Chapter 24

C HAPTER 24

Time slows down, and I feel frozen in shock as Victoria collapses.

"No!" a voice screams (maybe mine), and time speeds back up.

I sink my nails into the soft, muddy grass and pull my feet out of the hot spring. I dive toward the princess, but Brooke's arms close around me. She pulls me away from Victoria's unconscious body as Henry and Theo kneel over their sister.

"Tor! Tor! Can you hear me? Victoria!" Theo screams, shaking her shoulders. Wet hair is tangled across her face.

My stomach lurches. I turn and press my face into Brooke's shoulder. The air is freezing, and our knees knock together.

"She's already weak, and the heat must have gone to her head. I should have said something," Brooke whispers. I pull back and look up at her. Her face is stricken, but if anyone's at fault for this, it's not her. The guilt makes me nauseous.

"She's not responding," Henry says.

I squeeze my eyes shut as a chorus of denial echoes through my bones. Not now. Not yet. Not now. Not yet. Not now. Not yet.

"She needs water and food," Theo roars, snapping me back to reality.

This is happening now, and we can still save her.

"You get water," I tell Henry. "We'll find fruit."

I grab the backpack and turn it upside down. First aid supplies, Winston's handcuffs, and spare clothes scatter across the ground, but our passion fruit supply is gone, and our water supply is drained.

We sprint into the dark trees, and I'm immediately disoriented. Brooke veers to the left, and I hear Henry to my right, but the pitch black keeps me from seeing anything. I stick my hands out and move slowly, but soon I'm tangled in damp leaves and muddy moss.

"Find anything?" I yell.

"Not yet!" Brooke calls, barely audible over the sound of my jagged breaths.

"Hurry!" Theo screams. The terror in his voice makes my blood run cold. This is taking too long.

My eyes slowly adjust to the dark and I finally run into a passion fruit vine. "I found some!" I call into the black as I untangle myself and load my arms with as many as I can hold. I drop half of what I'm carrying, stumbling over my own feet in panic, but still have a handful of fruit when I reach Theo's side. I drop to my knees and bite open a passion fruit. Theo holds Victoria's mouth open, and I squeeze the juice onto her tongue.

"Do it again," he tells me. "Come on, Tor. Wake up," he pleads, tears slipping down his cheeks.

"We've got more," Henry calls, running out of the forest behind Brooke with loaded arms. They drop piles of passion fruit and a filled water bottle to the ground. Henry tips the liquid into her mouth until she's swallowed several gulps, and then Brooke and I take turns breaking the fruit apart and dripping pulpy juice into Victoria's mouth.

I'm desperate and frenzied, covered in sticky juice and goose bumps, tears pooling in my eyes and a pain welling in my chest, when Victoria finally coughs and opens her eyes.

"Oh thank god," a voice says. (Maybe me.) I crumple, and Theo catches me, his arms wrapping around my shoulders. The pain in my stitches flares.

"Eat this," Henry says, pushing a passion fruit into Victoria's hand.

Victoria slowly eats, then drains the entire bottle of water. After a long, tense moment, she sits up and sucks the juice off her fingers. "Why all the panicked faces?" She bats her eyelashes innocently.

Henry laughs weakly, but Theo sits back wordlessly, his eyes wide with shock.

"How are you feeling?" I ask.

"Fine." I don't comment on the way her eyes seem to slide out of focus when she looks at me. Then, more quietly, she says, "Thank you for the fruit." She picks up another piece and bites it open.

"You shouldn't get back in the hot spring," Brooke says, handing Victoria one of the extra shirts that we brought with us.

"Obviously." Victoria's eyelashes bob in the moonlight as she avoids making eye contact with any of us. She pulls the shirt on and wraps her arms around her knees, looking more scared than I've ever seen her.

"You should sleep by Comet tonight," I blurt.

"Okay," she whispers. I want to do more, but I feel utterly helpless.

