Chapter 17
Chapter
Seventeen
Dawn broke gray and hurried, the kind of light that promised rain before noon. Brodie watched Maddie wake—the way her eyes fluttered open, unfocused and vulnerable, before memory sharpened her features and she turned her head to find him already watching her.
“Hi,” she whispered.
“Hello, lass.” The words felt strange in his mouth, too casual for what had shifted between them in the darkness.
He’d kissed lasses before. Had thought himself in love once, in Edinburgh, in another life.
But this ran deeper than anything he’d known—a tide pulling him under, and he’d stopped fighting it.
Ruth appeared in the doorway before he could untangle his thoughts. Her face was drawn tight with worry, and Jonah stood behind her with a pack slung over one shoulder.
“The dogs are closer than we thought,” Ruth said quietly. “You need to go. Now.”
They moved fast—no time for breakfast, barely time to splash water on their faces from the bucket by the door. Jonah pressed the pack into Brodie’s hands while Ruth checked Maddie’s ankle.
“It’ll hold,” Ruth pronounced. “But don’t push too hard. Better slow and steady than collapsed halfway up the mountain.”
“The trail follows the river east for half a day,” Jonah said, his voice low and urgent. “When you reach the split rock—you’ll know it when you see it—head north. The terrain gets steep after that. Three days to the settlement if you’re careful. Maybe four with that ankle.”
“And if the widow’s men catch our trail?” Brodie asked.
“Then you move faster.” Jonah’s expression was grim. “The Maroons don’t venture this far down often. You’re on your own until you reach their territory.”
Maddie was pulling on her shoes—the worn leather ones from the plantation, already splitting at the seams. She moved stiffly, favoring her left ankle, but her jaw was set with a determination that made him forget to breathe.
Over three hundred years in the future. Flying machines and lights without fire and voices that traveled across oceans. And here she was, about to run through a jungle that would kill her if she made one wrong step.
“Ready?” he asked her.
She met his eyes. Steel underneath the fear. “Ready.”
They slipped out the back as the first fingers of real dawn touched the sky. The jungle swallowed them within minutes—green and wet and alive with sounds that made Brodie’s hand drift to his dagger. Behind them, he could hear dogs in the distance.
“This way.” He kept his voice low, one hand on Maddie’s elbow as they navigated roots that twisted like serpents across the forest floor. “Watch that vine—it’s got thorns.”
She nodded, already breathing hard. The ankle was going to be a problem. He could see it in the way she moved, the slight hitch in her step every time her left foot bore weight.
They followed the river east. The water ran fast and brown, swollen from the recent rains, the sound covering their footsteps. That was good. Less chance the dogs would pick up their scent over the smell of mud and rotting vegetation.
An hour passed. Then two. The sun climbed higher, turning the jungle into a steam bath. Sweat soaked through Brodie’s shirt, making his hair stick to his forehead. Beside him, Maddie’s face had gone red with exertion, but she didn’t complain. Just kept moving, one foot in front of the other.
“We’ll rest soon,” he said when her breathing grew too ragged.
“I’m fine.”
“Ye’re limping.”
“I said I’m fine.” But when they finally stopped beside a fallen log, she sank onto it with a gasp that told him exactly how not fine she was.
He crouched in front of her, unlacing her shoe before she could protest. The ankle was swollen again, angry and hot to the touch. Ruth’s wrapping had loosened during their flight.
“It’s not broken,” Maddie said. “Ruth said—”
“Ruth said to go slow. We havena been going slow.” He rewrapped the ankle with strips torn from his shirt, his hands as gentle as he could make them. “This is going to hurt for days yet.”
“We don’t have days.”
“We’ll make time.” He tied off the wrapping and looked up at her. “Ye fell through time itself and survived everything the widow could throw at ye. A twisted ankle isna going to be what stops ye now.”
She laughed—short and sharp. “You really believe me. About all of it.”
“Aye.” He stood, offering his hand. “My sister Elspeth had the sight. Could feel storms coming days before they hit. Knew things she shouldna have been able to know. And that old woman on the beach—the Cailleach—she gave me a black feather and told me to watch for who walks through the door. I kept it. Didn’t know why.
And then ye appeared, and everything about ye made sense in a way it hadn’t before. ”
He helped her up, held her hand in his as they started walking again. Slower now. More careful.
“The stone,” Maddie said after a while. “The one in the widow’s garden.
I can’t go back, it’s too dangerous. The past is now my home.
I’ve made my peace with it.” A sound escaped from the back of her throat.
“I don’t know how, but the feeling settled deep within me last night.
” She straightened her shoulders. “We’re together. That’s what matters.”
“If ye could go back,” Brodie said, the question burning in his chest. “If ye touched that stone tomorrow and it offered to send ye home. Would ye take it?”
She was quiet for so long he thought she wouldn’t answer.
“A few weeks ago, yes. Without hesitation. But now...” She squeezed his hand. “Now, I don’t think I could leave you. I think I’m...” She stopped walking, turned to face him. “I think I’m falling in love with you. And it terrifies me because what if something happens? What if we don’t make it?”
He pulled her close, careful of her ankle, and kissed her forehead. Because if he kissed her like he wanted, they’d be here all day. Right now she needed reassurance, not passion. “We’ll make it. I survived Edinburgh and the slave ship and four years at sea. I’m not going anywhere.”
“You can’t promise that.”
“I can promise I’ll fight like hell to make it true.”
They found the split rock just before noon—a massive boulder cleaved in two. From here, the terrain turned steep. Brodie adjusted the pack, studied the slope rising ahead. No clear path. Just jungle and rock and the promise of three more days of this.
Behind them, a dog howled. Close. Too close.
“They’re still coming,” Maddie whispered.
“Aye. We need to move.”
They climbed. The jungle pressed close, humid and hostile. Maddie’s ankle slowed them, forced them to stop every half hour. Each time, Brodie scanned their back trail, listening for pursuit.
The dogs had gone quiet. That worried him more than hearing them.
By mid-afternoon, clouds rolled in. The rain started soft, then harder, drumming through the canopy. It would cover their tracks, wash away their scent. But it also made the slope treacherous, turning every step into a potential fall.
“There.” He spotted it through the trees—a small structure, half-hidden by vines. “That’s got to be the waystation.”
They stumbled toward it, Maddie limping badly now. The structure was little more than a hut—four walls and a roof, no door, just an opening that faced away from the trail. But it would provide them with shelter.
Brodie helped Maddie inside, then checked their surroundings. No signs of recent activity. No tracks except their own. The waystation had been here a long time, abandoned, but the roof was intact and the walls solid.
“We’ll rest here,” he said. “Let the rain cover our trail.”
She leaned against him, trembling with exhaustion and pain. He wrapped his arm around her, holding her close.
Outside, the rain continued to fall, steady and relentless.
He was starting to relax, starting to let himself believe they’d actually made it, when he noticed them.
Marks on the dirt floor. Faint but visible in the gray light.
Fresh footprints. Too small to be a man’s. The size of a child’s.
Someone else had been here. Recently.
And they’d left, heading north. Toward the mountains. Toward the Maroon settlement.
Brodie’s hand tightened on the knife at his belt as he stared at those prints.
A child. Alone in the jungle. Heading toward the mountains.
Either running from something.
Or leading someone straight to them.