He’d saved her. Even with her magic, her knowledge, her experience, she would have never escaped House Hazael alive without him. And she had escaped. Perhaps repeating it to herself would make it feel real someday.
She traced a finger along his stubble. Real. Here.
And yet, when she closed her eyes, the shackles she’d once worn were still real, too.
“Come,” he whispered. “Let’s head to the weather deck.”
She drew her eyebrows together.
“To see the stars.” Smiling in the lambent glow of the night, he glided over her from the hammock, then helped her out of it.
Her hand in his, he picked a way among the hammocks and led her up the hatchway to the main deck.
On the quarterdeck, Liam stood at the wheel, his straw-blond hair silver in the moonlight; he held a spyglass to his eye.
She dashed to the starboard gunwale and stared out into the darkness. The sea lapped against the Liberté. On the rolling midnight-blue surface, the silvery moon shone like a pearl.
Far into the distance, two tiny lights flickered.
“Another ship,” Brennan murmured. “Liam’s found whatever he’s been looking for,” he whispered.
The ship Liam had said he was chasing. Her grip tightened on the railing. “Battle.”
“Battle,” Brennan agreed.
Liam collapsed the spyglass, his eyes enchanted with a green glow. Earthsight—an incantation, since he was a pyromancer. The glow fled, dispelled. He nodded grimly. “To your posts!”
Boots thudded across the deck and up the hatchway. Crewmen climbed rigging.
“Extinguish aft and stern lanterns! Loose topsails, gallants, royals!” Liam’s voice bellowed over the bustle. “Gun crews at the ready!”
Crewmen opened gun ports and positioned cannons on the upper deck while relaying orders.
“We’ve got the wind of her,” Liam said to his ship’s master.
But he hadn’t ordered any men to mortars. Why not? He could easily cripple another ship from afar with his stock.
A hand covered her own. Brennan’s.
“What do you see out there?”
His werewolf eyes would see more than hers would.
“A ship about eighty feet in length.” He squinted. “A… partition on the main deck.”
Partition?
A slave ship.
“Orders?” she called to Liam.
His mouth fell open, but he closed it. “Get to safety. The hold. Now.” He narrowed his eyes.
There was no way she would hide in the hold while everyone’s lives were at stake. “I’m a quaternary elementalist,” she hissed back, and the men around her slowed. “I’ll turn the very sea to your aid.”
Crewman paused around her, looking to their captain.
Liam swore. “Wait for grapnels, then do battle as you will.” He turned to his ship’s master, but snapped back. “Do no damage to her upper or lower decks. And do not sink her.”
She stood to attention. “Understood.”
Liam nodded to Brennan. “And you—”
“Stay by her side,” Brennan said.
Liam nodded, then held up his hand. Everyone around hushed.
The quiet hung heavy aboard the ship, a growing presence, its weight burdening her shoulders and—the crew shifted—theirs, too.
Flapping, from afar. The unmistakable loosing of sails. Liam’s eyes blazed. “Chase cannons! Load chain shot! Tear through those sails!”
A hiss, and cannon fire boomed, thundering from the aft.
“Twelve-pounders at the ready!”
A whirring cut the wind.
“Brace!”
Brennan pulled her to the deck, covered her. Iron crunched through wood.
“Sight the muzzle flash!” Liam bellowed. “Double shot to the aftcastle!”
A barrage of cannon fire became a cacophonous storm. Discord crushed through the hull. Crewmen shouted and screamed. And above it all, Liam barked orders that his officers relayed.
The sanctuary of Brennan’s arms encircled her, firm and unrelenting, and she leaned into him. If they could survive the initial onslaught, she would see the slaver’s crew dead.
The storm of shots lessened in interval.
Foreign shouts and screams called in the distance. Neared.
“Captain!” Zero shouted to Liam. “They’re dumping cargo!” Lightening their load for speed.
Cargo. They were throwing slaves overboard. People.