The mood of our little campout has turned quiet and anxious. Brooke starts the fire in silence, and Victoria is asleep with her head on Comet's stomach by the time the flames are big enough to produce heat. Henry takes the spot next to his sister, his breathing turning slow and even within minutes. Brooke checks in on me to make sure I'm okay (a word that has lost all meaning), and then she dozes off too.

When everyone else is asleep, Theo finally moves from the edge of the hot spring to the last open spot around the fire. He lies a few feet away from me and stares at the inky sky in a silence that neither one of us knows how to break.

"I miss Greece," he finally says.

I take a deep breath, trying to block out the pain in my arm. "I miss when life didn't feel like a curse."

Theo turns his head to the side, his eyes at half-mast. "You were never the curse," he murmurs. His eyes shutter closed and I watch him for a long moment, starlight glinting off his lips and lashes.

I shift onto my side, trying to get comfortable on the cold ground, but pain radiates through my arm, making it impossible to think about anything else. After what feels like hours of tossing and turning, I give up on sleep and tiptoe to the hot spring.

I prod my scarlet, swollen stitches with my finger and hiss in pain.

This might be a mistake, but here goes nothing.

I slip my shirt off and step out of my pants. I leave them carefully folded by the edge of the spring and step into the hot water. I sink down until the scalding, soothing water reaches my neck and tip my head back with a sigh as the throbbing in my arm subsides.

Now that it's gone, I realize the pain was like being in a room with the TV on, the volume inching up little by little. It was background noise until suddenly it was the loudest noise of all, drowning out everything else.

Blissfully, it's finally quiet. My head clears for the first time since the crash, and an old familiar daydream flickers to life in its absence.

Theo and me in Chicago, taking the train like he's not one of the most famous people in the world. I invent a hundred reasons why we'd be out together (taking Comet and Wally for a walk, coming home from a Cubs game, running through an entire roll of film on my Polaroid camera), in a hundred different conditions (the first snow of the season, drowning in humidity, crunching leaves under our feet). We take our time, because the world isn't ending, and no one is dying, and we get to make our own future. The picture is fuzzy around the edges, slipping out of my fingers like a dream the moment you wake up, but I pretend it's the life we'd have if we were different people in different circumstances.

When I get frustrated with the impossibility of it all, I imagine myself in a crown in Buckingham Palace. Weirdly, this future is easier to see, because it's not impossible. Theo can never join my world, but I could join his, and we'd follow a path laid out for generations. I tip my head back to gaze at the stars and lie to myself about destiny.

"What about your stitches?"

Theo's voice startles me. I twist around to see him standing shirtless on the edge of the spring, his toes inches from the water.

I cross my arms over my chest on instinct, though the water's too dark and murky for him to see anything scandalous. "I'm risking it."

He nods distractedly and rakes a hand through his hair. "Okay."

The silence between us stretches paper thin. "You couldn't sleep either?"

"No. I, um—" He clears his throat and paces the side of the hot spring. "I need to say something."

My heart beats double-time.

He stops abruptly and spins to face me. His jaw clenches. "You aren't the reason my life is a mess. I am lucky to know you, Wren Wheeler, and it was criminal for me to imply otherwise. I'm sorry." He looks like the words were tortured out of him.

"Thank you," I wheeze. I stopped breathing somewhere around the word "lucky." "I'm sorry for what I said too. About how I'd be better off if we'd never met." I knew I was a liar the moment I answered Theo's Would You Rather question.

His gaze hits the ground as he rubs the back of his neck. I've never seen him so unsure.

"Is there something else you wanted to say?"

"Yes, but—" He cuts himself off and looks at the sky. At anywhere but me, it feels like. "Do you want to play another game?" he asks suddenly.

Talk about emotional whiplash. "The last one didn't go very well."

His teeth scrape over his bottom lip. "I'm a bit desperate here, and this is the only thing I can think of."

"What kind of game?"

"We're each allowed to ask each other three questions, and we can't lie."

"That's not a game, that's a conversation."

"Something we're notoriously good at," he deadpans.

"Hey! I've gotten better."

"Well then, Wheeler, let's have a conversation." Now that he's made eye contact, we're locked. I couldn't look away to save my life.

