CHAPTER 43 - Elara
The darkness of the under-canals swallowed the launch, burying the sound of Vivienne’s distant screams beneath a heavy, concrete silence.
Neither of us spoke. The only sound in the cramped cabin was the steady, mechanical chug of the diesel engine and the frantic, heavy rhythm of our breathing.
Sylas stood at the wheel, his silhouette a rigid, unyielding shadow against the dim green glow of the old dashboard.
The river water was still dripping from his clothes, pooling on the floorboards around his boots, but his hands were steady on the iron wheel.
I sat on the canvas sails, my right hand clutched tightly around the kindle, my left arm pinned against my ribs.
The cold rain had washed the fresh blood from my sweater, leaving the fabric heavy, freezing, and stuck to my skin.
But I didn't feel the cold. I didn't feel the pain in my shoulder.
Every nerve in my body was firing, charged with an electric, breathless frequency that kept my eyes locked on the back of his head.
We moved through the unmapped belly of London for twenty minutes, turning through three separate brick junctions before Sylas finally cut the throttle.
The boat drifted to a silent stop against a rotting wooden dock deep inside a cavernous, abandoned limehouse vault. It was pitch black—a dead-end pocket of the canal network that even Vance’s scanners couldn't trace.
Sylas stepped down from the helm. He didn't offer a hand, and I didn't ask for one. I scrambled over the gunwale, my sneakers hitting the damp stone floor of the vault, the kindle tucked securely into my waistband. He followed a second later, his heavy boots making no sound on the wet rock.
He pulled a small pocket flashlight from his jeans, clicking it on.
The thin beam of light caught the raw brick walls, tracing a path to a small, dry alcove where a couple of old wool blankets were stacked on a wooden crate.
He set the flashlight down on the crate, pointing the beam upward so it bathed the alcove in a soft, indirect amber glow.
Then, he turned to face me.
The silence between us was absolute, thick with the adrenaline of the escape and the sudden, terrifying realization that we were completely alone. The walls of our temporary icebox had stayed behind in the shipping yard. There was no desk between us, no laptops, no code to analyze.
Sylas took a step closer, his gray eyes wide, dark, and wild under the faint light. He looked over my soaked sweater, his jaw locked tight as his gaze tracked the dark stain on my left shoulder.
“Are you hurt?” he asked, his voice nothing more than a rough, gravelly whisper that cut straight through the quiet.
“No,” I breathed, my heart hammering violently against my ribs as I looked up at him. I took a step into his space, my eyes tracing the tear in his sweater, the dark river water still matting his hair to his forehead. “You?”
“No.”
The words were barely out of his mouth before the last remaining thread of control snapped.
Sylas lunged forward, his long arms reaching out to lock around my waist, lifting me completely off my feet as he slammed his mouth against mine.
It wasn't a question, and it wasn't a desperate plea to see if I was breathing.
It was a fierce, possessive collision that shattered the darkness of the vault.
I let out a sharp, ragged gasp against his lips, my right hand instantly shooting up to bury itself into his wet hair, pulling him down even closer. My uninjured arm wrapped around his neck with a fierce, desperate strength, anchoring myself to him as he backed me up against the raw brick wall.
His mouth moved against mine with a raw, breathless intensity that tasted of winter rain and adrenaline.
He pressed his entire weight against me, his chest a hot, frantic wall of muscle that crushed the coldness right out of my skin.
His hands slid up my back, his fingers tangling into the wet calico curls at the nape of my neck, tilting my head back to take more, to push deeper into the kiss.
I didn't care about the pain in my shoulder.
I didn't care about Vance, the Board, or the fact that we had just stolen the keys to an empire.
All that mattered was the solid, burning heat of his body against mine, the way his fingers trembled as they clutched my jaw, and the sudden, wild realization that the cage was completely gone.