Release (The Submerged Sun, #3)

by Garden,Vanessa

  “She’ll be the boss, being the firstborn,” said Marko, getting right into the fantasy. “At first our children will follow her around like lost puppies, but they’ll eventually rebel.”

  Our eyes met and I blushed at the implication of us making babies.

  Marko must have noticed because his gaze instantly became heated and my lower stomach exploded with butterflies as he leaned in to press his lips to mine.

  I welcomed the kiss and slid a hand up to the back of his neck, gently applying pressure until the kiss became deeper. Though the sensation of his hot mouth on mine was exquisite, I drew away. Something just didn’t feel right.

  “What is it?” Marko’s blue eyes searched mine.

  “Sorry. It’s not you. I just don’t think I can do this... be in the same city as my grandparents and not visit them right away.”

  “It’s late. They’ll be asleep.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. Back home I’d get up for a drink of water through the night and sometimes find Nana or Pop at the table doing Sudoku.”

  Marko raised his brows suggestively.

  “Sudoku? Is that a code word for something kinky?”

  I laughed with surprise and sat up, grabbing my pillow and whacking him across the face with it.

  “No. It’s a puzzle and there’s nothing sexy about it. Now, if you can distract your dirty mind from the gutter for at least one minute, you can come with me to see them, but if not I’ll go myself.”

  His face grew serious, his eyes pensive.

  “My first instinct is to tell you that it’s not safe, but I know that won’t stop you so I may as well escort you there.” He got out of bed, stretching and yawning. I knelt on the edge of the mattress and pecked his cheek before rolling back across the bed and onto my feet.

  * * *

  I rapped my knuckles against the green door of the little red cottage that Robbie had lived in for several months, hoping to be loud enough for an awake person to hear but quiet enough to allow sleeping people to continue doing just that.

  Marko stood beside me, wary, but confident we were safe. As luck would have it we ran into Jonathan—one of Marko’s most trusted guards and the guy who had helped us both in the past, too many times to count—just before we boarded a gondola. He was able to update us on not only the state of Marin (though people celebrated the birth of the baby, the city was in a general state of unrest—they wanted their own babies) but also on the areas that were safe for us to visit, Robbie’s old cottage and the greenhouses being two of them.

  “How’s Anne?” I whispered as I waited for the door to open.

  Jonathan grinned, and if it wasn’t so dark out here away from the city lights I was certain his cheeks would be as red as his hair.

  “She’s amazing. Living with her parents again. She doesn’t work at the castle anymore. I can’t wait to tell her you’re here.” He shook his head, still getting over the surprise at seeing us again.

  I was about to say, ‘tell her I said hi’ when the green door swung open in a whoosh.

  “Pop!”

  He was wearing striped pyjamas and had a pencil tucked behind an ear and stood staring at me, eyes wide, for nearly half a minute.

  “Miranda,” he said finally. He took a step back and called over his shoulder. “She’s here, love. She’s back!”

  Nana squealed from somewhere inside the cottage and I heard the scrape of a wooden chair against the stone floor before she rushed to the door, arms wide, to join me and Pop in a group hug.

  20

  Robbie

  “Knock again,” said Lily, flipping a dagger over and over in her hand, creating a glinting swirl before my eyes.

  I rapped my knuckles against Marko’s double doors, wincing at the sound echoing down the corridor.

  “We may as well be shouting our intentions out loud,” I whispered. “The entire castle is going to know we’re up to no good if I have to keep knocking like this.”

  “Maybe we should just do the job ourselves,” Lily said, sheathing her dagger and leaning against the door. “Miranda fainted last night. Maybe Marko wants her to get a full rest. Maybe he was up all night with worry and didn’t get any sleep.” She paused, perhaps gnawing on her bottom lip which was her habit whilst thinking. “Let’s just go.”

  “I agree.” But just as I turned, one of the doors opened. I could vaguely make out Miranda’s shape.

  “Sorry. Marko’s still asleep.” There was a smile in her voice. “We saw my grandparents last night and spent the entire night catching up. Can you give him an hour more to rest? I don’t like the idea of Marko wandering around Marin tired. He needs to be as alert and on guard as possible.”

