The Sea King by C. L. Wilson
The only reason Autumn thought she could love without putting herself or others at risk was because, although her gifts could be quite dangerous, she’d never killed innocent people with them.
Summer had.
Chapter 7
Dead Man’s Cove, Crow Island
In the tattered sewer of a town called Dead Man’s Cove—home to pirates and landless scum from all walks of Mystral—the Drowned Maiden pub was an infamous watering hole, frequented by those from whom light itself quailed in terror.
Conversations were low and guarded, weapons large and prominently displayed. The wenches who slouched from bar to table, taking orders and serving drinks and whatever slop passed for a meal that day, had long since passed their primes. Hair frizzy, flaccid breasts propped up by tight, grimy stays, paint bleeding around tired eyes and grim lips, any beauty they’d ever possessed had long since fled. Not that the equally scurrilous patrons of the Maiden seemed to care.
Flint Grumman, the grim, muscled barman and owner of the Drowned Maiden, poured ales and whiskey with a burning, well-chewed cigar clamped between blackened teeth. Every once in a while, ash from the tip of his cigar would fall into whatever drink he was pouring. He’d serve it anyway and charge extra for the privilege.
Not a single patron ever objected.
Light bloomed briefly in the shadowy pub as the door opened, only to be blotted out the next second by the enormous figure that crouched down to cross the threshold. The growling whispers of conversation amongst the pub’s patrons fell silent.
Every black-hearted pirate and reprobate in the Maiden watched in uneasy silence as newcomer approached the bar and signaled for a drink. Flint’s hands shook as he poured, and a flick of ash fell from the tip of his cigar into the glass. Flint blinked, and in a move that surprised none who recognized the newcomer, set his cigar on the edge of the bar, fetched a new glass, and poured again. He shoved the second pour towards the newcomer and pocketed the man’s coin with a trembling hand.
“I’ve come for a ship and men to crew her.”
Silence.
Those watching from the corners of their eyes fixed their attention on their own tables and held their breath. None wanted to call the attention of the pirate known as the Shark.
Boot heels clapped on worn wooden treads. The Shark fixed his dead, black gaze on three men seated at one of the Maiden’s scarred tables.
“I said, I’ve come for a ship and men to crew her.”
The largest of the three men at the table—Bloody Jack Malvern, captain of the pirate ship Reaper—began to shake, tremors shuddering down his arms, making his beefy, thick-fingered hands rattle against the tabletop.
“I’ve decided yours will do,” the Shark said.
As if abruptly released from invisible bonds, Bloody Jack exploded out of his chair, dual swords unsheathed and swinging.
The Shark dipped back, and Bloody Jack’s swords skimmed past their target. Gleaming eighteen-inch blades shot out from the sleeves of the Shark’s jacket into his waiting hands. The blades swung lightning fast, a silvery blur in the darkened room.
Bloody Jack was known for his speed and gleeful, homicidal skill with swords. It was said he could decapitate a man and filet the flesh from his bones before the corpse’s head hit the floor.
The Shark was faster.
Bloody Jack’s head, wearing an expression of stunned surprise, hit the floor treads with a meaty thump, landing beside the piles of sheared flesh and bloody bones that had been his body.
The Shark pinned his soulless gaze on the remaining two men at the table. “You, what’s your name?”
Bloody Jack’s first mate swallowed hard. “Tunney. Red N-Ned Tunney.”
“Congratulations, Red Ned. You’re the new captain of the Reaper.” The Shark slipped his eighteen-inch fileting knives back in their spring-loaded wrist holsters and tucked them back up under the sleeves of his coat. “Summon the crew and provision the ship. You sail tomorrow on the morning tide.”
Without waiting to see if his orders were obeyed, the Shark pivoted on one bloody heel, stepped over the pile of meat and bone on the floor, and ducked through the Drowned Maiden’s door.
Konumarr, Wintercraig
His skin was so delicious to the touch. Heated velvet beneath her fingertips, brimming with sensual, energy. Summer’s palms skimmed along the swells of Dilys’s sun-warmed bronze skin, tracing the whorls and patterns of iridescent blue tattoos that told a mysteriously compelling, tactile story meant just for her. The tattoos lit up in the wake of her fingertips, coming alive with bright, phosphorescent blue light and sending waves of breathtaking, erotic heat tingling through her body. His eyes gleamed lambent gold beneath a thick veil of inky, obsidian lashes.
