Ms. Dale pushed us through the last bit of thick grass and we pulled onto the bank, where the ground was devoid of any life, thanks to the toxic waters seeping up from the river. The armored vehicle growled to a stop, and I scanned the river, looking for any sign of Alejandro’s boat.
“Where is it?” Owen asked, his voice thick with urgency.
I was just about to say that I didn’t know when I saw it—the beige-white boat floating toward us, the sickly water churning at its helm as it forged upriver. Pulling out a pair of binoculars Ms. Dale had acquired from her mysterious stash—I was assuming the palace armory—I held them up to my eyes, and was relieved to see Alejandro standing at the helm. There was no sign of Tim or Jay, but I could see Samuel’s sleek brown body sitting on the bow—he was staring right at us, his furry head cocked.
“It’s there,” I said. I snapped out of my seatbelt and got out, shouldering the long duffle bag full of weapons. It was heavy, and the strap bit into my shoulder, but I ignored it along with that flash of irritation that came over me when I realized, once again, that I still wasn’t as strong as I used to be. The operation had set me back months, maybe more, and it was hard not to be bitter about it, even though it had technically been my fault that I had to have one in the first place.
Ms. Dale shut off the vehicle, and the rest of our party exited it.
“Okay, Viggo, you and I can head over there and check—” Owen began, then stopped in the middle of his sentence and gave me a considering look. He moved toward the boat instead, murmuring, “I mean, I’ll go check it out.”
I realized I was glaring deeply. “Good. You do that,” I replied dryly, catching the sound of Violet’s chuckle as she came up to stand beside me.
“What’s so funny?” I asked, and she gave me a smile that seemed to chase away the lines of anxiety and pain that were etched into her face.
“You are,” she replied tartly. “Did you realize you were alpha male-ing with Owen?”
“What, am I coming on too strong?” I asked, wondering if it bothered her. I’d barely even noticed what I was doing. I just hated taking orders.
She looked at me thoughtfully, the smile still playing on her lips. “Maybe,” she said. “But honestly, I think it’s cute.”
I glowered at that, adjusting the strap over my shoulder. “I prefer to think of it as masculine,” I grumbled, and she laughed again.
Ms. Dale gave us an irritated look as she stalked by, her expression disapproving. “You two,” she said waspishly, “really need to stop flirting when your lives are in danger.”
Violet and I exchanged smirks. It wasn’t the first time Ms. Dale had said something along those lines, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. At least, I hoped it wouldn’t.
My anxiety increased as I scanned the tall grass that stopped behind us, several feet from the bank. Anything or anyone could be hiding in there, and even though it still pained me to agree with Ms. Dale, she was right.
Placing my hand at the small of Violet’s back, I said, “Let’s go.”
“I’ll catch up,” Ms. Dale told me, and I looked back to see her climbing into the seat of the SUV just long enough to start it, the driver’s side door still open, and slowly maneuver the vehicle closer to the drop-off into the river.
“What is she…” The question died on my lips as the SUV’s tires began sliding on the mud of the bank and Ms. Dale leapt from the driver’s seat, landing awkwardly in sludge as the still-running car drove itself the rest of the way into Veil River. It made much less noise and splash than I would’ve expected, floating a moment before starting to sink with a horrible gurgling.
Ms. Dale caught me eyeing her and shrugged. “Tying up some loose ends,” she smirked. Violet chuckled.
Just a little way upriver, Owen was impatiently waving us over. “It’s him,” he called, rather redundantly, when we were close enough.
I came up next to him, sighting the older man on the deck. My heart lifted just a little. “Alejandro! You made it!”
Alejandro’s frown was barely discernable in the waning light, but his voice was clear as he shouted, “Aye, my friend! I barely got out before the docks were swarming with wardens. It’s a good thing nobody else has the kind of motors I do. But more will be on their way here, so we really need to—”
“Hurry,” I finished for him, sliding the bag off my shoulder and tossing it to Owen. He grunted as he caught it, and I barely stopped the self-satisfied smile from reaching my face.
Violet was already eyeing the gap between the bank and the ship with a dubious expression, her eyes scanning the contaminated waters, the fingers on her injured hand twitching.
“How are we going to…”
Her question was cut off as a blurry body suddenly came barreling down the deck past Alejandro, vaulted the boat’s safety rails, and sailed the six feet or more from boat to shore on sheer momentum, landing with a wet thump on the bank in front of us.
“Violet! Viggo!” Jay exclaimed, a huge grin on his face. Beside me, I heard Violet let out a sharp sigh of what seemed to be relief. “Hi, Jay,” she said, and I couldn’t tell whether she sounded like she wanted to laugh or admonish him.
On my other side, Owen seemed taken aback. “Jay… you left the Liberators, too? Desmond didn’t tell me that.”
“Sounds pretty normal to me,” Jay said. “She never tells me anything.”
The two of them shared a look of pain that quickly turned to sympathy, and then moved forward and clapped each other on the back. “I’m glad to see you here,” Owen said sincerely, and Jay echoed the sentiment.
I felt a slight lessening of my dislike for Owen at how obviously he cared for Jay, but every moment we spent on this bank made me surer that our Matrian pursuers would appear out of the grasses. “Let’s get moving, guys,” I said. “We can explain more on the boat.”
“All right.” Jay held up the end of a long rope he carried in two hands, the other end trailing over the water back to the boat. As we watched, Tim came up from the other side of the boat, holding the rest of the coil of rope, which he affixed to the boat’s railing. “Violet!” he called. “Eggs. Safe!”
As Violet shouted her relief to her brother, Jay quickly scouted out a lone tree among the grasses of the bank and tied his end of the rope to it in a thick lump of knot.
“We chose this spot to land because of the tree. Alejandro said the bank here is too shallow to get close enough to use the gangplank,” he explained.
I felt myself smiling, despite everything, at the boys’ enthusiasm. I was glad to see they didn’t look too shell-shocked by their narrow escape from the wardens at the dock. Or at our narrow escape from the castle, at that. As they pulled the rope taut, though, I began to have my doubts about this method of boarding.
Jay went back to the boat first, and he made it look easy. He simply leapt, caught the rope, and swung across easily, hand over hand, until he could grab the boat’s railings and hoist himself up pull-up style. He wasn’t even fully grown, and his casual strength continued to amaze me. I allowed myself a moment of jealousy. Only one.
If I had that kind of strength, I could just carry Violet across in one arm… I looked at the gray-eyed girl beside me, worried she would overtax her injury. “Violet, can you—”