by Lori Bond
There was a noise behind us. Turning, I found my armor bobbing next to us. I had assumed the thing would sink like a rock to become another piece of deep ocean debris. I had never dreamed the knights could float. It hadn’t floated while I was in it at the bottom of Arthur’s moat. However, I now realized that might have been something Percy had done on purpose.
Will and I swam for the armor, and I grabbed on. Will climbed onto the armor’s chest. It was weird and awkward, and he nearly flipped off it trying to get on.
“You can do this,” he said once he was up there. “It’s not much harder than getting on a surfboard after falling off in deep water.”
I’d never been on a surfboard in my life, but I also didn’t want to stay in the ocean. It felt like my life was leaching away into the water to mingle with the salts. I somehow managed to clamber over my knight’s legs and then sort of pull myself onto the torso. I almost capsized us twice, and I used a lot of words that would have gotten me instant detentions if I had muttered them in school. When I finally got on, I somehow sort of leveraged myself forward so I fell flat on my face onto Will. I sat up so fast I nearly dumped us into the water again, and my face was now so red, my cheeks could single-handedly dry us off.
When I could bring myself to glance at Will’s face, he was grinning. Mercifully, he chose not to comment in the face of my obvious discomfort.
Instead, he pulled off his jacket and peeled at his dripping wet shirt so that I got a glimpse of his abs. Little drops of water glistened on his six pack. To my horror, I stared as if my eyes had lost the ability to look away. He wrung at his shirt squeezing out some of the water.
“Like the view?” Will asked. “You’re staring hard enough.”
I snapped my eyes back up to his face. Will’s grin before was nothing compared to the satisfaction oozing from him now.
“You’re doing this on purpose,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “You’re trying to distract me from that conversation we need to have.” For a second, he had also distracted me from how cold I was. It was a lot warmer sitting on my armor than it had been in the water, but I still shivered.
Will shrugged, but he didn’t deny it.
I looked away at the horizon. I had no idea which direction led to the—hopefully sinking—flying fortress and the knights that would fly from there to rescue us. Everything looked the same from the surface of the water.
“Would you have really killed me?” I finally asked. I didn’t turn back around because I didn’t want to see Will’s face when he admitted that he would have.
“What, no?” Will sounded horrified. When I didn’t look back over, Will nudged my chin in his direction with his finger. His touch was so light, I could have resisted if I wanted, but I turned to him. Will frowned, his eyes not quite meeting mine. I couldn’t tell if he was upset because he had scared me back at the Dreki base or because I believed him capable of shooting me in the head if those were his orders.
“Elaine, it was a bluff. I was trying to distract Evie while I figured out what to do. The Dreki, possibly her father, were watching through those cameras. She couldn’t help, and I needed to think of a plausible way for it to appear like we escaped her. Pretending I’d kill you would buy us some time. I was hoping whoever was watching would tell Evie to stand down.”
“So, there’s no standing kill order?” I asked just to make sure.
Will shook his head. “LANCE hasn’t given me one.”
“That’s reassuring.”
“That doesn’t mean there isn’t one somewhere,” Will added with the sense he was just being honest.
“Less reassuring.”
Will reached over and pulled me up against his side. “Part of what made it a good bluff was that it was so believable,” he said. “No one doubted for a minute that the controller had ordered something like that.”
I shook my head, thwapping Will in the back with my wet ponytail. “I hate to say this, because I hate to think there’s anything Vortigern is right about, but I think he may be right about LANCE. They seem like terrible people.”
“The aims are good,” Will said. He took a few deep breaths for a moment. “The goals, the mission, the ends are all for the greater good.”
“But the means, Will.”
Will’s forehead creased for a second before he got what I meant. “Yeah, I’m also beginning to think the ends might not always justify the means.” Then in a voice so quiet I almost didn’t hear him over the waves, Will added, “But they’re all I have.”
In an equally quiet voice, I said, “You have us now. Arthur and Ginny and me.”
I wasn’t sure he heard me at first, but then his arm around me tightened, pulling me closer. We sat there for a few minutes, bobbing on my armor while the sun dried us and took away the worst of the chill.
“Do you think Vortigern was lying?” he asked at last. I realized this was what worried Will the most. “Do you think LANCE stole me from the Dreki?”
