Vowed. Sworn to every Saint he didn’t believe in, and a few he did. And yet here he was, running through the thick foliage of the outer garden, scrambling for the back wall he’d climbed to get into the Academy property in the first place, all with the intent to make his way to the T23 model and get Sophia and the six frightened children off the ground.He had to be insane. No, worse than insane. He’d had to have lost every marble that had ever rattled around in his thick skull.He knew what happened when he got behind the steering device of a craft. People died. Horrible, flaming deaths filled with the stench of smoke and burnt flesh.Images flashed behind his eyes as he ran. The boy gripping his hair threatened to pull the strands out by the roots, but the pain in his scalp and shoulder were preferable to the sheer terror that made his knees buckle every time he allowed himself to think of the past.He’d been young, then. Not that he was old now, at the age of thirty, but he felt old.