“Deploy the boats!” Liam shouted over the noise. “Grapnels!” he yelled. “Master Aryn, take the helm!”
She peeked over Brennan’s arm. Liam made for the boarding netting and climbed.
“Brennan,” she whispered.
He pulled away, enough to look out over the gunwale. Past him, crewmen heaved ropes, pulling in the hooks grappled to the slaver’s railing. Roars rippled through the Liberté, deafening and terrifying all at once.
The slaver’s rigging burned—Liam’s magic. Atop the slaver’s aftcastle, a dozen hands readied bows, and men filed onto its poop deck. She craned her neck to peer at the crow’s nest, where archers picked targets.
Damn it. Here, she and Brennan were easy targets; and she wouldn’t hide behind him. Time to light them up.
Weaving an aeromancy spell with both hands, she scrambled toward the stern and angled around an eighteen-pounder. She shadowed the sky with black clouds. Next to her, Brennan stood sentinel, scanning the slaver.
She held the storm in her left hand and directed it with her right, calling the lightning to an enemy raising a sword to Sterling.
A bolt split the sky. The enemy shook and sizzled. Singed, he fell.
Sterling glanced over his shoulder in the man’s direction before parrying a cutlass blow.
She called lightning to man after man—
Brennan swatted something before her. She fell back, her focus—and her aeromancy—dispelled.
An arrow thudded into the deck behind her.
“Arcanir,” he snarled.
She looked back at the ship. Where had it come from?
“There, behind the wheel.” Brennan leaned in and pointed. The tip of a bow limb peeked out of cover.
From high up, something glinted in the moonlight—
Another arrow, from the slaver’s crow’s nest. Brennan reached.
It penetrated his hand. Blood spattered the deck and her face. Brennan’s blood.
Hissing, he pulled the arrow free and snapped the shaft in half. The sage-tinted arrowhead clattered to the deck.
He looked back at her. “We have to get you to safety.”
The crow’s nest archer readied another shot. They needed to move. Her gaze darted about the deck for cover—the captain’s cabin.
“Come on!” She jumped over splintered deck beams and raced up to the quarterdeck.
She threw the heavy door open and pressed her back to it. Brennan rolled into cover after her.
An arrow thudded into the other side of the door.
She peeked around the edge. If she aimed for the crow’s nest archer, the wheel archer would target her—and vice versa.
Swords clanged, men screamed and shouted, and flames crackled from afar.
Brennan leaned in. Amber gleamed in his lethal eyes. “I’ll handle them.”
There were no other viable options. She nodded. “I’ll cover you. Try not to die.”
He grinned broadly, a playful wink topping the look of pure confidence. She smiled in return as he rounded the cabin door.
She’d cover him. Hydromancy. Ice. She conjured a shard of ice in her hand. Guided by her magic, it would find its target.
One arrow cracked into wood. Then another.
She peeked out from cover. The crow’s nest archer ducked behind the mast.
The wheel archer—just visible.
A clear line of sight.
She threw.
The ice shard sped to its target, narrowly missing a running Liberté crewman—Zero. S
he winced, but it found its target in the wheel archer’s knee.
“Yes,” she hissed to herself. Her gaze darted to Zero fighting near the slaver’s gunwale—and an enemy lighting a fuse. To a twelve-pounder. Aimed at her.
She tumbled into the captain’s cabin, scrambling for the gallery windows.
A loud crash, and splintered wood pelted onto her. The shot had gone clean through the cabin, blowing the door off its hinges in the process.
If he reloaded, he’d be aiming closer to the stern. She crawled across the cabin, through a broken window, and swung down onto the stern balcony.
On the water, people aboard an overburdened pinnace rowed for the port side of the Liberté, no doubt for the boarding netting. Others clung to flotsam, struggling to stay afloat and alive.
She called the waves to help the pinnace along and sent out candlelight to the farthest person, so he wouldn’t be missed or forgotten.
But there, beneath the candlelight, was darkness. Black water.
