So many voices assaulted me: abrasive, blasé, airy, clipped, female, male. Loud music thrummed. Round and round, it all pounded against my temples. I couldn’t pick up any words, but nobody sounded cruel or blubbery. There was no begging, no wailing, no yelling. It felt safe. Safe enough for me to give in to the lull, just for a few moments.
A piercing wail shocked me awake. The voices closed in. Higher. Louder. Clinking thumps rang—one, two, three, four—followed by a heavy thud that echoed in my ear against the deck. The sounds repeated as footsteps loomed closer, the boat swaying with them. Waves crashed harder.
Hands pressed into me—touching, prodding, pulling me up, flipping me over, twisting my head this way and that. So manyhands. Tens of dozens of flashing memories flickered before my eyes. Dozens, hundreds, thousands of hands. Too many. Always shoving me, pushing me over, immobilizing me. Hands that were near. Hands that were far. Hands tugging my hair, even though the wet strands were plastered against my back. They were there and not, and I couldn’t tell which were real and which were fake, except that it needed to stop. They had to let me go. I couldn’t take it.
I thrashed against them, kicking and flailing my arms. The pain didn’t matter. Only getting away did. I croaked screams and coughed through the burn that caused.
They said things, words I was too lost to hear, but the voices that came with the hands always said things. Pretty things. Useless things. Painful things. Debasing things. They never made anything better. Only getting away stopped them. I wasn’t prey. I wasn’t going back there. I couldn’t.
One voice cut through the rest. Dangerous like the roar of an inferno. Refined like the smooth, slick polish of the deck.
“Give her to me.”
No, no, no passing me around, but my grievances went unheard as my body went weightless. My wounds burned from the pull and strain, but I wouldn’t give in. I jerked and pummeled my fists against whatever could be found.
“Arrêtez!” that voice commanded. “Ça suffit!” Stop. That’s enough.
Gruff, demanding, harsh, and yet it broke through. I froze. The feel of various hands dissipated until only his remained. I needed to make sure.
My eyes screamed in protest as I forced my eyelids to lift. Bright light flared back at me in a confusing blur of distant dark and light blobs to the left of my nose. I squinted. The sting increased, and I hissed through labored breaths.
People, those blobs had to be people. Too many of them. I clutched one of his biceps. My fingers didn’t even fit halfway around it, and when he tensed, the muscles corded.
“Help me,” I muttered with effort, my chest shaking. The throb in my temple flared. “Please.”
“I have you.”
“Pro-mise?”
“Yes.”
I don’t know why I believed him, but I did. It was the sound of his voice and the way he wrapped his arms around me. It was his cologne, that woodsy scent offset with rosewater and plums. It felt so familiar. I couldn’t explain it, but my lips curled with relief, and I collapsed against his shoulder.
Chapter 4
“Adrien.”Erelwavedupfrom the bulwark. “Hand her up to me.”
My hands tightened around the woman in my grasp. A dozen guests were already hunched together on the main deck’s aft, leaning over the bulwark rail and staring at our unexpected guest and me on the swimming platform. Overhead on the sundeck, more guests flocked to the edge. Their pointed fingers made my skin crawl.
I gave a firm shake of my head. Erel frowned, his mouth opening and closing in shock. Understandable—this was a first for me, too, at least the first time in years since I held anyone at all. Her reaction, her panic, I related to it. I remembered the same terror when I made it home after my own kidnapping when I was eight. No one understood me then, but I did her. No one deserved to go through that.
When the deckhands placed her in my arms, I braced for the electrical shocks from her touch to my skin. What I didn’t expect was for her to clutch me like a life raft, then burrow into me before becoming deadweight. My black heart softened.Unwelcome touch and I had a difficult relationship, yet for the life of me, I couldn’t let her go. I made her a promise, one I intended to keep.
She was thin, too thin. Her ribs poked against my arm. Probably underfed. Bleached-blonde hair with dark roots stuck to her cheeks. With her face tucked against me, I couldn’t see more than the swelling and bruising over her chin. Black and blue bruises marred what should have been smooth olive skin. Her clothing was torn, frayed, and drenched through, stained in blood from the color. And the smell—she stunk worse than a barrel of overripe algae.
“Get me the doctor,” I yelled up at Erel.
There was a blue tinge to her wrinkled skin, which begged the question of how long she had been in the water. It was only early May. The weather was decent and starting to warm, but the water remained frigid, especially as far as we were from the shores of the Côte d’Azur and Corsica. Dressed as she was, it was doubtful she had made it far. However, there was nothing visible on the open sea. The Mediterranean glimmered back at me, mocking the puzzlement of the situation. Where had she come from? And let’s not forget, she had spoken in English.
“Is she even alive?” a guest with a strong English accent in their French called from above.
“So gruesome,” a woman muttered in the crowd, high-pitched and nearly histrionic.
“I cannot get a good look,” a senator enunciated, poking his head above his female counterparts.
“Why would you?” His wife backhanded his vest. “Oh, the poor thing. Do help her, Monsieur De Villier.”
The crowd yipped, oohed, and awed like a pack of jackals preparing to pry flesh from bone. They flocked by the droves along the bulwark, each tossing their opinions and advice as though I gave a shit.
