Princess at Sea (46 page)

The wind gusted, pushing my hair back. The shack groaned, and Captain Rylan stumbled, gripping me to keep from falling down.

“What out of hell . . .” he breathed, staring at the clear sky full of wind. “Sweet mother of us all. . . .”

“He used me.
For money!
” I exclaimed, shouting to hear myself over the wind babbling in my head. It howled, it gibbered, it demanded release, but that would require a thought on my part, and I was dead.

I hung in Captain Rylan's grip. The toxin was pushed from my bite and flooded my body. My hands tingled. My legs shook from the poison taking hold and killing me. Raw force surged through me, and I flung my head back. “The foul bastard!” I raged, and a flash of venom-laced power raced through me.

Captain Rylan cried out, falling to crash into the railing. The horses scattered, the sound of their fear joining the ecstasy of the storm. Free and unencumbered, I stood on the porch. The wind in my head ran unhindered through me. Anticipation and fury raced each other to be the first to be acted upon. Bursting, I admitted to the heavens, “He never loved me!”

Flames licked at the sodden, green-slimed boards. The pines beside the house begin to smolder. The heat of anger and betrayal scoured through me. A distant roar echoed over the trees. It was the wind from the sea. It was coming to find me. It would take away my reason and sanity. And I welcomed it. God help me, I wanted to die from the hurt.

Sounding like a living thing, the angry soughing grew closer. I looked to the sky as the noise grew, and with the sound of lions, it crashed down upon me. I fell under the weight of it. Staggering, I pulled myself upright.

“He
never
loved me!” I exclaimed, and the nearby spring-sap twigs burst to flame. I fell to my knees under the blast of heat and dry wind.

The dry-rotted shack caught faster than light tinder. Heat washed over me, pushed by the wind and rolling over me like a summer-warmed field. The wind babbled and howled. It struck me and beat the flames higher, swirling with promise.

The air seared my throat, and I cried out when my breath was ripped from me and replaced with heat. The anger and hurt in me swelled, consuming me. With a whoosh, the nearby trees went up like an oil-soaked torch. The snapping and groaning of the shack burning behind me joined the tortured sound of trees waving and in flames. The heat of the burning walls behind me hit me anew, and I pulled my tear-streaked face up. My skin tightened from the warmth. Yellow with flames, the wall tilted and started to fall. It would crush me.

A part of me panicked, but the larger, broken part said no. I wouldn't move. I would choose to remain. I would end it. I had no life with Kavenlow, and now I had no life with Duncan. And how could I trust to love another? And without love, I might as well be dead.

I bowed my head, the soggy wood under my hands warm and steaming. I took a last breath, then another, burning my lungs with the sound of tearing paper. The wall creaked again. I closed my eyes, willing it to fall.

Something struck me, knocking me rolling into the railing and off the porch. I gasped, feeling the drop of air beneath me. Arms flailing, I struck the water. The roar of flames and wind was drowned out with the swirl of water. Cold shocked through me, my cry reaching the surface as a stream of bubbles.

I burst from the water in a cloud of denial and anger, finding myself sitting chest deep in the slurry of black mud and silt. Above me was the burning rubble of the shack. It had fallen in on itself without me. Beside me pulling himself up to sit in the water was Jeck.

“No!” I cried, hitting him as the wind clamored, angry that I was still alive. “You can't. You can't! Leave me alone!”

Lips pressed and hidden behind his dripping beard and mustache, he pulled me to him, wrapping his arms around me to try to contain me. I twisted and fought, helpless in the imprisoning strength of his grip, unable to accept there was compassion there, not believing it.

The shack slid majestically into the river, and a warm rush of water cascaded past us. The trees above burned, a thick smoke coming from the death of the new leaves and old needles while the wind both inside and outside my head howled and tossed the branches.

My fury rose that he'd try to save me, fueled by Duncan's betrayal and my inability to accomplish even the simplest task of ending my life. The wind in me demanded freedom, and in a shared moment of loss, I looked skyward and called down its brother.

Screaming its defiance, it fell from the heavens like a stone, flattening the water and sending Jeck to bow his head against me. But he wouldn't let go, his voice within my ear saying that it would be all right, that I could survive this. I didn't want to believe, and I felt my hands warm with his coming death. He would let me go, or I would end it this way.

He felt it coming, and with the strength of the wind filling me, I stiffened when a surge of force pulsed through me. I screamed as it left me, burning my hands and my soul. Jeck shuddered, his grip slackening for an instant before it came back stronger, almost desperate. “No,” he rasped, panting. “My hurt is as great as yours. I can take anything you can give. And I'm not letting you go. Listen to me. Listen to me, Tess!” he shouted over the tumult. “Let the wind go. Let it go for good.”

“Please. I can't . . .” I begged, the water sloshing into a thick black silt as I struggled against Jeck with a faltering will. “There's nothing left. I've lost everything. . . .”

“No,” he whispered, the pain I had heaped upon him making his voice a ragged thread laced with determination. “You're stronger than that.”

The wind bent the trees and fanned the fire, sending smoldering bark to hit us. It was angry that I was still alive and held its brother hostage, but in my head, the wind cowered, frightened by Jeck's voice.

“I can't!” I sobbed. “He said he loved me. He lied and left me to die.”

“Don't end it this way. Not because of him.” It would have been unheard over the wind and fire but that his lips were brushing my ear. His arms pressed me into him, keeping me from moving. The smell of horse and leather lingering on him meant security, and the band crushing my chest eased. A choking sob broke free. I clung to the compassion I found in him, ignoring that he was a rival player. It was all I had. And I thought—I thought he understood.

