew her fingers were freezing, but Thomas’s were warm, and he didn’t seem to mind. Together they watched the lightning stitch through the clouds ahead. The thunder was inaudible over the boom of the sea against the metal hull of the ship. Even in these conditions, the huge cargo ship sailed smoothly, though Khalila kept her other hand on the railing; that might change soon, if that storm came at them. She supposed she ought to have been properly frightened of the weather, but there was a wild beauty in it as well. A power that showed, clearer than anything else, the magnificence of Allah’s creations.
But the wind was still cold enough to steal her breath away.
“Do you think they’re all right?” Thomas asked her then. Like her, he was watching the lightning. She saw it dance in his pale eyes. “Wolfe and Morgan?”
“Yes,” she said. “I believe they will be.”
“I wish I could be sure. All I can think about is . . .” He didn’t finish, but she knew what he would have said; he would have been thinking of his time trapped in the dungeons of Rome, at the mercy of the Great Library. They’d nearly broken him there. Nearly.
Thomas shook his head, violently, as if trying to throw something out of it. Bits of sea spray glittered in his stiff, close-cropped blond hair like a cap of jewels. He was growing in a thick, short beard, too. “Why did Jess let this happen?”
Khalila had her own suspicions, strong ones, but she kept them to herself. Worse to guess and be wrong. “I doubt it was at all his choice,” she said. “I think he’d have moved heaven and earth to be with us, fight with us. Don’t you?”
She saw something else flicker in his eyes then, but it was too brief for her to recognize it clearly. “The Jess I knew would do that.”
“Then believe that he’ll find us now.”
Thomas said nothing else, and she let the silence stretch warm between them. Before she’d met Thomas and her other year-mates in training at the Great Library, she’d never have believed she could befriend someone so unlike herself; he was so huge and strong and . . . well, solidly and mysteriously German. But he was brilliant and sweet and funny; of all of them, his loyalty was as unbreakable as she imagined that thick skull to be. She cherished him. She cherished all of them, in ways that continued to unfold in new and surprising directions.
“Isn’t this adorable?” a new voice said from behind them, and Khalila glanced back to see that Glain Wathen had joined them. Another tall person, but Glain had a narrow Welsh cast to her features that gave her the beauty of a precisely honed knife. “Is it a private love affair, or can anyone join?”
For answer, Khalila held out her other hand. Glain snorted and linked arms with her instead. She rocked and balanced easily on the deck and stared into the storm without a trace of fear. A great deal of appreciation, though.
“Dario’s down below puking his guts out,” Glain said. She sounded uncommonly cheerful about it. “Santi’s sleeping. He said to wake him if we sink, and not before.”
That sounded like the very practical High Garda captain. Rarely disturbed by any impending doom. If there was something to do, he’d do it, but otherwise, he saved his strength . . . though, Khalila thought, he’d been darkly quiet since they’d been taken aboard this ship. He wasn’t speaking about his feelings or about the loss of Scholar Wolfe. She understood, in part—she loved Scholar Wolfe like a dour brother or a quarrelsome uncle; not quite a father, but most definitely family.
They were all family now. And she was proud of that.
“Dario said that he needed to talk to you,” Glain said. “Go on. I’ll keep the great lump here from falling overboard.”
“I won’t fall,” Thomas said. Glain glanced at Khalila, quick as the lightning flickering on the horizon, and Khalila knew they’d both caught the inference.
He wouldn’t fall, but he’d definitely thought of jumping. It was part of the reason Khalila had spent so much time up here on the freezing decks; she wanted to keep an eye on him and make sure his anger and despair didn’t turn even darker. She didn’t think he’d do something so unforgivable, but she could understand the wild impulse. He felt betrayed, alone, lost. Hopeless.
She fought that herself. But she had faith—faith in her friends—to sustain her, as well as her unshakeable faith in the plans of Allah. They had all survived this far. All was not lost.
She had to believe it and make them believe it, too. At least Glain seemed completely unbothered by their current circumstances as unarmed prisoners, surrounded by enemies and ocean water.
“Try not to pick any fights,” she told Glain. “Here.” She stripped off the warm, stinking coat and draped it over Glain’s shoulders; she instantly regretted it when the wind sliced through the fabric of her dress and began to claw at her skin. Still, she paused long enough to plant a gentle kiss on Thomas’s cheek—one he kindly bent down to allow. “Watch Glain’s back for me,” she whispered. It would keep him solid.
“I know what you’re doing,” he whispered back. “But I will.”
“And shave your beard,” she said, in a louder tone. “It’s like trying to kiss a bear.”