Page 21

“Very well.” His eyes were bright. “No kiln in the Fairy Dale. You’ve won the day. Let’s hope it’s not our last.” He turned abruptly.

“Are you coming?” He called over his shoulder as he climbed back into the boat, settling on the thwart in the stern, picking up the right oar.

“Aye.” She breathed it. Then the cry ripped from her throat. “Aye!”

An instant later, she was beside him, the left oar in her hands.

They rowed well together, side by side, leaning forward and back, pulling the oars. The going was too choppy, the rowing too strenuous, for conversation.

James felt his palms grow damp. Did Isobel have thicker calluses? Or was she bloodied too?

She shouted a command. He didn’t understand the words, but he understood what to do, pulling harder.

As they battled around the cliff, they found a slack in the current, and caught their breath, then redoubled their efforts to reach the open sea.

The wind snatched away his hoarse shout of triumph.

He turned to Isobel at the same moment she turned to him.

Her expression was exultant, dark hair lashing around her face, eyes shining.

How easy it would be, to press into her, to capture her lips, to kiss her and kiss her, to indulge in hot delirium as the frigid gray sea roiled around them.

A wave crashed over the prow, sprayed their faces. Isobel was once again facing front, and he turned too, eyes stinging. They rowed. They rowed and the roar of the whirlpool grew louder.

He’d never been out on the strait when it began to spin like this, like it would suck down the world.

They were going to skirt it. Leftward. That’s what Isobel was yelling. They were beating the sea with the oars.

As the prow rose and fell, James glimpsed the islets, black rocks collared with foam, and in the distance, Selchskerrie. So much water lay between, hills and hills of gray.

The boat plunged and rose, plunged and rose.

Suddenly, they were going faster, faster than either of them could row.

Isobel was yelling, but the wind, the roar, his own heartbeat merged with her voice. He knew. He knew. It had them—the whirlpool’s outer band. He tried to force the oars in the other direction, to row backwards.

Isobel swung forward, head near her knees. Her oar had been ripped from her hands. He wanted to touch her back, to stroke her hair, to tell her . . . what?

That he believed in mermaids. That they’d go down, down, down in all this crushing water and find themselves in a kingdom under the sea.

But he didn’t believe in mermaids, or magical underwater realms. Beneath the water, there was more water, fathoms of it, and endless dark.

He believed in her. Brave, beautiful Tib.

Dear God, he’d killed her. He’d killed them both.

Damn his haste, his rage, his pride.

He clung to his oar. He kept rowing, not properly, stabbing the oar blade down, using it as a rudder, arm joints cracking.

An islet was nearing, rocks slicked by the veils of mist tossed up by the crashing waves.

They sped toward it, caught in the gyre. He couldn’t stop it. He couldn’t even slow it.

One more instant and the boat would dash to pieces, boards splintering. The two of them, thrown in the waves.

He let go of his oar as rock loomed, filling his field of vision. He covered Tib with his body to absorb the blow, a futile gesture.