Grateful, I did as he said. In his left hand, he held a long stick with which he now felt the bottom of the swamp in front of him. “Because of vulture turtles.” Step by step, he struggled forward, and at some point, he was up to his hips in the black mud, so my pants were soaked with water at the bottom. Frightened, I clung tighter to Nathan, my arms wrapped tightly around his neck. I smelled his hair, his scent of salt and Louisiana, and tried tocalm myself down, but my teeth were chattering. Repeatedly, I shone the flashlight of the cell phone over the opaque water to see if I could spot a snake or something else in our immediate vicinity. The wild boar hut as Nathan called it was not far from his sister’s grave. I was certain that he would find it once we reached Lea’s resting place. He said he could go to Lea blind and deaf.
We didn’t talk much, but I pressed my cheek against his head. We wandered quietly, sometimes to the right, sometimes to the left, past dark trees, brushing against Spanish moss, and when we saw the orange-black writhing of a coral snake under the water’s surface not a yard away, Nathan paused and we stopped breathing. I could have heard a speck of dust sink into the water. Nathan grabbed my hand and squeezed it so tightly that I could barely suppress a scream, the snake, however, slithered away as if we weren’t there.
“That was close,” Nathan said, taking a deep breath.
“Didn’t you say they weren’t aggressive?” I teased because I was so relieved it was gone.
“They’re not. Usually.”
He kept walking, the phone showing 11:10 p.m. At some point, I forced Nathan to take a break, and we climbed up one of the huge tree stumps protruding from the water. We kissed in the moonlight, and at that moment, I knew I would never let Nathan leave my life no matter what. We had been connected since the summer at Rosewood Manor and we always would be.
“What happens afterward?” I asked, looking at him from the side. His dark hair fell to his shoulders and the moonlight outlined his profile bright and sharp, but his lips were soft.
“After what? After this?” He turned his head to me.
“Yes. What are you going to do afterward? Are you going to stay here or return to Coldville?”
Nathan stared through me for a moment as if lost in thought. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “I haven’t thought about it. My parents and Jacob are buried in Coldville and my sister is buried in the bayous. My heart belongs to both places. I couldn’t be anywhere else for long without missing something, but Coldville is unfortunately not an option since the place is as sick as the people there.” He paused briefly. “And you? Where will you go?”
“Wherever you are, of course.”
Nathan laughed tenderly. “Liar.”
“I’m not lying.”
“You’ll forget me as soon as you get back. And by the looks of it, that will be soon. The plan has failed. For good.”
“Are you serious?” That was shocking, but I didn’t know why.
Nathan glanced away. “It’s too dangerous, Will.”
“But.” My voice faded and a leaden heaviness filled my heart. “You live for this plan. You said you owe it to the men and women of Coldville. You said you owed it to the dead!” I didn’t know why it made me angry that he wanted to give up now, maybe because I felt betrayed because everything had been for nothing. Maybe because I didn’t want the man I loved to give up his only goal. For my safety. But that was exactly what I had wanted.
Nathan grabbed my hand. “Willa, when we made our plan, we had no idea. About anything. We were a bunch of angry young men, two or three of whom could steer a small cutter. A few others could shoot well because they were experienced hunters and another was a tech freak. The rest wanted to avenge the dead and those who would follow. We were never professionals, we’re not full-time hostage takers, and we completely underestimated your father’s power. We believed that with you, we had him completely under control and the rest would be child’s play, but that wasn’t true. We don’t work as a group either…you can see that yourself. I’ve known many of themen since I was a child, even if I hadn’t seen them in years…” He paused. “We dug graves together, built crosses, and mourned the dead. Buried our friends. Our families. One helped the other when they didn’t know what to do. I thought it would be enough that we had experienced something like that repeatedly together. I truly believed that counted for something.” He sounded resigned and full of doubt. “But now look at them: they betrayed each other for money and revenge.”
“You mean Sparta and Troy…Stanton and Noah?” I subconsciously corrected myself, but now that I reflected on it, I knew why. It was finally over. The princess and the Agamemnon. The men, the false names, and their secret plan. This place. Everything was about to change. I felt the pull of the whirlpool inside me like a hurricane that would sweep me away and maybe send me home in the end. Back to Dad. Back to Delilah and Penelope. Homesickness fluttered through my core as strong as in the beginning, surprising me.
With a strange feeling, I looked at Nathan, who shook his head. “No, I mean all of them, Will. Not just Stanton and Noah. It changed all of us. Me too.” His eyes looked sad. “I sent Kjertan away. The only one I’ve always trusted. The only one who was truly honest.”
Gott hjarta. I squeezed his fingers. “But you sent him away to protect me.”
“Yes,” he replied softly. When he looked at me, his eyes shimmered as vulnerable as a little boy’s. “Because I love you.”
His words made me smile. It had definitely changed him, but also in a positive way.
We were silent for a moment, listening to the night, but everything was quiet except for the call of an owl.
“I should have listened to my gut with Pan. It told me it wasn’t him, never could have been,” Nathan muttered.
“Maybe we’ll find him again. Maybe he hasn’t gotten that far yet.”
Nathan tried to smile but failed. “Yeah, maybe.”
We kept walking, and that night I made a promise to myself. When I returned to New York, I would find out everything I could about Coldville. I would go through my dad’s files, secretly if necessary, to find the culprit, whoever it was. Maybe I could bring justice to the people of Canada and then go back to Nathan. For the first time in my life, I would do something, try to do something I could be truly proud of, something that mattered and made things happen rather than stopping time and putting my feelings on canvas.
Nathan was right in the end, he found Lea’s burial place. When the moon had moved across the sky, we finally reached the wild boar hut. It would have taken us only an hour or two by boat but it had taken half the night. We slipped out of our wet clothes and made love on the wooden floor of the hut. We made love with all our inner conflict, our passion, and the knowledge that this time in Louisiana was over. And even in this love, Nathan was honest, completely himself, sometimes sad, and sometimes angry. I gave him everything I had, all of me and my promise to complete his plan. Later, we lay next to each other, hearts pounding and staring at the ceiling, intoxicated as if the wild, mysterious patterns of the Palace of Shards were dancing there. I recalled Nathan’s words from back then:Can you actually get out of your cage?
Nathan was the first to tell me I was not free. At this moment though, it felt like I had broken through the bars, like my life was no longer chained to the sacrifice Dad had made for me. I could decide for myself what I wanted to do and who I belonged to.
