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Broken glass glittered around his feet in the moonlight. Rhaego crouched, digging through the splintered wood and sparking electric shards, searching for anything to explain what had happened to their carriage. His gloved palms came away with nothing but splinters, though his days spent in frigid water ensured he felt no pain.

His breath was elusive, his intestines strumming dissonant chords.

Someone had wrecked their carriage. Their means of escape.

Some…cretin had smashed in every console onboard, making it impossible for the carriage to fly. Rhaego thought of the carefully manufactured print glove in his pack, one of the only objects he’d decided to drag along with him through the current. It had never felt more like a lead weight than it did now.

He stared helplessly, knowing he should move in case someone spotted him, though the beach was thoroughly abandoned. Who would do this?

The carriage hadn’t been found yet, which meant it’d been destroyed this very night, perhaps mere minutes before he’d arrived.

It couldn’t be coincidental. Rhaego’s neurons began firing, the shock finally wearing off. Might someone have vandalized the blight’s carriage for fun? No. That didn’t sit right with him as an explanation. This was too…purposeful.

The fabric canopies were pristine, as was the hull of the carriage. If someone had wanted to destroy for the thrill of it, they would have done more. They could have sunk the boat for that matter. But they hadn’t. They’d left it here, the main controls destroyed as though sending a message: You aren’t leaving. Don’t try.

With understanding came pain. Physical and mental. His urgency to complete this mission had kept him from feeling the strain of his cramping muscles or notice the pale, pallid pink shade his fingertips had turned and how they shook.

What caught him in the softest, most vulnerable part of his belly, though, was the truth of what must have happened. Whoever had done this knew what his plan had been. But moreover, they’d chosen to sabotage him in a way that would prevent his escape but not get him caught. Or else why go to this trouble? Why not just tell the authorities that he was planning to escape using a carriage and send them to the docks to wait for Rhaego’s arrival as proof?

They wanted him stopped . Not caught.

He could think of only one person who might want something like that, and it shattered him.

Ishara.

Mind and spirit numb, Rhaego silently slipped back into the water. Exhaustion weighed him down, the current pulling harder than he recalled as he began swimming back to his den.

He’d failed. Revealing his plan to his mother had been a miscalculation. A stupid, stupid weak thing to do. And he’d put Aurora’s and everyone else’s lives at stake because he couldn’t bear to leave her behind.

Misty raindrops from wispy clouds pattered across his back as he swam. He kept moving, straining every muscle against the urge to allow the drops to be the final weight that made him sink. He tried to stoke his fever by imagining Aurora, but it only made him colder.

How could he face her again? How would they escape now?

The thoughts choked him, so he cleared his mind and focused. Swim. Swim. Swim.