Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Find Sig. NOW!” Weston yells as I leap off the bottom rung of the mast into his arms. The climb down was a blur.
My arms and legs moved so quickly, it felt like I was flying.
He catches me easily and launches me toward the steps.
I descend them quickly, my boots pounding into the wood as he and Jorn run behind me, but instead of following down the second set of steps, they peel off down the hallway.
“Weapons!” Weston commands, and I hear his footsteps pound toward our room and Jorn’s toward Sig’s. He’ll get mine; I know he will. Right now, my sole focus is finding Sig.
“Sig!” My voice cracks with my scream. Leaping from the last few steps, my knees threaten to buckle as I pound into the floor, startling a few of the crew who sit in the lounge. I scan their faces, hoping one of them is hers, but they all just stare blankly back at me.
I race down the hall and throw the door to the showers open, and barely even register the startled looks of the Castaways inside.
“Sig!” I call, but there’s no response. “Shit,” I mutter and spin, the door slamming behind me as I sprint down the hall, past the infirmary, straight to the mess.
Calls of my name sound garbled as I block out all other sounds.
I know I look frantic, because I am. But I can’t stop. I need to find her.
“Signee!” I scream as I burst into the mess, still full of crew eating a late dinner. The noise feels deafening as I scan the room frantically, but my shriek must have cut through it.
There.
Sig’s head snaps toward the door from where she sits across the room. The muscles in her face turn to stone as she takes in my panic, and she shoots out of her chair.
“What’s wrong?” she says. “Is it Jorn?”
I sprint toward her, skidding to a halt in front of the table, before I grip her arm and yank her firmly.
“We need to go. Now.”
The crew sitting around her stare at us, but I ignore them. I can’t explain in front of them. I can’t take up any more time than it took to find her. I sprint back to the door, dragging her along with me, but I can feel her hesitation.
“Lennox, what is going on?”
My chest heaves as we fly up the first set of stairs, but I need to give her something and get to the deck as fast as possible.
“We found it, Sig. We found the dust, or, we think we did.”
I can feel the change in her the moment my words sink in. Her arm yanks from my grip as she runs faster, no longer needing me to drag her and urge her to move.
“You better not be fucking with me!”
“I’m not, I swear!”
We hit the first floor and bound up the last set of steps. Sig’s long legs take two at a time, and she pulls in front of me before we burst out onto the deck. Jorn and Weston wait at the gangway, tension filling their already armed bodies and hands laden with Sig and my waiting weapons.
The moment I’m close enough, Weston grabs my waist and shoves my dagger into my waistband before his palm is hot and urgent on my back.
“Go!” he yells, urging me forward, and the four of us take off running.
My boots pound into the dark rock, the steps so quick that my feet barely hit the floor before pushing off again. Sig and Jorn pull ahead, but Weston stays beside me, even though I know he could be running past all of us in a moment. He won’t leave me behind.
“Through the tunnels!” he barks, and we don’t slow down. The four of us barrel straight through the portal, the magic barely a flash around us before we’re inside.
“Will someone tell me what the fuck is going on?” Sig yells.
The torches flare to life, barely able to keep up with our speed as we sprint into the darkness.
Legs pumping as hard as I can, it’s as if my body has completely forgotten the intensive training Weston just put me through with the anticipation of finding the dust. My chest heaves with breaths, but I barely feel any of it.
My only thoughts are of what could be waiting for us on the other side of the island.
“I saw a glow,” Jorn says. “A glow I’ve never seen before. It was in the forest.”
“Do you really think—” Sig starts, and Weston doesn’t even let her finish.
“Yes.”
The certainty in his tone makes my chest swell. It’s as if he knows without any doubt that this is what Edmond had been telling us. He doesn’t need confirmation to believe it; it just feels right. And after seeing the glow, there can be no other explanation.
“Shit,” she curses, and focuses back on the dark tunnel ahead.
We take the same path Weston and I used only days ago, the one to meet Roley near the edge of the forest. This time, we don’t bother stopping to check our surroundings for threats as we follow each other through the portal.
Jorn takes the lead, and Sig follows closely behind as he cuts straight through the trees.
“Where is it?” she asks, her voice laden with heavy breaths.
“Straight back!” Jorn yells, gesturing off into the distance.
We weave through the trees, leaping over felled logs and jutting rocks.
The terrain is just as treacherous as the last time I ran through this forest, but with every stumble, Weston steadies me, his hands wrapping around my waist and urging me to keep going.