I shrugged, my T-shirt squishing against his side. “I’m not sure it matters. LANCE, Dreki, they both want to use you for their own ends.”
“I don’t know what to do. How to be a good agent and not use this horrible curse I’ve got. As long as I have it, Controller Stormfield, Vortigern, people like the Dreki will want me as a weapon.”
“We don’t want you like that.” I took my head off his shoulder so I could see him better even though my cheek missed the warmth. “Will, quit. Leave LANCE.” My voice wasn’t much above a whisper, but from the way he froze, he’d heard. I’d mentioned quitting to him before but never in such a direct manner.
Will gave a small laugh that wasn’t funny. “LANCE isn’t the kind of place you quit no matter how much you want to leave.”
“LANCE isn’t the kind of place most people quit,” I corrected. “But most people don’t live with Arthur Keep, with Pendragon and the Knights of the Round Table. Most people aren’t under his protection.” I took a deep breath, and then I did the bravest thing I’d ever done. Braver than kissing Will when I thought we’d die, braver than leaping up and punching a vastly superior, trained secret agent in the face, braver than jumping on Vortigern’s back with no armor. That had just been my life at stake. This was putting my heart on the line. I said, “Most people aren’t dating his daughter.” I held my breath, waiting for Will’s reaction and hoping against hope.
Will turned until we were facing each other. He cupped my cheek with one hand and stared at me. It was probably my imagination, but his eyes seemed to have turned a shade darker, like his pupil had dilated even though we sat in full sunlight. “No,” he said after studying my face for an agonizing amount of time. “Most LANCE agents are not dating Keep’s daughter. Thank God for that,” he added. Then he leaned over and kissed me.
This kiss was different from the ones before. For one thing, we weren’t worried about being interrupted by a hail of bullets. That kiss had been hurried with a touch of frantic. We weren’t dangling at the edge of a battle, me desperate for a vision. That kiss had been brief and businesslike with no passion at all.
This kiss was slow and gentle and sweet—the kind that could go on for hours, maybe even days, if we didn’t bother to breathe. This kiss was about us.
I had shut my eyes the moment our lips met, and that same moment, the future stretched out before me again in various strands. I shut that nonsense down before I so much as glimpsed a possibility. I didn’t want to See what would happen in the next two seconds or what might come about in twenty years. For now, I preferred to wrap myself up in the kiss and in Will’s arms. Nothing would distract me from this earth-shattering experience.
It might have only been a minute, it might have been closer to three hours before I realized that someone was clearing their throats behind us. Loudly. Insistently. Over a loudspeaker projected from a knight in a burnt—so even more hideous—purple cape.
Will and I broke apart, with a great deal of reluctance on my part.
“Lovely,” A
rthur said. “Is this what I have to look forward to every time I walk into a room? I’ll have to get Percival to start delivering me warnings so I don’t have to throw up a little bit in my mouth twenty times a day.”
Will grinned at me. “He seems to be coming around to the idea of us being together. He didn’t threaten to kill me this time.”
I wrinkled my nose at Will before turning around and facing my father. “Dad,” I said in a chipper voice, “we saved Will.”
“I noticed.”
“Yes, well, we’re dating now. I thought you should know,” I added in that same bright tone. I clutched Will’s hand wondering if now was when Arthur made threats.
Pendragon’s helm shot up so we could see Arthur’s face, probably so we wouldn’t miss him rolling his eyes at us. “I’d gotten the impression that might be the case. Ginny told me this was coming, and I could either accept it or be a baby about it. She told me to accept it.” Arthur looked like he would start a grand sulk over accepting, so I decided to distract him with our other news.
“And, Dad,” I added. “Will thinks he might want to quit LANCE, and I was hoping you’d make it so they didn’t kill him for leaving.”
Arthur shut his eyes, a pained expression crossing his face for a moment. He shook his head, but this wasn’t about our dating. Arthur knew what a Herculean task it would be keeping not just me but Will out of LANCE’s clutches.
“Princess, Will,” Arthur said, and he opened his eyes back up. His voice was serious. There was no yelling but also no smile. “I’ll do everything I can from lawyers to fighting LANCE soldiers myself to see that both of you stay safe. You have my word.” His right hand made a fist over his heart, and he gave us a small bow.
