Page 18 of The King's Man 3

He gives me a sideways glance.

“But Florentius’s things were confiscated.”

“I retrieved them.”

“Does everyone think I’m dead?”

“Except Florentius, myself, and—”

He gestures across the mounds to an approaching figure. Skriniaris Evander, in the heavy blacks of mourning, carrying his cat in a basket. I jump to my feet, wobbling for a few seconds. He braces for my hug, holding me tightly. “You’re not allowed to die for real, you hear this old man?”

I pull back and see the glimmer of my grandfather; the weight of his plea has me hugging him again, and nodding.

He pats my shoulder, his gaze on Quin. “There’s a boat in the canal outside the gate. Everything you asked for is inside.”

He gently shifts his cat and pulls out two mourning cloaks. One goes to me, the other to Quin, who dons it immediately. “Take the southern route out.”

I throw on the cloak, dizzy. Everyone thinks I’m dead. I can’t stay in the capital. Can’t be discovered.

Quin grabs a bundle hidden behind the log and slings it over his shoulder.

As I follow him, uncertainty about my future clouds my mind. I turn to Skriniaris Evander and ask, “Please, take care of Akilah? Florentius?”

He hides our discarded cloaks in the basket under his cat and speaks softly. “I’ll do my best.”

Quin lifts me into the air and into the treetops. He settles us behind a branch thick with leaves. Below, I see Nicostratus rushing through the gate to the burial grounds, his cloak a dark shadow of grief.

He lets out a pained wail.

My stomach tightens. I pull the golden feather from my belt and squeeze it tight as he cries my name again. I snag Quin’s cloak, pleading.

“The fewer who know the better,” he says, his gaze dropping to the feather in my hand.

I let out a shuddery breath and bow my head. Everyone’s reactions must be believable. Only that will keep Quin safe from the duke.

Nicostratus weeps, and Quin’s fingers twitch at his side, his knuckles white against the fabric of his cloak. He pulls us sharply away, gliding to the gate, where we, our mourning hoods raised, board a traveller’s boat.

Quin sits at the helm, calling gusts to immediately send us on our way. Watching him command the wind is like witnessing a force of nature. His movements are deliberate, precise; impossibly graceful for a man so stiff with pain. I hate how much I want to ask him how he remains so steadfast.

Inside the rustic cabin is a bench and baskets filled with clothing, money, food. His wooden cane. I touch it, and then scramble to the curtained door. “Are you running away with me?”

Though, thinking of it, how presumptuous—to assume the king would accompany me, when Skriniaris Evander might have done so.

He glances at me. “Keep yourself hidden.”

I drop the curtains and peek out between them. “I thought you’d just drop me somewhere safe.”

“I’m meant to appear as though I’m rapidly ageing and dying. I left a letter for my family, explaining I would use my last months to quietly slip away.”

“But your son—”

He stiffens and I lower my gaze. “This is the only way to help him. Veronica will take good care of him. My brother, too.”

We’re quiet for a few bends of the water. I glance at the clothes, the cane, and, as we pass by my home manor, I inch the curtain open and send a quiet wish for their wellbeing. Will I ever see my family again?

“You’ll come back,” Quin murmurs.

I swallow the lump in my throat and I stare outside until the canal bends and my home blinks out of sight behind the luminarium.

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