He shoves me again. “You’ll stay here till I’m finished with you.”
And then I reach with my free hand, down into my boot. It’s difficult. I can scarcely reach it, his grip on me is so tight, but then I feel it on the tip of my fingers, and I reach harder and I grasp it, drawing it up and holding it in his face with a trembling hand.
“No, I won’t!” I bellow, and the entire island seems to fall quiet for a second before the whole sky lights up with a crack of lightning and the loudest thunder I’ve ever heard in my life.
Peter’s face crumbles in a funny way. Like I’m betraying him?
Calla’s sitting there, frozen. She’s wrapped in a blanket now. She finally looks something other than smarmy. Now she looks afraid.
“Leave,” Peter says, nodding his head towards the door. “Now.”
I nod once, backing away from him. “Happily.”
“And don’t come back.” He spits. Literally spits. “You’re banished.”
“Good.” I nod, wiping my leaky face.
“Good.” He nods back, insolent. “Go back to England.”
“Can’t wait.” I glower at him.
He rolls his eyes. “Good luck getting home without me, you stupid girl.”
“Oh, I’ll be all right.” I nod coolly, though on the inside, I’m jelly. “I’ve figured out everything else around here without you.”
His eyes fall down me like I’m now a thing he hates. “You’re not as smart as you think you are.”
“Yes, I am.” I glare at him. “And when I get home, I’m nailing that window shut.”
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
I left with nothing. Just what I’m wearing and the dagger. I walked to the door as calm as I could because I didn’t want him to see that I was afraid, and once I felt sure I was out of his line of sight, I ran.
Straight to the dock, where waves like tsunamis were beating up against it. I threw myself into the little fishing boat, and I started to paddle.
Crazy in a storm like this, like trying to blow a bubble inside a tornado.
I thought the waves would stop me, actually—that they’d be upset that I left him and pull me back to the shore in front of the house, but they’re propelling me, this great current that I can’t see, water travelling in a different direction from the way the wind is blowing it, and I suppose that’s it, isn’t it? He’s literally pushing me away, across an ocean. I guess now I really am free. And if I’m free now, then what was I before? That question feels like a sinkhole that opens up inside my mind that I’ll skirt around for the rest of my life.
I think Peter keeps the storm on full blast so I might catch my death.
I wash up to shore eventually. The ocean sort of tosses me from the boat, and I fall onto the wet sand like a dead body in a bag, and before I’m even sure I’m fully out of it, the current snatches the boat away.
I watch the little boat get beaten and pounded as it drifts back to where it took me from, and I feel a grave gratefulness for it before my mind turns to wonder how it is I’ll get back to where I’m truly from. Or perhaps most pertinently, where I can even go now at all in the meantime.
I can’t go to Rye because I don’t want to see Calla.
I don’t know how to find Rune; Rune finds me.
In no uncertain terms could I climb Neverpeak in this weather. Maybe in the morning once the storm dies down, I could get to Itheelia or John.
And I know I’m kidding myself, avoiding acknowledging what I already know to be true. There’s a reason that I ran to the harbor without a second thought.
There’s one person on this stupid island who I trust to help me, and I don’t want to see him, even if I always do.
He’s not home when I get there.
I’m unreasonably cross about it too,* as though he were to know I was coming. If we were meant to be, he would is a lie I tell myself to keep me indignant and proud in a moment that would otherwise be terribly cold and humbling.
I bunch my legs up as I sit by his door. I’m under cover, and somehow, the rain is still slamming right into my face. It feels personal, and it probably is.
I’m not just fighting with Peter but the entire island, it would seem.
I wait for a long time. That feels personal too, or in the very least, it feels long. Shivering away in this terrible cold because Jamison decided not to be home when I need him to be.
Better than him being home with someone else, I suppose.
Considerably worse though would be if he were to arrive home now with another woman,? and why wouldn’t he?