“They are alive and unharmed, my pearl. Never fear. I pride myself on taking excellent care of all my treasures.”
After removing the chafing hemp rope Gabriella’s abductors had used to bind her wrists, the peridot-eyed women replaced it with loops of sturdily braided silk and pulled Gabriella’s arms over her head, tying the rope to a post behind the headboard. Her ankles were next, but when it became clear the women intended to spread Gabriella’s legs and tie each ankle to opposite bedposts, panic set in hard.
There was only one reason to tie her in such a manner. To make it easier for her abductors to rape her.
Summer’s mind was still clouded withtzele,but that didn’t matter. There was no way she was going to submit to rape without a fight. She began to struggle, bucking and kicking out.
“Get off me! Let go of me!” She tried to fill her voice with Persuasion, but her mind was still too blurred by drugs to muster the focus that power required.
Fire, however, was a different matter. Even though she’d spent her life hiding the true strength of all her magic gifts, Summer had the strongest affinity with the sun of all her sisters. When she called, all desperation and wild fear, the sun came roaring in response.
Summer gave a guttural cry as power pulsed through her, hot and fiery. Her Rose went white-hot, a searing ember against her skin. The ropes around her wrists burst into flame. The unlit oil lamps hanging from the ceiling burst into fire and shattered, sending flaming oil spraying across the cabin floor. The three slave women went flying, slamming into the walls and sliding down, hair singed, clothes smoldering. Every drop of moisture in the cabin evaporated, leaving the room so hot and parched, it hurt to breathe. Outside, the sea grew rough as storm clouds boiled across the sky, and the ship lurched sideways on a sudden gale-force wind.
Freed from her bonds, Summer lurched to her hands and knees, then nearly collapsed again. The remnant effects of thetzelehad burned away in an instant, but the sheer force of what she’d just channeled left her dizzy.
Mur Balat took a step towards her. She drew a deep breath of the hot cabin air and focused on Balat—intending to scorch him to cinders—when her magic just... evaporated. One instant, her power was a palpable force inside her, the next it was as insubstantial as smoke—impossible to grasp, let alone wield.
A desperate, wrenching pain exploded inside her, as if her skin were being peeled from her body.
“Incredible!” Mur Balat exclaimed. He loomed over her, palms outstretched, eyes glowing furnace red. Rivers of glowing, golden light were flowing from her body into his, forming a shining halo around him. “Truly exquisite. One of the most delicious powers I’ve ever tasted. And nowhere near as insignificant as I was led to believe.” He clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “You, my pearl, have been hiding your gifts under a bushel.”
She couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t scream. The three slave women gathered around her and, working quickly, tied her back up, hands above her head, legs spread and tied to the bedposts, and there was nothing she could do to stop them. When they were done, they hurried around the room, throwing sand on the fires she’d sparked.
Only once the fires were extinguished did the golden aura around Mur Balat begin to dim, then to blacken. Then the now-shadowy aura sank into his flesh and was absorbed. His fiery red eyes went black once more. At last, Gabriella was free of whatever arcane hold he’d trapped her in, but she was so weakened she couldn’t lift a hand or manage more than a whimpering protest as the three women cut away her nightgown and began to wash her with warm, scented water.
She tried reaching for her magic again, but nothing came to her call. Frantic, she pulled again, reaching deeper, and again
Balat had stolen her magic.
The slaver licked his lips and his gaze roved over her exposed body with open appreciation. “I must say, you are every bit as lovely as that magic of yours is delicious. Had I more time, I would gorge myself on you for hours. Alas, there is no time to indulge. I have an urgent task to attend to.” He stroked a hand down the side of her face, ignoring her shuddering flinch. “Normally, after I’ve eaten someone’s magic, they remain incapacitated and incapable of accessing their powers for days, but your sisters have already proven exceptional in their abilities to recover from my little indulgences. And therein lies my dilemma.”
Sitting down on the edge of the bed, he skimmed a hand along the curve of her bare breast.
“I can’t keep dosing you withtzele.You Seasons don’t tolerate it well and the effects wear off too quickly. If I give you more, I run the risk of overdosing you—the results of which would be... well, unpleasant, to put it mildly. But as you have proven more than once, if given the opportunity, you’ll use your magic to cause trouble. I must, therefore, employ a different method to control you until I return. Sadly, I don’t think you’ll like it very much.” He squeezed her breast.
Terror and outrage combined gave her the strength to hiss, “Let me and my sisters go now. Let us go, and you may survive this. If you don’t, Dilys Merimydion and Wynter of the Craig will hunt you to the very ends of Mystral, and when they find you, they will destroy you.”
Balat rose to his feet. “I wouldn’t pin my hopes on that, my pearl. But if, by some miracle, they do manage to track this ship down, my friend here is more than capable of sinking any ship on the sea.” He crossed the cabin and opened the door. A tall, dark massive figure filled the doorway. As the newcomer stepped out of the shadows of the doorway into the room, Summer felt the simultaneous blows of shock and dread as she realized Balat’s “friend” was a Calbernan.
He wasn’t one of the ones who’d come to Konumarr this summer. Of that, she was certain. This was a man who, once seen, you would never forget. He was tall, like all of his kind, his skin a deep, dark bronze. His chest and shoulders were broad and muscular, his build every bit as impressive as Dilys’s. But where Dilys’s and his men’sulumiwere all iridescent blue, more than half of this man’s tattoos had been inked in matte black, making it appear as if he were surrounded by swirling shadows.
“Your Royal Highness,” Balat addressed Summer with courtly graciousness, “allow me to introduce you to the Shark.”
Dilys smiled with grim satisfaction as a pod of dolphins sang out their news. Summer’s kidnappers must either think themselves safe or whatever magic they’d used in Llaskroner Fjord had run out because the concealing fog surrounding their ship was gone. They were sailing full speed towards the coast of Frasia. The dolphins and porpoises riding the bow wave of the ship happily called out the details of the vessel as they swam, and Dilys’s network of oceanic spies promptly fed those details back to him.
The name of the ship was theReaper.A three-masted caravel, built for speed and maneuverability. The type of vessel favored by the pirates who had long-plagued the reefs and shallower waters of the Carmine Islands that bordered the southern Olemas Ocean and the westernmost Varyan.
“Pirates?” Commander Friis echoed in disbelief when Dilys shared the news. “You honestly think a band of pirates would sail halfway round Mystral and invade Wintercraig to make off with the Winter King’s sisters? No pirates I know of would ever dare such a thing.”
“You weren’t meant to think it was pirates,” Dilys reminded him. “You were meant to think I did this—and you were all ready to believe just that, remember? It’s only luck that I came back when I did and was able to prove what really happened.” He cast a grim look in the direction of Frasia. “Ono,this was another targeted strike against House Merimydion.”
“And the Seasons? What are they going to do with them?”
“I don’t know. Use their weathergifts to take control of every ocean in Mystral. Or sell them. That’s what I’m hoping for.” He gave Friis a grim glance. “If they’re being sold, their abductors will be more likely treat them gently, so as not to devalue the merchandise.”
“So, what’s the plan?” Friis asked.
“We catch up to them.”
