The Underground Witch (Incenaga Trilogy) (11 page)

Erick gestured to the empty candelabra again.
“Emmeline took a flame. Nothing will stop her. Not even me.”

“This is absurd!
There is nothing left for her to return to. Mahlon burned everything to the ground.”

“She is aware
of her royal heritage now. She knows she can go to Pamizak’s palace and seek hospitality.”

Orrin shook his head.
“She knows better than to lead the Volarcus army to Pamizak. They aren’t as strong as Dolmerti.”

“Dolmerti will protect Pamizak
, if need be.”

“That is neither here nor there.
She couldn’t have left more than a couple of hours ago. I can catch her.”

“She is a good rider and Filia is fast.
Give her a chance. She must have been desperate to have left in such a hurry.” Erick’s voice faltered as he tried to keep himself together. He felt as if his body was turning to ash, his blood burning its way through his flesh and bones. Every part of his body ached for her return, but he wanted to respect her decision to leave, no matter how difficult it would be for him.

“There must be a reasonable explanation,” Orrin said.
“Emmeline would not do this. She is a considerate person. She wouldn’t leave without an explanation or some kind of warning.”

Erick
had nothing left to say. His soul seemed to collapse into itself, his chest failing against the push of a thousand pounds of sorrow.

“I’ll find her, Erick,” Orrin said.
“You’ll see. This is a mistake. Miscommunication is common in marriage, although I’m surprised she has taken such drastic measures. I’ll send a messenger to search for her on the road to Pamizak, and meanwhile, I’ll take my men to search the nearby towns. Then we will make our way to Pamizak. I’ll stop at every village along the way and inquire after her, assuming I haven’t heard from the messenger by then.”

Orrin turned to leave
and Erick watched his retreating back, knowing it would likely be the last time he would see him. What reason would Orrin have to return to Dolmerti if his daughter resided in Pamizak?

“Thank you,”
Erick said before Orrin made it through the door. “When you find her, let me know. I want to know she is safe. But don’t make her come back to me.” He stared at the ground and imagined himself being swallowed into a deep hole. “Just let me know she is safe. Please, I need to know she is safe.”

“As do I, son,” Orrin said.
He paused at the door. “Come with me. We will find her together. Once she sees you, she’ll realize her mistake.”

“No,
my presence would only cause her more discomfort. I don’t want her to feel as though I have come to force her hand. I promised her she would always have a choice with me and I intend to keep that promise. Too many choices in her life have been made for her. She deserves more.”

Erick
turned toward the window, crossed his arms and let his eyes go out of focus. He understood why she might wish to run away and create a life of her own, given the circumstances by which she had been brought into his life. She had been ripped from her home and told she must marry a man she didn’t know. He’d had no knowledge of this, of course. He thought she had agreed to the arrangement. Even after she grew to love him, he believed she wanted to marry him. But he never wanted Emmeline to feel forced into anything. So much of her identity and history stunk of people forcing the Incenagas to do things they didn’t want to do.

Erick swallowed. “Go.
She could be far by now.”

“So be it,” Orrin
said.

The door clicked shut and Erick winced at the finality of it. Every physical instinct
hungered to go after her, to be the one to find her and hold her again. He wanted to be there to wipe her tears and kiss her lips, remind her of their happy life together. But she didn’t want him and she’d made it clear she didn’t want him to go after her either. Even though it took all his strength to resist jumping on a horse and search for her himself, he would respect her decision and he would wait.

Er
ick gazed out the window again, hoping he’d hear word of her soon. Not knowing if she was safe gnawed away at his insides. What if she stumbled across the Volarcus army? What if she couldn’t hide her identity? What if they took her?

Erick gripped the window seal, his arms shaking. How long would he
be able to wait before he lost his sanity?

Emmeline tripped over a rock as Tiergan dragged her down the hill from the palace. The river swept past them, a roar of water masking their retreat. Emmeline craned her neck to glance at the men behind them, but before she could get a good look, Tiergan yanked her forward.

“Keep your head down,” he insisted. “Don’t look at them.”

Emmeline pulled down on his grip. “I’m perfectly capable of walking without your help,” she said. She pulled down again and her hands slipped free.

Tiergan took hold of the fabric at the back of her neck and shoved her onto a fallen tree.

“Must I bind you, Incenaga?”

Emmeline squirmed
against the bark scraped into her chest. A branch poked her in the neck, snagging the delicate necklace Erick had given her. She stopped moving. The last thing she wanted was to lose her only tangible reminder of Erick.

“I said I could walk myself,” Emmeline said
through her teeth. “You don’t have to pull me along like an animal. I said I’d go with you. What more do you want?”

Tiergan thrust his knee into her back and twisted her arms behind her. “I don’t trust
witches,” he said.

Emmeline winced as the bark dug into her chest.
Without thinking, she squirmed again and the necklace snapped from her neck. She whimpered and then bit her lip, unwilling to expose her grief.

As Tiergan bound her wrists together, a soft thump sounded near her feet
. She realized, with a sinking feeling, that the candlestick she had managed to tuck into her bodice had slipped out. Seconds later, while Tiergan was too busy tying her wrists to notice, one of his men appeared like a whisper, picked up the candlestick with a long, lean arm, and tossed it into the river. He slipped back into the faceless group of men without saying a word.

With her hands securely bound behind her, Tiergan yanked her up from the falle
n tree and pushed her forward. By sundown they reached a dozen waiting horses and began a two-day ride to the sea. Her bound hands made caring for her basic needs difficult, including staying on her mount, but she handled herself well enough and kept quiet.