He lay naked against the lush, opulent silk, velvet, and embroidered satin of her bed linens, a dark temptation. She knelt atop him, straddling his hips. Everywhere their skin touched, her flesh was suffused with a pleasure so deliciously intense, a connection so pure and deep, she never wanted it to end.
She drew in a shuddering breath and arched her back. The loose coils of her unbound hair spilled over her shoulders and danced across the bare skin of her back, tickling the curve of her buttocks. Her naked breasts thrust forward into his waiting hands, and he guided her to his mouth, laving her nipples with the hot, rough silk of his tongue. He caught one taut peak between his teeth. Fire shot through her, and a soft sob of pleasure broke from her lips.
She grabbed his head, thrusting her fingers into the thick, coiled ropes of his hair, holding him fast and shuddering in delight as his mouth worked its decadent carnal magic upon her and his fingers danced across the damp silk of her heated flesh.
“Dilys. Sweet Helos, Dilys!”
Her breath came faster, shallower, and her hips rocked in an instinctive rhythm as a delicious pressure of heat, tension and aching pleasure built up inside her. Her body ached for a release that somehow she knew only he could give her. She stood on the precipice, waiting for one final flick of his fingers and rasp of his tongue to send her flying over the edge.
Then, abruptly, the scene changed.
The woman straddling Dilys’s naked body and sobbing his name as she rocked against him was no longer Summer. It was Autumn. And Summer stood, frozen with fury, in the doorway of her bedroom.
A roar of rage and betrayal ripped from her throat. “You dare?” Her voice shook. The glass window panes rattled. “You dare claim what is MINE?”
Autumn and Dilys turned to face her in shocked surprise.
Autumn held out a hand. “Summer . . . wait! Wait!”
But it was too late. The Rose on Summer’s wrist went white hot and flames licked at the edges of her vision. Her barriers shredded as magic held long-dormant erupted with cataclysmic fury.
Autumn’s eyes widened, then turned blood red as every tiny blood vessel in her eyes burst. Her mouth opened on a strangled scream as her body began to convulse. And all that gorgeous famously red hair turned to flame of almost the exact color.
Gabriella came awake with a cry, skin hot, heart pounding, her body aching with unsatisfied need so sharp it was a physical pain.
The distinctive smell of smoldering fabric made her swear and leap to her feet. She ripped the sheet from her bed and plunged it into the basin of water she’d left by her bedside for just that purpose. When the immediate threat of fire was gone, she held up the sodden sheet and regarded with grim dismay the charred marks that, when wadded together, formed the unmistakable shape of her hands clenched tight around the linen.
Swearing to herself, Summer folded the wet, scorched sheet and stuffed it the bag she was using to collect scraps of fabric and trim materials for her school’s costumed history projects. This was the second time this week that she’d set fire to her bed while dreaming dreams that had become both increasingly erotic and increasingly violent, and while her maid, Amaryllis, had believed Summer’s story about accidentally dropping a lit candle on the first burnt sheet, she was unlikely to
believe the same excuse a second time.
Gabriella grabbed a fresh topsheet she’d pilfered from the laundry yesterday and began quickly remaking her bed to hide the evidence of her accidental flame.
“Damn it. Damn it. Damn it,” she muttered as she worked.
In the ten days since the Calbernans’ arrival, she’d successfully managed to keep her power under control during the day, but her barriers were clearly no longer strong enough to keep her magic in check while she slept. And it wasn’t just burnt sheets Gabriella was worried about. Her sisters—Autumn, in particular—had died numerous times in numerous gruesome ways in her dreams. It didn’t take much analysis to figure out why. All this week, Dilys Merimydion had begun to show a marked preference for Autumn’s company. Summer’s subconscious clearly considered Autumn a threat in need of elimination.
Afraid of manifesting that violence in real life, Gabriella had taken to avoiding Spring and Autumn as well as Dilys, a fact that had not gone unnoticed by her sisters. They weren’t at all happy about it, but their concern and dismay only unsettled her further and made her avoid them even more.
