“Rot and Ruin!Blast this thing!”Tearing off the Ring, Caleb clenched it until the edges bit his flesh.“Not this, Lord.Not this.Punish me, not him!”
Brandt snapped for two men.They lifted Alden with care, bearing him below as the surgeon hobbled after, muttering oaths half-medical, half-prayer.
“How bad?”Caleb demanded, the words hot in his throat.
Pausing, Brandt shook his head, eyes shadowed.“I’ll know more when I’ve worked on him.Leave him to me.”
Nodding, Caleb fisted his hands, feeling the pinch of the relic against his palm.He marched to the railing, the sea black and restless.Across the dark waters, the town’s lanterns dwindled to pinpricks, the horde on the dock melted into the night.How he longed to hurl the cursed Ring into the abyss and be done with it forever.
But he’d made a vow to his father.
Ayida slipped into the shadows beside the quarterdeck, her dark gaze slithering his way.
Ignoring her, he did his best to force down the rage boiling through him.But it surged anyway.Rage at himself.Rage at the trinket…at heaven’s silence.
Desi’s touch came soft upon his arm, an anchor in the storm.
“Take this foul thing,” he muttered, thrusting the Ring toward her.“Hide it.Bury it where I’ll never find it.Where no man can.”
She nodded, extending a trembling hand.“It’s not your fault, Caleb.But, yes I will.”The gold slipped from his palm into hers, landing on red stains that shouted his guilt.Alden’s blood.
“Oh, Lord,” Caleb whispered into the night breeze, “let him live.”
The air shifted.Nay, rippled.The night itself shuddered as if an unseen veil had torn.A faint, unearthly chime trembled through the rigging.Caleb turned sharply to Desi.
She stared at the Ring in her hand, eyes wide yet blinking.Color drained from her cheeks, turning pink flesh into ash, as if the relic leeched the life from her soul.She looked at him, bewildered, afraid.
“Desi!”He reached for her.
Her body wavered, her edges dissolving into mist.One moment her features sharpened, the next they faded like smoke in the wind.
As if knowing what must be done, she flung her hand open.The Ring struck the planks with a hollow, otherworldly clang.
And then, she was gone.
Chapter 26: A Future Untold
Desi shot up through the surface of the water, ripped out her regulator, and tore off her mask.The world burst around her in blinding light and salt.Her breath came as fast and hard as the pounding of her heart.The sea slapped her face, stinging her eyes with brine.Nothing but the rolling blue of the Caribbean surrounded her—vast, endless, familiar.
She spun in the water, droplets flinging off her lashes.Sunlight glinted so fiercely off the waves, she had to squint, to focus—to believe.There it was.TheSea Starr, bobbed not twenty yards away, white hull gleaming beneath the sun like something out of memory.
“No…” The word tore from her throat, raw and trembling.“Noooo!”
She was back.
Then why did her heart scream as though it had been ripped in two?Why did the warmth of the sea feel cold as death against her skin?Shock buzzed through her like static, numbing her fingers, making her chest ache.She stared into the dark blue below—the place she’d come from—half expecting Caleb’s hand to break the surface, to pull her home again.And fully wanting him to do just that.The Ring!She’d dropped it.And just like before, it had torn her through time and space and spit her back into the future.
But why now?
The wind whispered across the water, carrying the faint hum of an engine, the shriek of a gull.Camila’s voice echoed.“Desi!Over here!”
Desi’s limbs moved on instinct.Against every screaming urge to dive again—to claw her way back through the centuries—she forced herself toward the boat.Back to the surface world.Back to her life, her business, her sister.Back to everything she thought she’d wanted.
Then why did it feel like her soul was still drifting somewhere in 1718?
Camila leaned over the railing and stretched out a hand.“Why’d you come back so soon?”
Taking it, Desi landed on the deck with a jarring thud and sat to remove her fins.“Soon?”
