The ferry took an hour and eight minutes. Nobody talked for the first forty.
I stood at the rail with Maki draped across my shoulders, watching the island shrink behind us. The Crucible's rim caught the early light and threw it back, that big volcanic scar where I had put Julian Valerius on his knees in front of twenty thousand people, where Reyna had told me to stop holding back and then broken her own arm proving she meant it. Somewhere on the mainland, three hundred miles of coast away, Reyna was probably awake and running stairs and texting me things she would deny later.
She is currently doing pull-ups and has checked her phone six times, Nel offered.
"Not helping."
I never claimed to help. I claimed to narrate.
The lattice moved.
