Passenger (Passenger #1) - Alexandra Bracken Page 0,113

and all of that. I don’t believe he had a black heart in him; he’d only been poisoned with these justifications like all the rest of them.”

Etta itched to take his hand, but by the way his shoulders were bunched, she wasn’t sure he wanted to be touched.

“I realized my mistake. I had been planning to slip away from the family once we returned to the eighteenth century, to fall back into place in my own natural timeline, and I thought I might be able to, after we returned from…” He trailed off again. “Does Sophia still believe I let him fall?”

Etta winced, giving him his answer. “I told her that was impossible.”

“Is it?” he said, brushing a branch out of the way, “I don’t blame her. The whole family must have known I was desperate to escape my contract of service. Exile is a rather neat, if extreme, method of accomplishing just that. I’ve…I’ve even wondered if something in me let him fall, knowing what the consequences would be.”

She shook her head. “No. And, for what it’s worth, Sophia does recognize it was an accident.”

“But she does blame me,” he finished. “I blame myself. And I’m the fool, because in spite of everything, he was my brother. I never saw him as anything less, or cared for him less than Chase, who is my brother in everything but blood. And it clearly wasn’t the same for him.”

She tried to remember what Sophia had said—that Julian had insisted he and everyone else should think of Nicholas as his brother—but words must have meant very little when he clearly hadn’t demonstrated any of those feelings.

“That doesn’t make you a fool,” Etta huffed, wiping her sopping wet hair out of her face. “You deserve to be loved and treated with respect.”

If he heard her, Nicholas didn’t acknowledge it. He turned his face up to the rain for a moment, then continued forward in silence.

“I should have saved him,” he said after a long while. “When I came back to find that you’d gone…it brought me back to that moment on the mountain. It…gripped me and wouldn’t let me go, even after I saw that you were all right.”

A panic attack? she wondered. Or an echo of a terrible memory. That would explain the overreaction.

“All that’s left in the end is the certainty that I can’t protect you from every small thing, and it’s difficult to accept,” he said. “But I am truly very sorry for the things I said.”

“It drives me crazy to be treated like a child,” she told him. “I know that wasn’t your intention, and I know things are different in your time, but almost nothing gets my temper going faster.”

He nodded. “I know. It was irrational.”

Etta shrugged. “I’m no stranger to irrational thoughts, believe me. I spent the better half of my life secretly convinced I was a mistake my mom regretted bringing into the world, and that’s why she was so distant. Hardhearted and impossible to please. But I know it’s not true—when I was younger, she was…very different. And she’s given me everything I’ve ever needed.” Except, of course, for the truth about traveling. Etta looked over at him, meeting Nicholas’s gaze. “I’ve never told anyone that before. I’m not sure I’ve even let myself put that feeling into words before, even in my own head.”

“And now that you know the truth—” he began.

Etta, who had been navigating through pockets of sinking mud and rivulets of water, caught a flash of bright color out of the corner of her eye. Without warning, she crouched and tugged him down with her.

Nicholas landed on his knees with a surprised grunt. Etta’s attention sharpened, focusing on a point in front of them, as she rose slightly to peer over the brush. They’d been walking along the edge of the moat, following the walls of the city the best they could, even as the jungle did such an excellent job of disguising it. But now Etta caught a flash of something new. She leaned forward, parting the tangle of leaves and limbs in front of her: ochre cloth. Movement.

Men.

It took her a moment to place what she was looking at. In her time, Buddhist monks wore brightly colored robes that ranged in color from saffron to a kind of burnt tangerine. These were a duller yellow, stained with splatters of mud; they clung to the men as they took shelter beneath the looming gate on the opposite end of a