Salt water stung her eyes and filled her mouth as she gasped for air. She strained to see, and horror engulfed her. The longboat seemed to be miles away. Miles and miles away.
And the Hawk was next to it, clinging to it. He could crawl right over to safety, while she…
Water rose and crashed over her head again. She started going down. Her lungs were going to burst. Searing pain swept through them. She realized that she was about to die, to drown, to sink down to the sea bed in a swirl of bone and petticoats and skirts, and lie there to be food for sharks and other fishes. Life, sweet tempest that it was, would be over. Death could not be so hard. Not so painful as the agony that came to her lungs. Not so terrifying as the sea green darkness and the cold that was enveloping her. They said that a drowning man saw his life flash before his eyes. What of a drowning woman?
A drowning woman saw her lover’s face, she thought, but her air was all but gone, and she did not know if she saw her husband or the Hawk before her.…
Pain awoke her just before she opened her mouth to breathe in gallons of the water. Fingers entwined in her hair, dragging her up and up. She broke the surface and through the darkness and gray and pelting of the rain, she saw the Hawk.
“Swim!” he commanded her furiously.
“I cannot! My petticoats—”
“Shut up!”
He was holding her against him, treading the water with a fury and coming at her with a knife. If she had had breath, she would have screamed. He meant to slay her so that she would not drown, she thought incredulously.
But he did not slay her. His knife did not cut into her flesh, but severed away her clothing. Her skirts and petticoats fell, and her legs were free, and she could tread water herself. “Get rid of your shoes!” he shouted.
She reached down and gulped in some water. He spun her around, digging into her hair again, but holding her face above water. She managed to shed her shoes. She realized that he was already swimming, his fingers dragging her along by the hair.
“I can manage!” she cried. Twisting, she began to go with the water. He wasn’t fighting the current or the waves. He was allowing the rush of the storm to cast them toward the shore.
Hope surged within her, but then it died. She was tiring so quickly! And it took them so long. The shoreline seemed so close, and then a gray wave would crash over her, and it would seem miles away again. She started to flag. He caught her by the hair again.
“Stop!” she cried. The cold was numbing. It made her want to die. “Stop, you’re hurting me. I can’t make it. Go on!”
“I’ll hurt you like you can’t imagine if you don’t stop fighting me!” he swore. His fingers were grasping her, biting cruelly into her. They laced through her hair, and he was swimming hard again. She ceased trying to fight him. The rain was all around her, as gray as the sky, as dark as the sea. There was no difference between them. Sky and rain and sea were one, and they were imprisoned by them all.
“There. Hold on!” the Hawk demanded.
She didn’t know if she held on or not. The darkness encompassed her. She went limp. She sank beneath the waves. The shore was just ahead of them. She saw that. Then the world was dark.
She came to moments later because she was flat in the sand, and he was straddled over her, his mouth on hers, forcing air into her lungs. She gasped, and breathed on her own. Her eyes flew open.
“We’re alive!” she cried.
“We’re alive,” he said simply. He crashed down beside her. She realized that she could no longer feel the rain. He had brought them into the shelter of a small cove with overhanging rock and ledge.
She could think no more that night. She closed her eyes, and slept.
The sun, hot and beautiful upon her damp body, awoke her. Skye rolled, dazed, to her side. She looked about, and she saw the Hawk. He was still out, sprawled not ten feet away from her. Desperately pleased to see him with her and alive, she crawled the distance to him. If he slept, she could dare to wake him with a tender kiss. This morning, she could not feel guilt or shame.
Yet before she could touch him, she paused. A frown furrowed her brow as she stared down at his face.
Half of his beard had been sheared away. His mustache, too. Bits and pieces of hair clung to his flesh in a very odd manner.
She reached out and touched the hair. It came away in her grasp. It was fake. His beard was fake. He was really clean shaven. And with the beard gone to display the contours and angles of his face, he looked even more like Petroc Cameron. In fact, he looked exactly like Petroc Cameron.
She stared at him, and the truth slowly, slowly dawned upon her. She stood, forgetting their wild fight for life and death,forgetting everything as rage seared into her heart, blinding her to the entire world.
“Bastard!” she shrieked, and she awoke him not with a kiss, but with a wild and savage kick to the midsection.
XVI
“Despicable bastard! Scurvy knave. Worse than a sea slime, worse than the densest pile of—of rat dung! You should be sliced to ribbons, disemboweled! Skinned alive, inch by scurvy inch!”
He was dreaming, Roc thought. The storm and the roiling waves were all about him still and he was dreaming that some Harpy had come flapping around above him to torture him awake.