Summer’s plan to expose Dilys’s use of Persuasive gifts—and thereby eliminate him from her and her sisters’ lives—had come to nothing. The enormous wagonload of books and papers Uncle Clarence had sent from Seahaven’s royal archives contained nothing that even hinted at Calbernans’ ability to manipulate minds. And although Uncle Clarence had sent Summer a private eagle with a clear warning to keep her powers hidden around Calbernans because they did possess those gifts, the actual message itself—“I know for a fact that Calbernans can be very Persuasive, so I urge you and your sisters to be cautious around them.”—was too vague to be of use against them.
It was just as well. Had Wynter thrown the Calbernans out of Konumarr for using mind-controlling magic—which he most definitely would have done—she wouldn’t be able to use Dilys’s obvious preference for Autumn’s company as an excuse to get away from Konumarr. And now that she was far enough gone into madness that she’d begun burning her bedsheets in her sleep, leaving her family was no longer a future possibility, it was an immediate necessity. The longer she stayed, the more dangerous she would become. She’d never forgive herself if she hurt her sisters or Wynter—or anyone else, for that matter.
With her bed now remade and rumpled to look as if she’d slept on the new linens, she flung open her balcony doors to let in some fresh air and spritzed a bit of perfume on her bed to mask the slight charred scent that lingered in the fabrics. Then she rang for Amaryllis to help her get dressed.
Just hold it together a few more days, Summer, she told herself as she waited for Amaryllis. Just a few more days. She’d already planted the seed with Wynter, making him aware that Dilys’s preference for her other two sisters was the latest in a long line of rejections, and leading him to believe those rejections had caused her a deep emotional wound that was becoming too painful to bear. Tomorrow she would once again mention her desire to visit the Skoerr Mountains and see the sun that never set, only this time she would include a little push of Persuasion—one subtle enough to escape the Calbernans’ detection—to help Wynter realize that a solitary trip to the icy, remotest reaches of Wintercraig was exactly what Summer needed to help her get over this latest suitor’s rejection.
Once there and away from the Calbernans, with their Persuasion detection, she would use the full force of her gifts to arrange some sort of tragic accident that would claim her life. Before, when she’d contemplated going away and not coming back, she’d thought she would fake her death and live out the rest of her life in seclusion. But now, considering how quickly the madness was claiming her and the way her fury had fixated on her sisters, her plans had changed.
Even if she isolated herself in the remotest reaches of Mystral, there was no way to guarantee that in her madness she would stay there or that the people she loved would be safe from her. Khamsin had been sent away to Wintercraig, after all, and their father had still pursued her there and tried to kill her.
No, there was only one way to make sure she never harmed anyone. She no longer intended to fake her death. She meant it to be real.
After a morning spent sailing the fjord with Spring and Autumn Coruscate, Dilys lay on his bunk in his ship the Kracken’s spacious captain’s cabin, staring up at the well-fitted beams of the deck overhead while he tried to make sense of the feelings that had cast a pall over a day he should have thoroughly enjoyed.
“Dilys?”
Dilys turned his head as the door to his suite opened, and his cousin Ari entered, ducking his head to clear the doorway.
“They told me I’d find you here.” With a casual intimacy that bespoke a lifetime of friendship, Ari snagged one of the cabin chairs, flipped it around and set it down beside the bed. He straddled the chair and rested his arms along the back. “What’s wrong, cousin? You were very quiet this morning and then you left the palace after dropping off the myerialannas this afternoon and came out here.”
Dilys stifled a grimace. He should have known his odd behavior today wouldn’t get past his cousins.
“What happened? Are things not going well with Myerialannas Spring and Autumn?”
“Ono.” If only his problem was so simple. “I mean, things with them are going just fine. That’s not it.”
“Then what is it?”
Dilys linked his hands behind his head and stared up at the ceiling. Calbernans were, by nature, very social. They needed the close connections with friends and family, the confidences and interactions that built intimacy and nourishing emotional ties. But Dilys hadn’t confided his growing disquiet to Ari or Ryll all week, and that wasn’t like him. Maybe it was time he did. Maybe talking about it would help solve the problem.
“Spring was the Season that was chosen for me. You know this.”
“Tey. Or Autumn. Lucky son of the sea.”
“Tey, very lucky,” he agreed without any particular enthusiasm. “It only makes sense that Spring would be the Council’s choice for me. Having met them, she is clearly the leader of the three. She has the bearing of a queen.”
“But you find yourself more drawn to Autumn.”
“No. I mean yes, but no.”
Ari lifted his brows. “Well, that clears things up.”
