Page 114 of My Noble Disgrace

It sounded like the white boat.

I froze in horror, forgetting to swim. It was probably coming back to finish us off.

The air began to clear, revealing the boat through the billowing smoke. It slowed as it approached us, and there was no black pole this time, and no weapons pointed our way. With a low, mechanical clank, it came to a jerky stop beside us.

Cait and Lachlan looked down at us from the boat, their faces horrified.

“Get in!” yelled Cait, letting go of a small helm and reaching her hand out for us.

“What have you done?” I cried, fierce tears blurring my vision.

She shook her head vehemently. “It wasn’t us!”

“How am I supposed to believe that?”

“Trust me, Mara!” Her voice cracked, strained with desperation. “You know I wouldn’t do that!”

“But you’re driving the boat!”

“It drove itself!” She still reached out for me, but Keane and I stayed put in the water, looking at her hand as if it would kill us to touch it. “I swear on my life, Mara.”

“Is it under your control now?” I asked, terrified of this bizarre vessel and what it was capable of.

“Yes,” said Lachlan, joining Cait in reaching toward us, beckoning to us to take his hand. “It’s safe now.”

Keane reached up his cuffed hands, letting Lachlan pull him up into the sinister boat.

I stayed in the water, unwilling to go anywhere with them if they’d been complicit in such devastation.

“Trust me,” said Cait. “Cael will be the next person to find you if you don’t get in, so I suggest you listen to us!”

I looked into her wide eyes, unsure if I believed her, but I wanted to. Ireallywanted to. So I reached up, grasping her hand as she grasped mine, letting her pull me up to what I prayed was safety and not betrayal.

Keane, Lachlan, and I sank into leathery white seats. Cait sat in front of a glass window. She grabbed the small black helm and put her foot on a pedal.

The boat lurched forward.

“Sorry,” Cait said. “Not used to this.”

“Wait! We have to search for survivors,” I said.

Cait directed the boat around the wreckage, the flames still devouring whatever hadn’t already sunk into the water.

We drove slowly between the debris, finding no signs of life. Just smoke and carnage.

My stomach felt sick and my heart felt heavy. I dropped my face into my hands, noticing that my mustache had fallen off in the water.

“They’re all gone,” said Keane quietly.

Lachlan shook his head. “I’m sorry, but we better go.”

With no choice but to leave the burning boat behind, we turned toward the open ocean. Cait steadied the vessel and put her weight into the pedal, cutting through the waves at a speed I’d never experienced, taking us farther from the shore.

“Where did you find this thing?” I knew it had to come from the arsenal. I’d believed by now it contained advanced technology I couldn’t dream of, but something like this still seemed impossible—a boat that needed neither wind nor oars, not even a helmsman, and traveled faster than anything I’d ever seen.

“It was at the shore,” said Cait, gesturing to the west, just where I thought I’d seen a white vessel. “It was unguarded, so we thought we could steal it. But as soon as we started to drive, the helm locked up and began to move on its own and we couldn’t control it . . . and you saw what happened next.” She quieted to a pained whisper. “After it fired the weapon that blew up the boat, we were able to take control again.”

I looked at Cambria’s fading shoreline, but I could no longer see Graham or Cael from here.

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