DAMIEN'S POV
May fifteenth we flew to Split.
The flight was long and Elara slept for most of it with her head on my shoulder and a novel face down in her lap that she'd been reading in the airport and abandoned within twenty minutes of takeoff. I read through a Cross Industries report that James had sent and then put it away and watched the clouds below and let my mind go quiet.
We landed in the early morning, local time, the Croatian coast visible from the descent. Blue that didn't look real until you were in it.
The first island was Hvar.
We took a ferry from Split harbor, forty minutes, the water already warm for May in a way the Adriatic apparently just was. Elara stood at the ferry railing the whole crossing with the wind doing things to her hair that she didn't bother correcting