Dilys bared his teeth and growled. “Yes, I find Autumn the more appealing. She’s warmer and more approachable than her reputation suggests. I enjoy her company immensely. She makes me laugh more than any woman I’ve ever met. And she has made it clear she would not refuse an offer of marriage from me. That’s not the issue.”
“You find the most beautiful woman in the world more appealing than you thought possible, the Queen’s Council has approved her as a potential liana, and your courtship of her is going well. I’m sorry, cousin, but I really don’t see the problem.”
“Of course you don’t. Because there shouldn’t be a problem.” Beset by sudden frustration, Dilys sat up and scrubbed his hands over his face. “Argh! What is it about her? It makes no sense. I’m a fish on the hook, only I never saw the bait and I still can’t see the hook! I just know it’s there.”
“Autumn has you on a hook?”
“No! Not her!”
“Then Spring?”
“No, not her either!” Dilys flung himself out of the bed and began pacing the width of his cabin. “If it were either of them, would I be clawing the walls? They’re the ones I’m here for. The ones I was sent to court.”
“Ah.” Ari pushed several long ropes of hair over his shoulder. “So I take it the ‘she’ wielding the hook in question is the little sweet one, Summer.”
Dilys threw his hands up in the air. “I told you it makes no sense!”
Ari shook his head. “Of course, it makes sense. She’s beautiful. She’s kind. After fifteen years of fighting other people’s wars, coming home to her would be like escaping to paradise. Who amongst us wouldn’t find that appealing?”
“Appealing
has nothing to do with it. I need a strong, powerful, fearless wife capable of mothering Calberna’s next queen, and she’s a coward!”
“That’s a little harsh.”
“Oh? What would you call it, then? She runs the other direction every time she sees me. She hasn’t spoken more than two words to me since the day we arrived.”
“Now, that’s not true. I’ve counted at least a dozen.”
Dilys’s stopped his pacing and turned to glower at his cousin. “I’m going to take your skull and smash it into the wall until your brains are soup.”
Ari laughed, utterly unafraid. “You’d have to catch me first.”
“My point is,” Dilys said through gritted teeth, “she’s not even close to what I need. She clearly wants nothing to do with me. So why is she the one I can’t stop thinking about? And my dreams . . .” His voice trailed off as he remembered in vivid detail the erotic dream turned nightmare that had ripped him out of sleep this morning.
“What about your dreams?” Ari’s voice had lost its teasing tone.
Tension shot through Dilys. His first instinct was to snarl and snap. The dreams of Summer, her hands on his flesh, his on hers . . . the seductive, silken feel of her nakedness against his . . . those were intimacies that belonged to him and him alone. Not to be spoken of. Not even with cousins he loved like brothers.
“She’s in my dreams every night,” was all he finally admitted. “She has been from the start.” He refused to tell Ari how erotic those dreams had become, how in his sleep he made love to Gabriella Coruscate over and over and over again, how it felt like the most right and perfect thing he’d ever done. Or how, lately, those dreams had begun ending each night with fury and violence. How this morning, he’d come awake shouting, torn from a nightmare so vivid he could still smell the acrid stench of Autumn Coruscate’s burning flesh, still see Gabriella standing in the doorway wearing an expression so ferocious and deadly only a fool with a death wish would dare cross her.
Summer had.
Chapter 7
Dead Man’s Cove, Crow Island
In the tattered sewer of a town called Dead Man’s Cove—home to pirates and landless scum from all walks of Mystral—the Drowned Maiden pub was an infamous watering hole, frequented by those from whom light itself quailed in terror.
Conversations were low and guarded, weapons large and prominently displayed. The wenches who slouched from bar to table, taking orders and serving drinks and whatever slop passed for a meal that day, had long since passed their primes. Hair frizzy, flaccid breasts propped up by tight, grimy stays, paint bleeding around tired eyes and grim lips, any beauty they’d ever possessed had long since fled. Not that the equally scurrilous patrons of the Maiden seemed to care.
Flint Grumman, the grim, muscled barman and owner of the Drowned Maiden, poured ales and whiskey with a burning, well-chewed cigar clamped between blackened teeth. Every once in a while, ash from the tip of his cigar would fall into whatever drink he was pouring. He’d serve it anyway and charge extra for the privilege.
Not a single patron ever objected.
