Chapter 41 Finally Free: The Cabin of Quiet Truths
The climb into the sky is smooth, but my stomach stays somewhere down on the tarmac. The private jet's engines do not roar like the commercial flights I have heard passing over the Flats. They emit a low, expensive hum that vibrates right through the soles of my sneakers. For the first thirty minutes, I do not move a muscle. I just stare out the thick oval window, watching the jagged, glowing grid of the city shrink into a tiny patch of amber sparks before the clouds swallow it whole.
I look down at my lap. My hands are flat against my jeans, and for the first time in two years, my skin does not feel tight from harsh chemicals. There is no grey dust under my fingernails. My palms are clean.
It feels completely unnatural.
"You are doing that thing again," Caspian says softly from across the aisle.
He is sitting in a massive leather armchair that swivels, a small polished wood table separating us. He has already shed the velvet gala blazer. Now he is just wearing a plain black hoodie with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows. Without the hair gel and the tailored lines, he looks entirely different. He looks like a boy running away from home, not the crown prince of an empire.
"Doing what?" I ask, pulling my hands back and tucking them under my arms.
"The thing where you look at your own skin like you are waiting for it to dissolve," he says. He leans forward, resting his forearms on the table. "Zora, look around. We crossed the perimeter. My father's security team cannot touch us up here. Greg Will's lawyers are already at the clinic. You do not have to keep looking for the exits."
"It is a habit, Cas," I say, leaning my head against the plush headrest. It is so soft it feels like a trap. "When you spend your whole life waiting for the other shoe to drop, you do not just stop because someone gave you a leather seat and a glass of sparkling water. I feel like if I blink, I will wake up with a mop in my hand and Sterling screaming at me about a smudge on the mirrors."
Caspian slides out of his seat and kneels on the carpeted floor next to my chair. He does not care that the fabric is expensive, or that he is a Thorne behaving like a servant. He just reaches out and gently pulls my hands from under my arms, holding them in his own. His palms are warm, callous-free from a life of privilege, but his grip is steady enough to anchor me.
"Then let me be the reminder," he whispers, his dark eyes locking onto mine. "The mirrors are gone. The Academy is behind us. In five hours, we land in a country where nobody cares who your father was or what neighbourhood you grew up in. They are only going to care about how you move."
"That is what terrifies me," I admit, my voice cracking as the exhaustion finally starts to eat through my defences. "I do not know how to be just Zora the dancer. I only know how to be Zora the protector. I have been a shield for Lumi since the day of the crash. If she is safe, and she is getting the surgery, what am I supposed to do with all this anger?"
"Put it into the choreography," Caspian says. He lifts one of my hands, his thumb gently tracing the scar on my wrist from an old stage-prop accident. "Elias told me once that the difference between a good dancer and a great one is not their flexibility. It is what they are trying to escape when they leave the floor. You have a lot to escape, Zora. Use it."
A sudden shudder rolls through the aircraft. The seatbelt sign chimes above us, and the nose of the plane dips slightly as we hit a pocket of rough air.
My heart stops. My fingers instantly tighten around Caspian's, my nails digging into his skin. My breathing goes shallow, the cabin disappearing for a split second as my mind violently drags me back to the rain, the screeching tires, and the terrifying sound of metal crushing metal on 4th Street.
"Hey, hey. Look at me," Caspian says quickly, his voice rising above the rattle of the cabin. He does not pull away from my grip. He climbs onto the wide seat next to me, wrapping one arm entirely around my shoulders and pulling me hard against his chest. "It is just turbulence, Zora. Just the wind. We are at thirty four thousand feet. There are no cars up here. There are no intersections."
I bury my face into the fleece of his hoodie, inhaling the scent of him, expensive soap and cedarwood, a smell that has somehow become the only thing that can quiet the noise in my head. I hold onto him like he is a life raft, listening to the steady, rapid thumping of his heart beneath my ear.
"I hate it," I choke out, my eyes burning with tears I refuse to let fall. "I hate that a little bit of shaking can still make me feel like I am dying."
"I know," he murmurs, his chin resting against the top of my head as his hand rubs slow circles into my back. "I know. But you are not down there anymore. You are with me. And I am not letting anything happen to you."
We stay like that for a long time, even after the ride smooths out and the clouds below turn a pale, blinding white under the moonlight. The silence between us changes from tense to heavy, filled with the kind of honesty that only happens when you have stripped away every lie you have ever told.
"I used to watch you, you know," Caspian says quietly, his voice vibrating against my cheek.
"When?" I ask, not moving from his shoulder. "When I was scraping gum off the desks in the library?"
"Every day," he confesses. "Before the scholarship letter even arrived. I would be in Studio A, doing the same repetitive drills my father paid the coaches to perfect, and I would see you through the glass. You would be holding a rag, but your feet were marking the time. You had this look on your face, like you wanted to tear the whole building down with your bare hands. I was envious of you."
I pull back just enough to look up at him, frowning. "You were envious of the girl who smelled like bleach?"
"I was envious of the fact that you were real," Caspian says, a sad, genuine smile touching his lips. "Everything in my life was a script. What I ate, what I wore, how many hours I practised, who I talked to. My father did not want a son. He wanted a trophy that did not talk back. But you? You were furious. You were alive. I wanted to know what it felt like to care about something enough to look that angry."
"It is not a great way to live, Cas," I say softly.
"Maybe not. But it is better than being dead inside," he says. He reaches up, his fingers brushing a stray lock of hair away from my eyes, his touch lingering on my jawline. "When my father threatened to move Lumi tonight, I realised that if I let him do it, I would be signing the contract to be his puppet forever. Saving her was not just about doing the right thing for you, Zora. It was the first time in my life I actually chose my own future."
The distance between us feels smaller than it ever has. The high-stakes thriller of the Academy, the stolen logs, and the threats of the clinic are all safely locked away on the ground. Up here, in the dark cabin, there are no titles.
"I am glad you chose it," I whisper.
Caspian does not answer with words. He leans down, his hand sliding to the back of my neck to tilt my face up, and presses his lips to mine.
It is completely different from the kiss in the rain outside the gate. That one was a desperate collision, a reaction to survival. This one is slow, deliberate, and fiercely deep. It tastes like a quiet promise. His lips are soft but firm, pulling me closer until there is no space left between us at all. I let out a breath I feel like I have been holding since the midterm began, my hands climbing up his chest to wrap around his neck, pulling him down into the cushion with me.
For the first time since the accident, the guilt does not creep into the back of my mind. The trauma does not tell me I do not deserve this. As Caspian kisses me, his thumb tracing the line of my collarbone, I finally feel the weight of the Vance Academy slip away entirely.
When he finally pulls back, his breath is uneven, his forehead resting against mine as he keeps his arms locked securely around my waist.
"We have four hours left before we hit Heathrow," he murmurs, his eyes dark and dilated in the dim cabin light. "You need to sleep. Your ankle is going to be stiff when we land."
"Only if you stay here," I say, my fingers still tangled in the strings of his hoodie. "I do not want to wake up and see that leather chair empty."
"I am not going anywhere, Janitor," he smiles, a faint, boyish dimple appearing on his cheek.
He pulls a heavy wool blanket over both of us, shifting until my back is pressed against his chest, his strong arms holding me tight against him. I close my eyes, listening to the rhythmic, comforting sound of the jet cutting through the sky.
Behind us, a billion-dollar empire is hunting for the truth we left behind. But ahead of us, across an entire ocean, is a city that does not know our names.
And as the darkness finally takes me, I realise that for the very first time, I am finally, truly free.