“I’ve been better.”
“I got passports and money from the safe.” He motioned to a black duffel bag in the backseat.
“Thank you.” I looked over at him, and I hoped he understood how much I truly appreciated what he’d done and risked to help me. Ridley reached over, taking my hand in his, and held it on the drive to the train station.
When we pulled into the parking lot, he turned off the car and got out. He grabbed the bag from the back, and I walked around the Land Rover. He took my hand again so we could walk together to the ticket booth, but I stopped.
“What?” Ridley looked back at me.
“You can’t go with me. This is where we have to say goodbye.”
He shook his head. “What are you talking about?”
“Kennet and Konstantin are just pawns. Somebody else is making the moves, and I need to find out who that it is and make sure they get some semblance of justice. I may never be able to prove my innocence, but I won’t stand by and let everything I care about be destroyed.”
“That’s exactly why I should go with you,” Ridley insisted.
“No. I shouldn’t have let Kasper go with me, and I won’t let you meet his fate,” I said.
“Bryn—”
“And more than that,” I cut him off, “my parents are still in Doldastam. I don’t know who is behind everything, and they could go after them in retaliation. I need you to go back and make sure they’re safe.
“And Tilda,” I went on. “She needs someone to help her now. And I need you to tell her that I didn’t kill Kasper.”
“Bryn, she knows that,” he said.
“Tell her anyway, okay?” I persisted. “And tell her I’m sorry. I never meant for him to get hurt.” I swallowed back the tears that threatened to form.
Ridley squeezed my hand. “Okay. I’ll tell her, and I’ll watch out for you parents and Tilda. I won’t let anything happen to them while you’re gone.”
I kissed him then, knowing I might never see him again, that this might be the very last kiss we ever shared, and he set down the duffel bag so he could wrap his arms around me. For a moment, the world fell away around us, and it was only me and him and the way his lips tasted and his arms felt and how desperately I loved him.
He held my face in his hands and looked deep into my eyes. “When this is over, and your parents and Tilda are safe, I will come find you.”
The train began to whistle as it pulled into the station, so we didn’t have much time. I kissed him again, then grabbed the duffel bag and ran into the station.
FORTY-SEVEN
five days later
The cell phone sat on the counter, the black screen staring up at me, almost taunting me to use it. It’d been five days, and every day had been a battle of will not to call Ridley to find out what was going on.
I didn’t know if he’d gotten caught for helping me escape, and I wanted to know how Tilda was doing and if my parents were safe. But the Högdragen were probably monitoring his phone, and even though I’d gotten an untraceable prepaid phone, that could still mean trouble for him.
So I didn’t call.
“What are you having?” the waitress on the other side of the cracked vinyl counter asked me, interrupting my staring contest with the phone.
“Um…” A badly worn laminated menu sat on the counter next to my phone, and I quickly scanned it to see if anything appealed to me. Most things sounded as if they were cooked in a vat of grease, and my stomach rolled in disgust. That was the price of stopping in dive diners like this, but I didn’t know how long I’d be on the run, and these places had the cheapest food—even if all the food was repulsive.
“Just an unsweetened iced tea,” I decided.
“Coming right up.” She smiled at me as she took the menu. Even though she had the weary expression of someone who was at the end of a ten-hour shift, there was sympathy in her eyes as she looked at me, so I knew I had to look as bad as I felt.
The metal side of the napkin holder worked as an okay mirror, so I tilted it toward me to get a better look. My attempt at dyeing my hair hadn’t worked, failing the way it always did since my hair refused to hold any color. The black dye had faded into a sickly grayish-blue, and in another day or two it would be gone entirely.
The black eye Kennet had given me had finally begun to heal. The first few days it had been an awful puffy purple, and now it was fading to a putrid yellow. I tried to cover it up with makeup, but it was still obvious that there was something going on with my eye.
It didn’t help that I wasn’t sleeping, so there were bags under my eyes, and my skin had an unpleasant pallor. I hadn’t been eating well either, since it was hard to find anything that sat well with me on the road. I’d made the mistake of grabbing turkey jerky in desperation last night and ended up throwing it up.
So far, my only plan was to get south and lay low for a little while until I felt like most of the heat was off. I knew Evert wouldn’t want to spare many soldiers to go after me, but he would probably send a few. The Skojare would definitely send some of their guards, not that I thought they’d be able to do anything.
But since I was accused of killing a Prince, other Skojare allies might send troops to help find me, like the Trylle or maybe even the Vittra. They lived farther south than we did, which meant I’d have to go even farther to get out of their range until everyone got tired of looking and went home.