❝ ...Following in the footsteps of many adventurers before them, Kaia and her friends set out on the path of riches in search of the Royal Merchant: a mighty ship long lost at sea, a vessel that once sheltered four hundred million dollars in gold. T...
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STARLIGHT WAS LOST BENEATH thunder and rain as the shell of a girl wept in the street.
Nights like these had long since become clockwork for Kaia Hollenbeck. Nights of abandoning the smiling facade, reliving those chains of memories and suffering alone in her emotional flood. Wallowing, but never long enough to lose herself beneath the waves.
But tonight was different. Darker.
Tonight she was caught in the riptide. Drowning.
Rainfall was not enough to keep her confined to the haunted, hollow halls of Tannyhill; through the storm she roamed sleeping Kildare without destination. Kaia was drenched to the bone, on the cusp of catching a cold, but she didn't care. After feeling so numb for so long, she would welcome anything with open arms. A cold, the flu, even pneumonia.
Figure Eight passed along in a haze and with every step, the crushing in her chest only suffocated more. Kaia had fallen blind to the world around her—enough so that the next time she snapped back to reality, she was far from home. Alone on an empty street corner, standing beneath a flickering light, right in the middle of The Cut.
Somber eyes took in the worn buildings and beat up cars, disorientation flooding bone-deep. How could I have walked this far and not noticed?
Kaia's gaze lifted to the sky; though thunder and lightning quarreled still, the rain stopped. Water clung to her hair and clothes and it gathered into small puddles along the street; she anchored herself to the smell as she sunk onto the curb. She tried to focus on anything and everything but all that led her out into the storm, but to no avail; eventually every thought would circle back to him.
An earthquake of emotion—of sorrow and grief, of guilt and shame—rattled her bones as the chain unraveled.
Kaia remembered the day she first met Weston Albrecht as if it were yesterday. A two-heart collision amidst the academy halls just shy of two years ago—a hopeless romantic and a tall, dark stranger locking eyes like magic. Blinded by naïveté, that moment felt like a Taylor Swift love anthem breathed to life or a Disney princess meeting her ever-after prince for the very first time.
But the magic was quick to die and he sure as hell did not carry her off into the sunset. She was not his princess and they were no fairytale. To him, she was no more than a sex toy and a punching bag; to him, she was barely even human.
If anyone ever told Kaia that she'd one day be the suffering party in a violent relationship—that she hadn't walked away after the very first hit and stayed for a hundred more—she might've laughed herself to death. Long ago, that proud and naïve child swore she would never be one of those girls, clinging to their abusers like a lifeline because they either believed in love's transforming power or feared the repercussions of walking away. The girl could almost laugh at the twisted irony, for that is exactly who she became.