“Don't let this kill you,” he whispered, and I realized I was clutching his shoulders, crying into his shirt. The wind in my head faltered, falling into a soft muted complaint, sullen that Jeck had found a way to reach me, breaking its hold on me. The wind fanning the flames in the trees abruptly lost interest, lifting its head to look at the sea. With it went my anger, leaving only the crushing reality that Jeck had bested me again. Again I had failed. Again he had seen me weak and foolish. God help me, I couldn't even die properly.

“But he lied to me,” I wept as I sat in the stream, the breath of reason sparking through me as the wind diminished. I was caught. Jeck had caught me and forced me to live. Leaning into him, I shook with my sobs. “He lied to me on the boat when he said he loved me. He saved my life only so I could bring him the ransom when I told him Contessa had forbidden it and I was the only one who could make it happen. I lied to Kavenlow!” I wailed, shamed and made into a fool by Duncan. “I lied to Kavenlow for him, and for what? This?”

“Shhhh,” he breathed, his grip gentling when I started to shake. “It will be all right, Tess. Let the wind go.”

“He used me,” I said. “He only wanted money. He sent me here to die. He didn't come back. I called for him, and he didn't come back . . .”

“I know,” he murmured, his fingers pressing against my head easing. “You survived it. You're strong, Tess. Don't let it break you.”

I took a shuddering breath, smelling his leather jerkin and the briny stink of low tide over the sharp smell of burning. His arms were about me, warm and secure, giving me something real to fasten upon. Slowly, I realized the wind had slackened to almost nothing. Exhausted in mind and body, I let my head rest against the front of his shoulder and listened to the crackling of the last of the flames and the tinkling of slowly moving water moving out with the tide.

“Why?” I rasped, hearing the soft soughing of the burning trees as the wind forgot about me and blew out to sea to play with the stingrays. Around us was the reek of burning green, but here in the creek we were safe. “I thought he loved me,” I said, my eyes on the filthy water swirling around us, my tears joining it freely. “Why did he do that to me?” I breathed, not expecting an answer. “Why?”

Jeck's arms around me tightened and released. “I don't know.”

The soft thuds of our horses' hooves were a gentle cadence
swallowed up by the leaf mold, and the sound of the wind soughing in the treetops taunted me. I sat without feeling, the reins slack and slipping from my fingers, balancing by instinct as we made our slow way back to the capital. In my ear was the unrelenting voice of the wind still trapped inside me, its message once blurred and indistinct, now obvious and painful.

It mocked me, telling me that Duncan didn't love me, over and over and over. First a whisper, then rising to a laughing chortle, then back to a sly burble, never ceasing.
Duncan doesn't love you.
It was a warning heard too late. I had blinded myself to it, not wanting to believe. No one had told me truth could be found in the voice of the wind, and now the truth was trapped within my head.

Before me upon a single horse were Contessa and Alex. The prince had his arms about her, the curve of his arms gentle and loving as he held her with her feet politely to one side of the animal. Their soft conversation was unheard but for the comfortable come-and-go of their intertwined voices. Jeck was half a horse length behind me on one of the three horses that had been tied behind the wagon. Alex, being an expert horseman, had caught them all after escaping the shack with Contessa.

Farther back was the creaking of the wagon and the loud voices of Jeck's men. There were far more than the four he had discussed with Kavenlow, and they were on foot as the wagon held semicomatose pirates along with the chests of spice. Most were awake now, not remembering Jeck pulling them from the burning building before finding me kneeling on the front porch. Of Captain Rylan, there had been no trace, but I knew he was too clever to have died in the fire.

I was exhausted, shamed in body and spirit. But it seemed I had changed the punta dream: I was not a prisoner upon a horse before Jeck; Alex and Contessa were with us, and the pirates were captured. Betrayal had made my heart a sodden rag, though, and the misery haunted me still. But my sister was alive and unhurt. I would not seek to change the future further but rather be content with what I had.

The voices of the men surrounding us grew louder as the trees thinned and the light brightened to early evening. Their voices were cheerful with the sound of anticipation. I pulled my attention from my fingers knotting in the horse's mane as we stepped out from the shelter of the woods and into the fields about the capital. The setting sun struck me, almost a pain upon my heat-damaged skin. I squinted and hunched deeper into my saddle, wanting to hide from it.

I had lied to Kavenlow. They must have realized it to have gotten to me so quickly. Not only had I lied, but I had been caught.

“Look!” came Contessa's cheerful voice. She was rescued and restored. Nothing could go wrong for her now. “In the harbor. They're back already! See? The pirate ship and the chancellor's.”

My head came up, and I blearily focused. Far below in the harbor were the ships in question, their sails furled and their decks empty. A small group of soldiers on foot were headed our way, two men on horseback with them. One broke away and cantered to us. The man left behind reined his horse in to keep it from following, bending to talk to a man on foot. I could tell from his silhouette and black leather jerkin and cap that it was Kavenlow. My heart clenched. What would I say to him?

Distressed, I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, noticing with an uncaring detachment that the tips were twisted and burned, singed from the fire's heat. I glanced at Jeck, who had nudged his horse up equal with mine now that there was room. He hadn't said a word to me since pulling me sobbing from the water when the first of his men on foot arrived. I knew he felt my gaze on him when his jaw clenched and his eye ticked.

My face flamed. I had cried in his arms over a thief, a man he'd warned me about if I had cared to listen. Jeck had seemed to understand at the time, his arms around me as we sat in the tidal river, him holding me together as my world fell apart and I realized just how foolish I had been. But now I wondered. Maybe I had just imagined his compassion. Maybe I had needed it so badly that I fostered the emotion on Jeck when it wasn't there. He certainly wasn't compassionate now, having returned to his usual stone-faced, closed-lipped self.