  “Of course,” said Lily, unable to hide the disappointment in her voice. She would have liked to have visited Nana and Pop as much as I would have. “Let him rest. Rob and I will do a little sleuthing ourselves. Maybe sneak into Damir’s room or his lab. Or snoop around Sylvia’s room if we get the chance.”

  “Okay, but if you find anything important come back straight away and wake us. And be safe.”

  “We will,” I said, staring at the floor, because my stupid eyes couldn’t focus enough to meet her gaze.

  Lily elbowed me in the ribs. “Let’s go.”

  “See you later,” I said, nodding to Miranda, who had already disappeared behind the door.

  “Bye.”

  In a way, I was glad Marko and Miranda were indisposed. The less they had to do with Sylvia and Damir right now the better. Marko always made plans with the best of intentions, but he had a way of letting his heart rule his mind at crucial moments and I didn’t want him getting into trouble. Not yet, not when we’d only just arrived.

  Lily turned right, towards Damir’s rooms, but I gently tugged on her hand.

  “No. I don’t want that monster’s eyes on you. And I don’t want you going anywhere near that lab. It’s a horror story in there, trust me.”

  She stood her ground and folded her arms across her chest. My sight was blurry but I could tell she was frowning by the shadows across her eyes.

  “I can handle it.”

  I shook my head. “Of course you can, but you don’t know what he can be capable of in his current state of mind.”

  Footsteps approached and I pulled Lily into the shadows and we stayed flat against the cool wall, holding our breaths, until the guard passed us by.

  “He’s insane, Lily. And if he sees you with all your golden hair he might think of Lauren, which puts you at risk.”

  “Okay. No Damir then,” Lily said with a sigh. “We’ll pay Sylvia a visit instead.”

  Though spying on Sylvia was almost as much a risk as messing with Damir, I agreed. We needed to do something constructive with our time.

  There was one major problem. This early in the morning Sylvia would most likely be in her room still. The fact that the baby was in there with her, gave even more reason for Sylvia to stay in. She wouldn’t leave that baby’s side for anything. But, it was worth a shot. I was prepared to do anything to get Marko back on the throne and baby Angelina into Miranda’s arms.

  After asking a passing maid, who’d just left Sylvia’s room, if Sylvia was awake yet, she laughed loudly and said, “The dome could come crashing down on us right this second and she wouldn’t wake.”

  So here we were at Sylvia’s door, ready to creep in while Sylvia slept. Insane? Yes. Definitely. But thank God my eyes had chosen to behave right this minute, when I needed them most. The fact that they were now starting to sharpen more often was the single thing keeping me from gouging them out in frustration.

  “You’re insane,” whispered Lily, who had volunteered to keep watch. For a second I thought I’d said my last thought out loud, but then I realised she was referring to the fact that I was about to enter Sylvia’s room, with Sylvia in it.

  She checked the length of the corridor, her long hair swishing over her shoulders, and gave me a nod when it was all clear.

  I flashed Lily
the grin of an insane man before slipping into Sylvia’s room.

  Darkness enveloped me and it took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the dimness of the room. Sylvia had light crystal lamps on either side of her bed and a couple in her adjoining rooms, including her old dining room where she now kept baby Angelina.

  My eyes scanned the room and I wondered where I should start looking. There had to be something lying around, some kind of clue as to what had happened with Lauren. Had she been poisoned? Had Sylvia used a dagger? Perhaps I’d find stained clothing. But somehow I doubted Sylvia had spilled blood, otherwise Damir would have seen it.

  I spied Sylvia’s dressing table, loaded with china and crystal jewellery boxes. She no longer wore her signature jewelled rings or chunky necklaces. She’d said it was because of the baby. She didn’t want the jewels to scratch her delicate new skin. But perhaps Lauren had broken Sylvia’s favourite necklace or bracelet in a struggle.

  A creak at the door stopped me in my tracks and I ducked beside the bed and waited for Lily’s warning signal, but no whistle came which didn’t surprise me. Guards weren’t going to come running upon hearing a door creak. And doors creaked a lot around here.