Trees whir past, and from the corner of my eye I see the cabin from that night.
I pull my focus from it, and back onto the darkness before us that gets deeper the farther we go.
I breathe in, trying to shutter the rise in emotions from being reminded of that night so abruptly, and then it hits me.
The scent in the air.
It’s the same scent I noticed when Dane brought me to the cabin days ago. I couldn’t place it before, but it seemed…familiar, and felt like a small bit of magic washed over me, making me feel content and happy. Hopeful.
It was the dust.
It is the same scent I inhaled every time Dane opened the pouch. The fragrant floral notes washed over me in Blackwood, back when the Guardian showed up to whisk me away to this magical land.
This is it. We really found it.
The revelation fuels me, and I push impossibly harder, despite barely being able to see Sig and Jorn in front of us. I’m trusting the island, trusting it will bring us right to it, and that it will end this involuntary fate.
Then I see it.
Just ahead, the barest hint of light breaks through the darkness, glowing like a beacon and drawing us straight toward it, the same glow we saw from the mast.
I can barely breathe. My chest feels like it might explode as my legs fly beneath me, and the glow gets closer and closer.
I’m so focused on it, fixated, that I almost slam into Sig’s back as she comes to a stop in front of me.
I step up beside her, and tears spring into my eyes as they fall onto the pocket of forest that no longer is coated by darkness.
Everything shimmers. The colors and glitter are like I’ve never seen before.
No gold or jewels back in the castle match the magic that is before us, coating the trees.
Blooming, sparkling golden flowers unlike anything you would ever expect to grow in a dark forest cover every branch, from the trunks to the peaks.
The smell is intoxicating, and waves of happiness roll through me as I crane my neck, jaw slackened, and stare up at the branches.
It’s the only light in the otherwise complete darkness.
Edmond knew.
I don’t know how, but he did.
Light always finds a way, even through the blackest woods.
I always thought it was only a lesson, something that was passed through our kingdom because of the descriptive words chosen to mimic the kingdom’s name.
It was always a lesson about having hope, finding the light in the darkness, the good in the bad, the happiness in the despair.
But it was more than that. It was a way to let us know we could return, that we weren’t hopeless.
It was our way home.
A peal of laughter cuts through the quiet, the only other sound being the collective heaving of our strained breaths. I glance over at Sig and find the brightest smile I’ve ever seen on her splitting face. She jumps up and down, her eyes on the trees above as another wave of laughter overtakes her.
I whirl around, my eyes searching for Weston, and they find him, hands resting on top of his head, and a complete look of disbelief and wonder painting his features as he takes in the glowing grove behind me.
His eyes are wide as they meet mine, and huffs a small laugh.
“We found it. We fucking found it,” he murmurs. The grin that pulls at his lips glows brighter than the dust around us and makes my chest clench. After all this time, this was the moment he had been waiting for, the moment where all his sacrifice finally mattered, and I get to witness it.
His strides are long as he closes the distance between us. He sweeps me into his arms, and crushes me against his chest as his face falls into the crook of my neck. I can feel his smile against my skin, and I can’t stop mine as I wrap my arms around his neck and hold him tight.
Laughter bubbles from my chest as he spins us around in circles, his bulging arms flexing and trembling as if I can’t possibly get any closer.
Pure joy emanates from him, as we spin around, and his laughter mixes with mine.
My head spins when he stops abruptly, pulling back just enough that I can see his emotions all over his face as he presses his forehead to mine.
“We can go home,” he says, his voice a low rumble. “We didn’t lose hope, and now we can leave.”
“You didn’t lose hope, Weston. You never wanted to stop trying. You’re the one who kept everyone safe and happy so that they got to go home. You did this.”
His eyes soften as they dart between mine, just before he’s kissing me, his lips bruising as his arms tighten again, further caging me against his body.
I can’t control my smile through the kiss when I hear Jorn’s crow and Sig’s screams of excitement coming from behind me, and use the distraction to push against Weston’s chest.
“We need to get the pouch right now. We have to go to camp.”
He nods and lowers me to the ground as the commanding captain takes over once again, figuring out the strategy and taking the next steps.
It’s as if the time that no longer mattered merely an hour ago now flies by. When you have an unlimited amount, haste means nothing, but the moment that disappears, it is everything. We can’t waste another minute.
We can go home. We can leave tonight if we want to.
We were given our choice back, and the buzz of energy in the air makes me feel like the island is watching, waiting to see what we do with it.