My stomach lurches. I'm getting braver, but sincerity is still the scariest thing. "Three questions."

He nods to the water. "Do you mind if I get in?"

Yes. No. My heart thrums painfully. "I won't stop you."

He cocks his head to the side, annoyed. "See, you're being evasive already."

"Me?" I gasp in faux surprise. "I'm not the one who refused to answer my Would You Rather question."

"It won't happen again," he promises. He unbuttons his jeans. "Fair warning, I'm going to take off my pants now." Maybe it's the heat, but I'm suddenly lightheaded. I don't remember what we were talking about. A soft sigh escapes his lips as he sinks into the hot water.

My throat dries up.

He advances toward me but stops just shy of arm's length, which is probably for the best, because I'm internally freaking out.

"All right, Wheeler, question one. Are you ready?"

My stomach is fluttery, and I feel pinned in place by his eyes. "Do your worst." (My false bravado is out of control.)

"During Would You Rather, you said you'd go back in time. Is that to avoid meeting me… or something else?" he asks. Direct and to the point.

I swallow my nerves. "I'd do it again without changing a thing." Even if we'll never get autumn walks past the brownstones in Lincoln Park, I can't bring myself to regret a single minute of knowing King Theodore Geoffrey Edward George.

He edges closer and his eyes flutter closed for a split second. His shoulders relax a fraction. He's moving in inches, as if worried about scaring me away. He should be. There's a part of me that wants to run, but as always, there's something about Theo and me that feels inevitable. We can fight it all we want, but the universe will run our airplane into the ground before it allows us to outrun each other.

"What's your second question?" I ask.

He looks at me like he knows something I don't. "Turns out I only needed one."

"Are you serious?"

"All right, all right. Er. Oh, I've got one! Is it true that Americans eat peanut butter and jelly on the same sandwich?"

I bark out a laugh. "What kind of question is that? Yes, we eat PB and J sandwiches, and yes, they're delicious."

He grins. "Fascinating. Three—"

"You already asked three questions."

"No, I didn't."

"Your first one was when you asked if you could get in the water."

He slants me a frustrated look. "That's against the spirit of the game, Wheeler, and I have a real question this time."

"Why do you call me ‘Wheeler'?" I blurt it without thinking and regret it immediately. I hadn't planned on wasting one of my questions on this.

He narrows his eyes and slides an inch closer. "It just happened. It probably started as a doomed attempt to put some casual distance between us, but then I saw the way your eyes sparked when I said it. You looked half annoyed and half in love with me, and I guess I got addicted to that expression."

"No one with an accent like yours should be allowed to be so charming. It's not fair." I never stood a chance.

His expression softens into one of amused delight. "I'll take that under advisement. Question two?"

"Why did you write your real name on our marriage certificate?"

He exhales in relief. "I would have let you have as many questions as it took until you asked me that."

I'm flustered, both dying for his answer and nervous about what he might say. "If it meant nothing, that's fine. I'm not expecting—"

"Wheeler." He moves closer. "I didn't plan it, and I don't have a good explanation, but when we stood on that beach and said our vows, I realized all of mine were true. It's that simple. I did it because I meant it."

He reaches up and brushes a wild strand of hair off my forehead, his fingers trailing fire everywhere he touches. In the water, his foot nudges mine.

"I know that piece of paper has made everything infinitely more complicated, but I thought I was dying, and I loved you, and in that moment, I wanted to marry you as me, not as Blaze Danger. I wanted it to be a decision I made for myself." He wears an expression that I've memorized down to my bones: it's the same look he gave me when I took his picture with a Polaroid camera in Greece, and for the first time, I realize it wasn't the angle or the early-morning magic light or even my mind playing tricks on me.

"I meant it too," I whisper, closing the final distance between us until my body is flush against his. He hooks a finger onto the chain around my neck, his pupils expanding in the dark. He lifts the necklace out of the water and stares at his ring for a long time, before gently letting it slip from his fingers and tucking a finger in the waistband of my underwear.

I'm buzzing everywhere.

"I think that might be a bad idea," I whisper, my lips brushing against his.