  I’d spent the first year of my life in Marin holding my breath at night, waiting for some kind of hideous monster to materialise at my bedroom door. I’d wake Marko and make him check the halls. That was back when I was new to Marin, just a scared little boy. Back when Marko used to tell me that the spirits of the ancients wandered the castle halls at night.

  How things had changed. Nothing scared me now. Except maybe losing Lily.

  The bed squeaked and I raised my head slowly to see Sylvia roll over to face me. My heart sped up but thankfully, she kept her eyes shut and began to snore softly, in the delicate way only women do.

  From the adjoining room, the baby whimpered softly, and I quickly tiptoed as best as I could in my boots to rock her crib so that she wouldn’t awaken. But when I stared down at her tiny little face, she opened her eyes and smiled at me. Unable to stop myself, I grinned back and was rewarded with a gurgling sound.

  “Shhhh,” I whispered, tucking the blankets securely around her. She was cute and looked so much like Lauren—pretty Lauren who had been dumped out to sea without any ceremony.

  I stroked the baby’s soft, golden hair, thinking it sad that she’d never get to meet her mother, and whispered, “Go to sleep little one.” I needed to get back to my snooping before Sylvia woke up or the maid returned, or before my eyesight regressed again.

  So much jewellery flooded the dressing table, that it was hard to lift a single item without pulling ten other items along with it. They were noisy too, jingling against each other, so after a quick inspection, I carefully dropped them back into the pile. I was wasting my time. Broken jewellery would prove nothing.

  Easing her bedside table drawer open, I sucked in a sharp breath when I saw the three rings I’d never seen Sylvia without. One was missing its large emerald and the other two were so clean they sparkled, leading me to believe she’d had them polished only recently. But where was the emerald? And why was it missing.

  I opened a black, velvet jewellery purse, but instead of the missing green jewel, or any other piece of jewellery for that matter, there was a scrap of paper inside. The print was swirly but neat—Sylvia’s writing. It was the name of a woman and an address.

  Katica Jiravec

  PUPNATSKA LUKA, OTOK KORCULA.

  I’d heard Marko speaking of this bay on the island of Korcula, when I was a child. He’d told me some of his family history. Of his grandmother’s Croatian heritage and how she had grown up on the bay of a beautiful island called Korcula, and how Frano had been visiting on his expensive yacht and had asked a beautiful young islander girl with long dark hair and vivid green eyes advice on the best fishing spots.

  Staying faithful to her father’s rule to never give local fishing secrets to foreigners, she had refused him. And Frano, being a man who had never been said no to, decided then and there that this was the kind of woman that he needed by his side in life. Someone who stuck to their guns, was loyal to those whom she loved, and very, very beautiful.

  The address in my hands got me thinking that perhaps Sylvia had been keeping contact with her relatives. That Katica could in fact be a relation to Marko’s grandmother.

  There were some folded papers and envelopes in the drawer and when I flicked through them a photograph fell to the ground. I picked it up and my eyes chose that moment to weaken, causing the image of the blond boy and a dark haired woman in the photograph to blur. Damn. I couldn’t be certain, but I thought I’d caught a glimpse of a beach, and pebbles instead of sand. Shame I didn’t get to see the faces.

  The bed squeaked again and I tried to cross the room as quickly and as quietly as I could before Sylvia woke, but I obviously wasn’t quick or quiet enough because she cleared her throat and said, in a very husky voice, “What on earth are you doing here?”

  Lily stuck her head around the door and gave it a couple of raps with her knuckles.

  “Morning,” she said with I’m sure, a fake, cheery smile plastered on her face. “Robbie and I were passing by and heard the baby cry. He didn’t want to wake you.”

  Sylvia said nothing.

  “A maid we saw said you’d been up all night,” I said, shrugging, wondering if Sylvia’s face was contorting with rage or not. I couldn’t tell. “Thought we’d give you a break.”

  Baby Angelina chose that exact moment to cry out and I raced to her side, carefully lifted her warm little body out of the crib and snuggled her against my chest.