Light bloomed briefly in the shadowy pub as the door opened, only to be blotted out the next second by the enormous figure that crouched down to cross the threshold. The growling whispers of conversation amongst the pub’s patrons fell silent.
Every black-hearted pirate and reprobate in the Maiden watched in uneasy silence as newcomer approached the bar and signaled for a drink. Flint’s hands shook as he poured, and a flick of ash fell from the tip of his cigar into the glass. Flint blinked, and in a move that surprised none who recognized the newcomer, set his cigar on the edge of the bar, fetched a new glass, and poured again. He shoved the second pour towards the newcomer and pocketed the man’s coin with a trembling hand.
“I’ve come for a ship and men to crew her.”
Silence.
Those watching from the corners of their eyes fixed their attention on their own tables and held their breath. None wanted to call the attention of the pirate known as the Shark.
Boot heels clapped on worn wooden treads. The Shark fixed his dead, black gaze on three men seated at one of the Maiden’s scarred tables.
“I said, I’ve come for a ship and men to crew her.”
The largest of the three men at the table—Bloody Jack Malvern, captain of the pirate ship Reaper—began to shake, tremors shuddering down his arms, making his beefy, thick-fingered hands rattle against the tabletop.
“I’ve decided yours will do,” the Shark said.
As if abruptly released from invisible bonds, Bloody Jack exploded out of his chair, dual swords unsheathed and swinging.
The Shark dipped back, and Bloody Jack’s swords skimmed past their target. Gleaming eighteen-inch blades shot out from the sleeves of the Shark’s jacket into his waiting hands. The blades swung lightning fast, a silvery blur in the darkened room.
Bloody Jack was known for his speed and gleeful, homicidal skill with swords. It was said he could decapitate a man and filet the flesh from his bones before the corpse’s head hit the floor.
The Shark was faster.
Bloody Jack’s head, wearing an expression of stunned surprise, hit the floor treads with a meaty thump, landing beside the piles of sheared flesh and bloody bones that had been his body.
The Shark pinned his soulless gaze on the remaining two men at the table. “You, what’s your name?”
Bloody Jack’s first mate swallowed hard. “Tunney. Red N-Ned Tunney.”
“Congratulations, Red Ned. You’re the new captain of the Reaper.” The Shark slipped his eighteen-inch fileting knives back in their spring-loaded wrist holsters and tucked them back up under the sleeves of his coat. “Summon the crew and provision the ship. You sail tomorrow on the morning tide.”
Without waiting to see if his orders were obeyed, the Shark pivoted on one bloody heel, stepped over the pile of meat and bone on the floor, and ducked through the Drowned Maiden’s door.
Konumarr, Wintercraig
His skin was so delicious to the touch. Heated velvet beneath her fingertips, brimming with sensual, energy. Summer’s palms skimmed along the swells of Dilys’s sun-warmed bronze skin, tracing the whorls and patterns of iridescent blue tattoos that told a mysteriously compelling, tactile story meant just for her. The tattoos lit up in the wake of her fingertips, coming alive with bright, phosphorescent blue light and sending waves of breathtaking, erotic heat tingling through her body. His eyes gleamed lambent gold beneath a thick veil of inky, obsidian lashes.
He lay naked against the lush, opulent silk, velvet, and embroidered satin of her bed linens, a dark temptation. She knelt atop him, straddling his hips. Everywhere their skin touched, her flesh was suffused with a pleasure so deliciously intense, a connection so pure and deep, she never wanted it to end.
She drew in a shuddering breath and arched her back. The loose coils of her unbound hair spilled over her shoulders and danced across the bare skin of her back, tickling the curve of her buttocks. Her naked breasts thrust forward into his waiting hands, and he guided her to his mouth, laving her nipples with the hot, rough silk of his tongue. He caught one taut peak between his teeth. Fire shot through her, and a soft sob of pleasure broke from her lips.
She grabbed his head, thrusting her fingers into the thick, coiled ropes of his hair, holding him fast and shuddering in delight as his mouth worked its decadent carnal magic upon her and his fingers danced across the damp silk of her heated flesh.
“Dilys. Sweet Helos, Dilys!”
Her breath came faster, shallower, and her hips rocked in an instinctive rhythm as a delicious pressure of heat, tension and aching pleasure built up inside her. Her body ached for a release that somehow she knew only he could give her. She stood on the precipice, waiting for one final flick of his fingers and rasp of his tongue to send her flying over the edge.
