Page 68 of Kingdom of Chaos
Inside the cab, Ensley is seemingly sleeping peacefully against Titus.
Imogen stares at her cousin with a scrunched nose. “I need to stop for food soon, because even you are starting to smell tasty right now.”
Ew.
“You’ll live,” Talon shoots back at her.
“If you don’t, do I have permission to drain your corpse?” she asks with a grin.
Double ew.
Talon rolls his eyes. “Sure. I wouldn’t want to go to waste.”
I give them both a look like they are crazy, and Imogen purses her lips at me.
“Oh, get over yourself,” she snaps.
“Imogen,” Talon warns.
She shakes her head and rolls her eyes. “I don’t know what you even see in her,” she says, gesturing to me. “She’s so uptight.”
Talon opens his mouth to respond, but I beat him to it.
“It’s not uptight to think it’s gross that you want to eat one of your relatives.”
Imogen leans forward, baring her teeth, even the pointy ones. “It’s a joke. Have you ever heard of one before?”
I really don’t like her, but I tell myself she’s not worth the energy and crank the truck. My eyes connect with Titus’ in the rearview mirror just before I pull back onto the road.
“She’s going to be okay. She just needs to sleep it off,” he says, easily reading the question in my eyes.
I nod even though I know the worry gnawing at my gut won’t disappear until I see it for myself.
“It’s going to take an entire day to get up to New York,” Talon says.
He has the map that Violet gave him out on his lap and he’s tracing the path between Florida and New York. I’m hit with another wave of how strange it is that our worlds are so similar. The coastline looks so similar to ours, maybe even identical.
“My best guess is about eighteen or nineteen hours,” Talon says, lifting his head. “Maybe more, depending on what traffic is like here, but at least it’s a pretty straight shot up the coast. If we drive straight through, we can make it there in the early morning hours.”
“Is that wise?” I ask, thinking of how pale he looks, and Ensley passed out in the back seat. Even Imogen looks worn out.
I want to get there quickly, but after what we’ve all been through, I worry about everyone. Myself included.
“There are enough of us to trade out driving, but if it feels like we’re pushing it, we can stop and rest. Let’s just see how it goes,” Talon suggests.
I nod, and ease the truck back onto the road. I’m nervous to drive but I try not to show it. If Ensley were awake, she’d probably be nervous too. She’s been in a car when I was driving before.
At least most of the way is on the expressway. I just need to get us back to the main road and focus on keeping the truck in the lane.
Easy-peasy, I tell myself to settle my nerves.
I maneuver us back in the right direction, but I only drive for about thirty minutes before Imogen orders me to pull over so she can take the wheel, grumbling about my turtle pace as we switch seats. I’d be offended, but that half hour was so stressful I’m just relieved to be done. My fingers ache from how hard I was gripping the steering wheel.
When I slide into the back to take her place, I immediately check on Ensley, still curled up against Titus. Her color looks good, and if I didn’t know better, I’d think she was just napping.
The wave of relief that washes over me is immediate and powerful. For the first time since Talon and I found the members of the Silent Order standing over our sleeping friends, I finally start to relax.
The adrenaline crash hits minutes later, heavy and sudden. My eyelids grow impossibly heavy, and I drift off to sleep to the rhythm of the truck’s gentle swaying as we speed down the expressway, racing toward Becks.