"I'm certain of it," he answers, and I squash the flash of guilt that hits me.

There's a warning on the edge of my consciousness telling me there's something I'm forgetting, one more question I have to ask. But when Theo tilts his lips to mine and whispers, "Third question?," the words that come out of my mouth are "Why haven't you kissed me yet?"

His hands rest on my waist, and even in the heat of the spring, his touch is searing. The kiss starts as a question—hesitant and soft. Everything fades away, and we're not in a hurry. I feel rooted to the muddy earth as we melt into each other, the burn in my chest answering the only question that really matters. His tongue presses against mine and the pace of the kiss changes. From question to answer to desperate resolve. He clasps my waist and presses his body to mine, opening an ache in me that I've done my best to ignore. We fit as easily together as we did in Greece, and the months of waiting finally catch up to us. I worry that if I keep kissing him, I won't know how to stop.

I rake one of my hands through his hair and he swears softly in my ear. He pushes us backward until we hit the edge of the spring, where he flips us around and presses my back against the muddy banks. He sinks his teeth into my bottom lip, and I hiss in pleasure. His hands are everywhere: in my hair, tracing my collarbone, pressing an indent of his ring against my sternum, feathering lightly across my stomach. His mouth breaks free from mine and trails down my neck, and then reality hits.

"Theo." My chest heaves with the effort of not kissing him. "I have one more question."

"You already had three," he growls, kissing me behind the ear.

"I know. But it's important."

"Only one more," he whispers, sending shivers across my damp shoulders. "And then I get to kiss you again."

"What are we going to do when we get off this island?"

He draws back, his brows scrunched in confusion. "What do you mean?"

"How are we going to make this work? The public needs a story, and obviously the Firm is going to want to be involved in figuring all this out."

The heat drains from Theo's eyes as his hands fall away from me. "I'm not telling the Firm."

"We can't exactly sneak around without them finding out. You travel with an entourage everywhere you go."

"Right."

Now I'm the one confused. "So we are going to tell them?"

" No. They'll want to control every aspect of your life. How you dress and where you go and who you spend your time with. You'll become another piece on their chessboard, something to be maneuvered to their advantage, and that's if they decide that you're allowed to stick around. If not, Graves will plant horrible stories about you in the press and ruin your life. There is no scenario in which you win."

I finally understand, and I feel like an idiot for not getting it sooner. He won't tell the Firm, because after we're rescued, there'll be nothing to tell. I swallow the emotion in my throat and force out the next words. "What if I don't want to win anything but you?"

"I'm sorry, but I love you too much to ever let you date me," he says simply, like those three little words won't change my entire world.

"You're in love with me—present tense?"

He laughs softly as he lifts our intertwined hands out of the water and kisses each of my knuckles in turn. "Did I not make that obvious? I'm in love with you, past, present, and future, which is why there is no world in which I would ever subject you to the life that killed my father."

I think of my palace-and-ball-gown daydreams. Theo and Me. King and Queen. Fate. The whole shebang.

But when I look at him now, my heart sinks. Because I've seen that conviction in his eyes—the one that says he believes in his cause and he won't change his mind. As long as he thinks he's protecting me, love was never going to be enough to keep us together.

"I love you too," I whisper into the dark. The harsh reality of our situation settles firmly around us: Theo and I have not been brought together by fate. The plane crash was just shit bad luck. "Can we pretend?" I don't want the heartbreak yet.

"Anything for you." He kisses me again. I hum softly against his lips as warmth spreads out from my chest, chasing away the shadows in my heart.

"Can we stay up and talk all night, for old times' sake?"

"Mm-hmm," he murmurs, his lips against my ear.

It's decided. Until we're rescued, Theo and I aren't doomed. He's not the king, and I'm not a potential pawn for the Firm to control. We can be two idiots in love, kissing in a hot spring under the stars, pretending nothing in the world could ever change that.

Theo lifts me and brings me in front of him. I wrap my legs around his torso and press my fingers into the soft ground behind his shoulders. As we kiss, the earth trembles under my hands.