She squinted.
No, a shadow.
The size of a ship. Bigger than the Liberté.
“Get to the ship!” she screamed out over the water. Dozens of people struggled, their limbs bound in bilboes. Her own wrists chilled, making her shiver.
Any hydromancy spell to draw them nearer could also attract whatever was beneath the water’s surface.
Shuddering, she scrambled to the starboard corner, scanning the slaver wildly for Brennan. Finally, she found him high up in the crow’s nest, imprisoning the struggling archer in a hold.
“Brennan!”
His face immediately snapped in her direction. His preternatural hearing.
“There’s a shadow!” She pointed out to sea.
He shook his head.
“In the water!” She looked back out there. Great Divine, whatever was beneath the surface, she needed to get everyone out.
Brennan threw the archer to his death and began the long climb down the mast.
What could he do about a massive sea creature?
Cannon fire made her flinch as shots blew past.
Spelling a waterspout or a maelstrom would hurt the people afloat… And she couldn’t target it while it was underwater. She had to think of something else.
Scare it away. In case it didn’t work, she moved her candlelight spell farther out to sea—and then fed its fiery glow with two hands, building it, spinning it, growing it.
The candlelight grew until it illuminated the dark waters like a thousand candles.
The clangor of battle quieted. Faces turned to the light. And the shadow moved below it.
A chill shook her and froze her in place. It wasn’t working.
Massive tentacles surfaced and wound around the giant candlelight spell, sweeping through its ethereal glow.
“Kraken!” The call rippled through a dozen men.
Kraken. And she’d actually drawn this nightmare closer.
But it was distracted by the candlelight… Vulnerable. She had to do something.
“Hands to stern chasers!” Liam bellowed.
Both hands devoted to the candlelight spell, she would only have a moment to attack the kraken before it disappeared back under the surface. You want fire? I’ll give you fire.
A fireball.
Dispelling the candlelight spell, she cast a fireball, as large as she could manage in an instant, and sent it flying.
Flame illuminated the monster and only singed a tentacle. It struck the surface, sending floating survivors away.
Another tentacle shot out and struck the surface.
And another.
And another.
Panicked screams rose from the water.
One halted immediately. Disappeared. The man vanished beneath the water.
She grabbed its railing and clenched it. No. No, no, no.
She’d only succeeded in making the monster angry. The survivors from the slaver wouldn’t live to taste freedom unless someone did something.
While the kraken remained underwater, she couldn’t target it.
Underwater.
That was how she had to defeat it. She threw off her thiyawb, down to her chemise and linen pants. Her hands tightened around the railing.
“Rielle, stop!” Brennan’s voice thundered behind her.
She jumped, streamlining her body into a fine point. Her feet broke the water.
She surfaced and swam toward the last position she’d sighted the kraken. If she could just get beneath the surface, even a flame cloak—if cast with strong enough will and destabilized—would cook the creature alive.
Amid terrifying screams and tentacles slamming the surface, people swam past her toward the Liberté. Cannon blasts roared from the ships.
A splash broke the water behind her. Brennan. He splashed up through the surface and gulped air.
One stroke after another. She was marquise of a coastal march. She’d been raised on the water, swimming and diving since childhood. If anyone could handle this, it was she.
“Stop this madness!” he shouted.
“Go back!”
There was no one else. The only other mage present was Liam, who had to lead his crew through this and captain the Liberté.
Finally out far enough, she submerged and cast another candlelight spell, a firefly against the night. The creature would seek her out.
Pressure seized her waist. A tentacle. Serrated chitinous rings cut into her flesh. Breath bubbled from her nose. Her entire body trembled.
The water reddened.
Not yet. She needed to be close enough to kill it.
Water pushed against her, resistance as the tentacle pulled her. She held the candlelight before her, aching eyes fixed on her destination.
A massive mouth. A sharp, chitinous beak to tear her to pieces.
