“Then what—”
“This place was built twice,” I said, pulling her along. “The second time, over a set of seven-hundred year old ruins.”
The air was getting colder and danker now. We were reaching older tunnels that were almost completely dark.
“It’s also built on a hill,” I said. “Because originally… ah, there it is.”
The door was ancient oak, from a tree a thousand and a half years dead. It was heavy and thick. Banded with iron.
And it was also propped open, exactly as Randall said it would be.
We pushed thr
ough, and the waterfront of the city lay spread out before us. Beyond that, the Aegean Sea… its surging whitecaps sparkling like jewels in the moonlight.
I let go of her hand. It was a little crazy, but almost immediately, I missed the comfort of her touch.
“Can you run?”
There were voices above us. Everyone from the party, being forced to exit from a choke-point between the castle’s two main turrets.
“Faster than you.”
I whipped my head to look at her. She wasn’t even out of breath.
“Division one Track and Field,” she boasted. “Eight-hundred meters. Fifteen hundred meters…”
Her lips were plump and full… and wet too, like she’d just licked them. Suddenly I wanted to kiss them again. Shit, I wanted to go on kissing her forever.
“Four-hundred meter hurdles,” she went on. “Long jump, triple jump…”
“Alright, alright,” I laughed out loud. “I love it.”
The voices grew louder, probably because the crowd was getting bigger. But I could hear others now too. Sharper voices, barking orders.
“I’ll say when,” I said.
“Say where too,” she replied. “I don’t want to have to wait up for you.”
She was cocky, I’d give her that. Especially for someone who’d just botched an assassination. The idea that she’d tried to pull it off all by herself was still unbelievable to me.
“See the wharf?”
I pointed. She nodded.
“That’s where we’re going.”
I looked back at her again, this time with all new eyes. She was five-foot-nothing. Curves in exactly the right places. Her long blonde hair was pinned back over her ears, her stark blue eyes scanning the landscape laid out before us.
She’s not afraid.
It was the first thing that really struck me about her. That in all the chaos, all the confusion, she hadn’t even flinched.
In fact, she was handling everything with an uncanny calm and precision.
We already knew who she was, of course. Why she was here. Her reasons were so eerily similar to our own, we already felt a strange kinship without even knowing her.
And now I’d kissed her…