Page 65 of Reign of Light
“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, tensionfilling 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 botherstopping 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.
