The Kingmaker (All the King's Men Duet #1) - Kennedy Ryan Page 0,62
of her in the tulip garden,” he says, his voice serious. “She’s pretty.”
“Pretty is the least of what she is, but she is that, too.”
I miss my parents, my brother, and my family. But what I’m missing with Nix is more somehow. Even after only having a week with her, it’s more. For every time Grim has caught me looking at that photo on my phone, there’s a dozen times I’ve pulled it out he hasn’t seen.
I’ll never regret this trip. It’s been good experience and our research is valuable, but even with the part I’m most excited about still ahead, getting outside this summer and exploring the peninsula, I’m ready to go home. The quiet, the scope of this place changes your perspective on life. And if there’s one thing I know about my life after this trip, it’s that I want Lennix Moon Hunter, however I can get her, in it.
Being on the water breathes new life into my passion for this Antarctic voyage. Living confined and in the dark with limited human contact for so long felt like my hope was packed under ice as tightly and surely as the pre-historic snow we collect.
We worked ashore the last few days, which took an enormous amount of preparation. Bureaucratically, because the area is so closely guarded and managed that it takes a machete to cut through all the red tape. We received our approval to gather data mere days before reaching shore. Now that we’re off the peninsula, and our ship The Chrysalis is floating alongside an armada of glaciers, I feel as buoyant as the ice floes bobbing around us.
“The landscape looks different every day,” David says from beside me, his forearms leaned on the ship’s railing.
“That’s part of what makes it so unpredictable,” Grim adds. “Glad we got some good work in before conditions changed.”
“The birds were my favorite part,” Peggy inserts with a laugh, chewing on her ever-present unlit cigar.
She worked with our seabird specialist to get population counts for various species, which will be compared with previous data, helping to identify any potentially endangered populations. They’ve been able to perform a thorough penguin census and collect blubber from the seals in the area. We also gathered several mud samples that will be analyzed and hopefully give us information on how carbon may be trapped under ice.
“I think Larnyard may wish he’d listened to you,” Grim says, hitching his chin toward the sky. “Look at those clouds.”
I recommended we make camp on shore for a few days and spend some extra time collecting much-needed data since it had taken so much time and effort to even access the area. Dr. Larnyard had disagreed and wanted to get back on the water for the next leg of our expedition.
Sailing through ice is a treacherous, exhilarating prospect. The Chrysalis is ice-capable, but no vessel guarantees safety if you clip a ’berg the wrong way or get trapped out on the water in one of the Antarctic’s volatile storms. The clouds looming over our ship promise storms. We’re hundreds of miles from shore, thousands of miles from civilization, and a hairsbreadth from catastrophe.
“I don’t like what the sky’s telling us,” David says, his brows rouching over concerned eyes. “Iceblink.”
There are only a few places in the world where the phenomenon of iceblink, glaring white near the horizon reflecting light from ice, is even possible. Antarctica is one of them. Polar explorers and sailors have been using iceblink to navigate arctic seas for centuries. In contrast, water sky projects open lanes of water onto the clouds, showing how to avoid hazardous ice floes that could lock up a ship for days or even weeks. Hell, for months.
When I saw water sky, it was the first time I could articulate the exact color of Lennix’s eyes. Dark, stormy gray, and seeing far. Seeing things no one else did.
“What I wouldn’t give for a water sky,” I say softly, only giving the situation half my focus. What I wouldn’t give to see her. To tell her I was a fool to think I could walk away from eyes like that.
“Right,” Grim says, frowning at the gathering clouds. “We need open water. You see all this ice crowding around the ship?”
He’s right. Even just an hour ago, our path was clear, but now tessellations of ice have interlocked around the ship, a tundra jigsaw puzzle that, if not navigated skillfully, could strand or even sink our ship. Beyond skill, we’ll need a