Shuddering, she dispelled the candlelight and closed her eyes. The azure pool of her power—her anima—consumed her inner vision. She gestured the flame cloak, willing it to its maximum intensity. Brightness radiated from the other side of her eyelids.
The pressure abandoned her waist. Water pushed and pulled.
She opened her eyes. The flame cloak blazed to thirty feet in every direction, boiling the water to bubbling opacity.
There—not far—a singed, injured tentacle flailed and vanished.
Now or never.
Her own magic wouldn’t hurt her. Using both hands, she pushed the flame cloak’s intensity past its limits, destabilizing it.
It burst.
Everything went white. An explosion flared over fifty feet in every direction.
Fixed on the kraken’s last location, she swam toward the surface as the darkness of the depths reclaimed the water once more.
A massive broken shadow sank below, descending into the black.
Dead… Was it dead?
Her chest tightened. Air. She needed air. She craned her neck up to look at the surface, some thirty feet up. She swam, kicking her legs.
Fires glowed on the surface, some hundred feet away. The ships.
A sharp pain stabbed her chest from all sides. Agony. Twenty feet.
Faster. She had to—
Swim faster—
Darkness closed around her.
Weakness.
Her lungs squeezed, wringing.
Not like this.
Lights. Tiny lights shone like stars in the depths. They grew, rushing toward her, glowing white, beautiful. Heavenly.
Fifteen feet. She sucked in a lungful of water.
Chapter 44
Brennan swam around some flotsam toward the glow of magic. The little fool—was she trying to get herself killed? What was she thinking?
Smoke, black powder, burning wood and silk, blood, and the overwhelming smell of salt water filled the air. Shouts rang behind him, a cacophonous chaos of men’s screams.
“Kraken! All hands to guns! Blast that thing out of the water, or we’re all dead!”
Whose voice rose above the din,
he couldn’t tell. The captain of the slaver? Someone from the Liberté?
The glow of magic beneath the water enlarged, a fiery sphere swelling, and swelling, destabilizing. Great Wolf, protect her.
He cut through the water, cannon blasts sounding behind him. Iron hit the surface, and he gulped air, dove, eyes fixed on the massive glowing fiery sphere amid the depths.
Agony shot through his back. Bones crunching. Air bubbling out. Blood.
It—
She—
No breath. A vise squeezing out barbs of pain. Darkness closing in. Fading. Had it been a cannon shot…?
Closing around him—arms. Up, up, up—
The surface. The night sky on fire, licked by orange flames, breaths like shallow, needling agony.
“Don’t you die, Marcel,” a voice hissed in his ear. Liam’s. “She’ll kill me if you do.”
She. Rielle.
She’s underwater. Go after her. Save her. Words he wanted to say, but only wheezing came out.
They came under the shadow of the Liberté. Several pairs of hands reached out from the boarding netting.
“Take him.” Liam let him go and turned back toward the open water.
“Captain.” A grim voice. Sterling’s.
“You have the helm, Sterling. If I’m not back in—”
“We’re not leaving you, Captain.”
A moment passed, and then the rhythmic splashing of a fast swim.
As the darkness narrowed his field of vision, he had the vague sensation of rising, ascending through the air, his eyes meeting a flame-licked sky that blackened and blackened.
Wood met his skin. A groan ripped out of his clenched mouth. Pain radiated outward and up and through—
Find her, Liam. Find her.
Gasping for breath, Rielle coughed, spewing water on the sand. She grabbed her belly, wincing at the pain there, the wetness coating her arm. Blood. A soaking-wet shirt covered her.
“Sundered flesh and shattered bone, by Your Divine Might, let it be sewn.” Liam.
A warm glow soothed her, soft and light. Liam’s magic. She opened her eyes and found knees beside her. Liam kneeling over her. Only the waxing moon lit the dark, its faint glow a glittering blanket.
“You—” She coughed, rasping. A small, iridescent scale slipped from her chest and into her hand.
By Dark Deeds (Blade and Rose Book 2) Page 46