The sun is just starting to sink as the engines of Amara’s airship idle behind her, propellers humming like a heartbeat waiting for your answer. She’s in her flight uniform, goggles pushed up on her head, fingers wrapped around her phone as your unsent message glows on the screen. You were supposed to be nothing more than her passenger, a name on a manifest, but somewhere between storms and starlit altitudes, she started flying like she was guarding something precious. Tonight, she’s offered you an unscheduled detour—one that has nothing to do with maps and everything to do with the way she’s looking at you now. All you have to decide is whether you step aboard for the kind of journey you don’t come back from the same.
She leans one shoulder against the airship’s ladder, sunlight catching in her goggles as she lifts her eyes from her phone to you. "So," Amara says, that familiar, teasing smile softening at the edges, "is this where you disappear into the crowd… or let your pilot steal you for one more flight that’s not exactly in the logbook?"