Tiergan kept her near the front of the company for the entire journey to the sea, insisting she face forward and keep her head down.
It was an odd demand, but it gave her time to think of a way out of her mess. She withdrew into herself and considered her bleak options. She wouldn’t let herself become Tiergan’s slave, that much she knew, but would she have to take her own life to stop him? Or could she escape? Or hide? If she waited until they were far enough from Dolmerti, would Tiergan bother going back for Erick? A chill spread through her body and she knew that he would. Tiergan’s threats weren’t empty.

By the time they
reached the shore, Emmeline was frantic. She had yet to think of a plan that would both protect Erick and let her live. But it was the unknown that frightened her the most. Would her death come from his hand or her own?

A sturdy ship and strange crew waited on the shoreline, ready to
take her to Griet. While the crew worked side by side, she noted their obvious contempt for one another. There were soldiers who glared at sailors and sailors who returned with set jaws and tight lips. None of them raised their eyes to observe her arrival, however. She wasn’t surprised. She had seen this behavior when Mahlon brought her to Dolmerti. Everyone had been afraid to look at her. Everyone, that is, but the man they thought would claim her. She took a deep breath. Just thinking about Mahlon made her skin crawl.

A young boy
tugged on her skirt the moment she boarded.

“I’m O
’fin,” he said, his eyes boring a hole through the deck. “I’ll show you to your cabin.”

O’fin held out his hand for her to take and Emmeline shot Tiergan a questioning glare.
Would he force her to remain bound the entire journey? Tiergan nodded toward the nearest sailor, a large man with skin the color of night. The sailor pulled a knife as long as his hand from its sheath and Emmeline recoiled. With his eyes on her arms twisted behind her back, the sailor’s gaze softened. He waited until she turned around before taking hold of her hands with a tenderness she hadn’t expected. Carefully, he sawed the cords until they broke free and then took a step back.

Angry welts circled
Emmeline’s wrists, her raw skin stinging, and her shoulders aching. But she refused to nurse her pain in front of Tiergan. Instead, she held up her chin and brushed past him as she stepped forward to take O’fin’s hand. The boy grinned and tugged her across the deck. His jet black hair swept across his forehead, bouncing with each step as he bustled around the ship.

Emmeline followed
, each step seeming to finalize the decision she’d made. With her hands no longer bound, it felt more like a choice to walk into the belly of the ship than something forced upon her. She bit her lip to keep it from trembling. Was she sure this was what she wanted? An image of Erick flashed into her mind and her resolve strengthened. She would do everything in her power to keep him safe.

O’fin
led her to a good-sized cabin where she was told she would remain for the duration of the journey. With five paces between the walls in one direction, and ten in the other, there was plenty of space for a large bed, small table, and room for her to roam. But over the course of the following week she spent the majority of her time sitting by the small port window, wracking her mind for a foolproof plan as she gazed into the sea. She thought of plenty of ways to escape, even some that wouldn’t require fire, but not one could give her enough assurance that Erick would remain safe. Or that Dolmerti would be free from Tiergan’s wrath. She recognized, with a knot in her chest that grew each day, that until she could find a way to escape, and keep everyone she loved alive, she was at a standstill. It was a truth that threatened to drag her into a pit of rage and misery, a truth that composed a tune of hate for who she was, or rather, what she was.

O’fin proved to be her one breath of fresh air in the darkness that had become her life. He
could not have been more than eight or nine, and yet as the days rolled by and the more he cared for her, the more she realized he had the sensitivity of a man who’d seen more suffering in one lifetime than anyone one ever should.

O’fin
never caught sight of her face, as far as she knew, and yet he always seemed to know when sadness tugged at the corners of her mouth or shadowed her eyes. His olive arms wrapped around her waist in tender embraces that seemed to grow tighter the longer they sailed.

After
several weeks at sea, Emmeline awoke to the ship groaning, its timbers rocking back and forth as if they had a life of their own. A storm raged outside her tiny window, beating against the glass in a battle to sink the ship. It seemed every force around her had gathered together to sink her until she was nothing more than driftwood on a cold sea. If the sea didn’t kill her, then Tiergan’s control would.

The ship rocked and Emmeline’s stomach rolled with it.
Never before had she felt so sure her insides would rather be on the outside. It was as if a cauldron of rotten soup churned inside her, burning to get out.

The ship
pitched and the table tumbled across the wooden floor, splintering into the far wall. Emmeline buried her head into her blankets, fighting the urge to spill the contents of her stomach onto the ship’s floor. Her nausea grew with each wave, perspiration matting her hair to her neck and cheeks.

She pulled the blanket down just as a
bolt of lightning cracked like an angry whip outside her window, giving her a glimpse of the monstrous wave barreling toward them. Emmeline squeezed her eyes shut, bracing for impact.

The ship lunged and muffled screams
sounded from above. The ceiling creaked as more water sloshed onto the ship’s deck and, as the wood gave way to the unyielding sea, streams of moisture slipped through tight cracks and spilled into her cabin.

Unable to contain herself any longer, Emmeline lurched to the side of her bed and vomited on the wooden floor.
A pungent odor rose from the floor and assaulted her nose. She dry heaved. Again and again. When her stomach stopped clenching, she fell back onto the bed, her limbs shaking with fear or exhaustion, or both. She couldn’t be sure. She had never sailed before, much less during a storm, and the screaming above did nothing to help.

Heavy
boots pounded down the companionway outside her cabin and Emmeline lifted herself on an elbow to watch the door, hoping whoever it was would pass. Anyone coming to look for her at such an hour would be someone looking to use her power and she was in no position to resist. A fist landed on her door and her heart plunged.