Winterborne Home for Vengeance and Valour by Ally Carter

Author:Ally Carter [Carter, Ally]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
ISBN: 9781408357385
Publisher: Hachette Children's Group
Published: 2020-03-04T22:00:00+00:00

SPAT OUT BY THE SEA. AGAIN.

April ran until her lungs felt like they were going to burst. ‘Come on,’ she said to absolutely no one but the darkness. She was shaking, radiating with cold and fear, and so she didn’t talk any more.

She screamed.

‘Come on!’

The boat wasn’t even a dot on the horizon, long since swallowed up by the night and the sea. The mini mansion was behind her, lost behind a curtain of fog. And April stood, looking out at the place where she thought he’d gone into the water.

‘Gabriel …’ The word was almost a sigh. ‘Come on.’

Surely sword-wielding billionaires know how to swim, April thought. But just that quickly, she remembered black-and-white headlines and old grainy photographs – stories of a boy who had washed up on the rocky shore, alone and afraid, spat out by the sea.

She just had to hope that the sea would spit him out again. She hadn’t found her mother yet. She needed her key. She was still mad at him but also grateful because he had just kinda sorta saved her life, and she kinda sorta felt like it might be her turn.

So she walked down the rocky shore, calling, ‘Mr Winterborne!’ even as a little voice in the back of her head whispered that he’d been in the water too long.

It was starting to look like maybe the ocean wanted him back.

April wasn’t a very good swimmer, but she could doggy paddle and she could float.

She could fight.

When she saw something bobbing in the water, she ran into the waves, pushing against the current, screaming, ‘Mr Winterborne!’

But absolutely no one shouted back, and when she realised the thing in the water was just the big, flat crate that had fallen overboard, she almost wept. But she didn’t have time for weeping, so she yelled, ‘Gabriel!’ then threw an arm over the crate and kicked, trying to reach the place where she thought he’d gone in. She tried putting her head underwater, but it was too dark. It was too cold. She’d stopped shivering, and something told her that was a bad thing.

‘Gabriel?’ she whispered, like maybe the whole thing might have been a very bad dream.

She could feel her grip on the crate slipping, her hands too cold to hang on. The shore was too far away. Ms Nelson and Evert Winterborne might as well have been on another planet, and April knew she was on her own.

Like always.

Maybe it would be OK just to close my eyes for a little bit, a little voice inside of April said. Maybe it would be OK just to let go of the crate.

But something was shimmering in the distance. Like a mirage. Like that lady who lived in a lake – April thought someone was trying to give her a sword. Which seemed silly until she remembered: sword.

So April started kicking and praying and pushing the big crate until she reached the dark figure floating on the waves, the hilt of the sword still sticking out of the place where chest and shoulder meet.

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