  “Leave us,” shouted Sylvia and I heard Lily retreat and close the bedroom door.

  “I’ll leave, too.”

  Behind me the bed groaned and soon Sylvia was by my side.

  “Give her to me,” she said, her voice tight with annoyance. “You don’t know how to do it and you’re putting her life in danger just by holding her.”

  Sylvia tried to lift baby Angelina out of my arms but I turned away.

  “Shhhh, I do know what I’m doing and though I may be partially blind, I can still see shapes and outlines. She’s safe in my arms. I won’t drop her.” I lifted Angelina to my face, until I could see that she was in fact drifting off to sleep. “She’s closing her eyes,” I said, gently rocking her in my arms.

  Sylvia’s face, which gradually sharpened under my returning sight, melted into a soft smile. She watched me rock Angelina, her eyes soft and misty with emotion, and with a chill in my bones I recalled the whispered rumour around the castle last year—that the only man Sylvia said she would ever create a baby with was me.

  Inwardly I shuddered. She had once been like a mother to me, but now after all she’d done, to Marko, to Lauren, and to the entire city of Marin, she disgusted me. I didn’t hate her but I certainly would never let her touch me in that way.

  She moved closer, too close, her arm grazing mine as she gazed up at me. “Aww, look at you two. What a pair you make,” she said, wistfully. She rested her head, ever so gently against my arm and chest as she gazed down at Angelina and made clucking noises. My body turned rigid. I needed to get out of Sylvia’s bedroom. Fast.

  “Here, you can take her if you like. I think she wants you.”

  “No,” said Sylvia, gazing up at my face, again too close for comfort. Where was my defunct vision hiding right now? I’d give anything not to see that dreamy look in her eyes. “I think she likes you. She probably thinks you’re her handsome daddy and me her mummy.”

  Sylvia’s full lips stretched into a wide smile. She’d gone mad. Her obsession with becoming a mother had now morphed into an obsession to be a happy little family.

  “Damir should be holding her, not me,” I said quickly, even though I would never ever let Damir lay a single finger on this child. She wasn’t biologically his anyway.

  “But you could be her father, Rob,” Sylvia said, her eyes misty again. To say she was giving me the cr
eeps was an understatement. She moved across the room to pick up a book resting on the unused pillow of her queen-sized bed. When she came back to my side, scanning through the pages, I saw that it was titled, “Parenting, Nature’s Way.”

  “It says here, that in order for a baby to thrive, it requires a mother figure and a father figure or else the child, especially a girl, might grow up battling issues with the opposite sex.”

  Sylvia snapped the book shut and looked up at me with pleading eyes. She was a tall woman, but because of my height, still had to crane her neck to meet my gaze.

  “You could be that man, Robbie. You could be the father figure, and I the mother. We could raise this child, this princess of Marin, together.”

  The hairs on the back of my neck prickled with alarm. I cleared my throat.

  “I will protect this baby till the day I die. But as a guard, not her father. Children need love, Sylvia. Love and protection. And that love and protection can come in many parental forms, not just text book mother-father figures.”

  Sylvia paced the rooms, ignoring what I’d just said. I could tell by the gleam in her eyes that her brain was working overtime, setting imaginary plans into motion. Though I didn’t doubt her love for that baby, especially in this moment, I wanted no part in her delusions of happy families.

  “I’ll have my guards move your things in tomorrow. You can share my room and we can co-parent,” she said, an edge returning to her voice, making me think this was not a suggestion but a veiled order.

  I placed the baby back in the crib and tucked the soft white blanket around her tiny body, wasting time so that I could think carefully about what I was going to say next. If I ruined things for Marko, stirred Sylvia before he’d had a chance to set things right in Marin, then I’d never forgive myself.

  Lily chose that moment to open the door and stick her head in. “Everything okay?” she asked, her eyes narrowing at me as if to say, “you’ve stayed too long!”

  Sylvia’s face turned red. “Get out!”

  “She was only checking on me,” I said through gritted teeth, my hands balling into fists at my sides. “Don’t speak to my fiancée that way.”