I gave him an equally courtly nod and then smiled. Arthur might be ragingly immature and a real pain sometimes, but he was honest. He was good for his word. Arthur protected his own, and Will and I were both family. Even if I missed my old boring life, I now appreciated being a part of the circus act that came with being a Keep. I was glad Will was being folded into the show.
Pendragon’s helm snapped back down hiding his face. I pretended it was because Arthur was too overcome with emotions he didn’t want us to see, but I figured he was getting ready to take off. A trio of knights had just flown up and hovered around us.
“Vortigern’s daughter and a small group of Dreki got away, but the Destroyer and the LANCE contingency Stormfield sent secured what’s left of the sinking fortress.” Arthur’s irritated tone became tinged with sarcasm. “LANCE is picking over the tech in there like carrion birds. Fortunately, Morgause destroyed that knight-killing weapon, and Percival erased all records of its existence. Not a tech I would want in LANCE hands. Young man,” Pendragon said, turning to Will, “you have no idea how pleased I am you want a new career.”
The three extra knights flew down until they were within feet of where Will and I bobbed in the ocean.
“Your rides await.” Pendragon gave us another mid-air bow. He reached over and took the hand I offered him. I had assumed he would help me stand so a knight could come together around me, but Arthur had a different idea. Pendragon tossed me straight up into the sky. Unlike the first time that had happened all those weeks ago, I didn’t scream. Instead I laughed and aimed myself at the clouds, pretending I was flying for real, like the Defender did, with no armor. I knew the armor would form around me, and if for some reason it didn’t, Pendragon—Arthur, my dad—was down below waiting to catch me.
EPILOGUE
THAT NIGHT
GINNY FROWNED AT THE SCREEN OF SECURITY FOOTAGE FROM THE Montana ranch. She backed up the video three seconds and played it again. Squinting and leaning closer to the screen, Ginny froze the image. There. The video looped there.
Ginny swore and pulled up the security logs for the ranch. It took her a minute, but she found the patch Tori had inserted to fool the system into believing she and Raul were still there. The timestamp marked the hack occurring just before the Dreki attacked the Rook and took Will. Ginny slammed her hand on the desk. The metal surface began to heat and glow until Ginny reined her fury back. She concentrated and siphoned the heat back into her body away from the table until the surface was once again cool to the touch. It had to be a coincidence that Tori and Raul had left the ranch just as Elaine and Will were put in danger. Surely, they hadn’t sold their daughter out, cut some kind of deal, with the wannabe dragons.
Arthur rushed into the room, his face pale, his fingers making agitated motions as he reached for her. Ginny half rose from her chair, swiping shut her screen. She’d tell Arthur they’d lost Tori and Raul later.
Arthur got to Ginny before she could stand, pulling her the rest of the way up into a giant hug.
“What is it?” she asked although she suspected. Few things made Arthur this upset.
He shook his head for a second against her neck, but then he pulled away until he only held her hands. “I Saw the future shift. It’s bad, Ginny. It’s bad.”
“You, me, or Elaine?” Ginny kept her voice calm, her posture relaxed, the way she outwardly reacted to all of his visions, but inside her heart began to race. It was always bad now. Except for the glimpses he’d gotten of Elaine and Will’s daughter, it had been a long time since Arthur’s visions had portended anything good.
“Will.”
Ginny hid her surprise that Arthur now sensed Will’s future too. Arthur had never once Seen Tori, despite her connection to both Arthur and Elaine. Will really was family.
Ginny turned, freeing her hands from Arthur’s grasp and brought up the screen she kept tied to her hack into the LANCE system. She scanned the files for anything new concerning Will.
Her eyes widened when she found the memo with Will’s name. Her hands shook slightly as she scrolled through to see if the request had been approved or was still pending. Her heart dropped.
“We have to do something,” she said. “Stormfield’s formal request for termination was approved four minutes ago.” She kept her voice controlled, but her mind flew to the two oblivious children tucked up in their beds. This would break Elaine’s heart.
Arthur ran his fingers through his hair, but then dropped his hands to his side. “I know.” His eyes clouded over. With only Ginny present, he didn’t bother to hide the telltale evidence of his clairvoyance. When he had finished Seeing, he shook his head, his eyes clearing again. “If we don’t act, LANCE retires Will in Stormfield’s office in two weeks.”
