I had to find the crack before I started swimming. I’d been in the water for maybe only half a minute, but it didn’t matter when it was this cold. The sea would take every bit of my energy. As I turned the other way, my heart went still, and I lost control over the breath I’d held.
Darcke’s face disappeared behind my final air bubbles, and I wondered for a second if I’d imagined it. But as the froth faded, he was still there—unyielding and impossible. His wild face was barely an inch from mine, his eyes filled with feral desperation.
When his hand found mine, our bodies convulsed. My eyes were locked on his as muted screams filled my ears—heartbreaking cries of help. It was Darcke’s people, and then it was not. Pleadings in other languages mingled with each other until they became a song of sorrow, carried here by the sea in the hopes of someone who would listen.
My lungs protested as I tried to listen to what they were saying, but when another spasm shook me, I heard Darcke’s voice in my head as clear as if it were my own, breaking through the others.
It’s enough now. It’s enough.
My eyelids fluttered, darkness flickering in and out.
Stay with me, he ordered as he started swimming backward, holding on to my hands and pulling me with him.Stay with me, Elvara.
As I squinted at him, something golden caught my eyes.
Around Darcke’s neck was a physical collar, one that was gilded and pretty, but a shackle all the same. I blinked hard, trying to get my eyes to focus. When I saw it again, I felt the divine tether that wasn’t the one we shared but the noose the shaman and the king used to control him.
Sorrow creased his face when I looked back at him, and I tried to speak, but darkness pressed in like a predator, and the world fell as silent as the vow echoing in my mind.
I’m going to free you.
Forty-One
It was dark outside the round window when I jolted awake.
The room was empty, the ship quiet, and I pushed at the furs I’d been wrapped in to swing my shaking legs over the edge. My heart raced into my throat when the table chattered, a cup on it dangerously close to keeling over. When the table rumbled demandingly a second time, I forced myself to stand.
“I’m coming,” I mumbled as I made my way over.
The cup was cold, but the soup in there was still good. I was mid-gulp when the door flew open and Darcke barged in, instantly making the room smaller and making my still-frozen limbs twitch with the urge to slip around him and escape out into the night.
“Good. You’re awake,” he said in that lethally low voice. “How are you doing?”
I set down the cup on the table. “Fine. I?—”
“Even better.” Darcke stormed up to me so quickly that the table dug into my back when I recoiled. “Now I can yell at you for being an absolute fucking idiot martyr without feeling guilty. What were you thinking, throwing yourself at him without a fucking weapon?”
“Maybe you can give her some grace? She saved your livesdoing what she did.” Kilia’s voice came from outside the room, but I only had time to glimpse his and Ilse’s faces before the door between us slammed shut.
I grimaced when the window followed, its shutters closing tightly, as if I might try to crawl out of it otherwise, leaving us only in the light from one candle standing by the edge of Darcke’s bed.
Perfect. His ship was also angry with me.
The table dug harder into my back, and I stuck my tongue out at the wood.
“Very fucking mature,” Darcke barked.
“And what about ‘fucking idiot martyr’ makes you an elder?” I taunted.
I was tired and still cold, and I really didn’t want to deal with his mood swings. I would have tried to get around him, but I had a feeling the door would not open even though there wasn’t a lock.
“At least I’m telling you what the fuck I think.” Darcke leaned his hands on the table on either side of me so I had to bend my back over the wood to continue meeting his eyes. “Not just acting on my first stupid instinct.”
“No, you just let a cave fall down on you so I won’t get hurt. Tell me,how is your back?”
“A lot better than your ass will be if you continue trying to die for me,” Darcke hissed, his face hovering right above mine. “I have no issue bending you over my lap and beating some fucking sense into you.”
My stomach surged, and he felt it from the dangerous grin spreading across his face.