Then, abruptly, the scene changed.
The woman straddling Dilys’s naked body and sobbing his name as she rocked against him was no longer Summer. It was Autumn. And Summer stood, frozen with fury, in the doorway of her bedroom.
A roar of rage and betrayal ripped from her throat. “You dare?” Her voice shook. The glass window panes rattled. “You dare claim what is MINE?”
Autumn and Dilys turned to face her in shocked surprise.
Autumn held out a hand. “Summer . . . wait! Wait!”
But it was too late. The Rose on Summer’s wrist went white hot and flames licked at the edges of her vision. Her barriers shredded as magic held long-dormant erupted with cataclysmic fury.
Autumn’s eyes widened, then turned blood red as every tiny blood vessel in her eyes burst. Her mouth opened on a strangled scream as her body began to convulse. And all that gorgeous famously red hair turned to flame of almost the exact color.
Gabriella came awake with a cry, skin hot, heart pounding, her body aching with unsatisfied need so sharp it was a physical pain.
The distinctive smell of smoldering fabric made her swear and leap to her feet. She ripped the sheet from her bed and plunged it into the basin of water she’d left by her bedside for just that purpose. When the immediate threat of fire was gone, she held up the sodden sheet and regarded with grim dismay the charred marks that, when wadded together, formed the unmistakable shape of her hands clenched tight around the linen.
Swearing to herself, Summer folded the wet, scorched sheet and stuffed it the bag she was using to collect scraps of fabric and trim materials for her school’s costumed history projects. This was the second time this week that she’d set fire to her bed while dreaming dreams that had become both increasingly erotic and increasingly violent, and while her maid, Amaryllis, had believed Summer’s story about accidentally dropping a lit candle on the first burnt sheet, she was unlikely to
Gabriella grabbed a fresh topsheet she’d pilfered from the laundry yesterday and began quickly remaking her bed to hide the evidence of her accidental flame.
“Damn it. Damn it. Damn it,” she muttered as she worked.
In the ten days since the Calbernans’ arrival, she’d successfully managed to keep her power under control during the day, but her barriers were clearly no longer strong enough to keep her magic in check while she slept. And it wasn’t just burnt sheets Gabriella was worried about. Her sisters—Autumn, in particular—had died numerous times in numerous gruesome ways in her dreams. It didn’t take much analysis to figure out why. All this week, Dilys Merimydion had begun to show a marked preference for Autumn’s company. Summer’s subconscious clearly considered Autumn a threat in need of elimination.
Afraid of manifesting that violence in real life, Gabriella had taken to avoiding Spring and Autumn as well as Dilys, a fact that had not gone unnoticed by her sisters. They weren’t at all happy about it, but their concern and dismay only unsettled her further and made her avoid them even more.
Summer’s plan to expose Dilys’s use of Persuasive gifts—and thereby eliminate him from her and her sisters’ lives—had come to nothing. The enormous wagonload of books and papers Uncle Clarence had sent from Seahaven’s royal archives contained nothing that even hinted at Calbernans’ ability to manipulate minds. And although Uncle Clarence had sent Summer a private eagle with a clear warning to keep her powers hidden around Calbernans because they did possess those gifts, the actual message itself—“I know for a fact that Calbernans can be very Persuasive, so I urge you and your sisters to be cautious around them.”—was too vague to be of use against them.
It was just as well. Had Wynter thrown the Calbernans out of Konumarr for using mind-controlling magic—which he most definitely would have done—she wouldn’t be able to use Dilys’s obvious preference for Autumn’s company as an excuse to get away from Konumarr. And now that she was far enough gone into madness that she’d begun burning her bedsheets in her sleep, leaving her family was no longer a future possibility, it was an immediate necessity. The longer she stayed, the more dangerous she would become. She’d never forgive herself if she hurt her sisters or Wynter—or anyone else, for that matter.
With her bed now remade and rumpled to look as if she’d slept on the new linens, she flung open her balcony doors to let in some fresh air and spritzed a bit of perfume on her bed to mask the slight charred scent that lingered in the fabrics. Then she rang for Amaryllis to help her get dressed.
Just hold it together a few more days, Summer, she told herself as she waited for Amaryllis. Just a few more days. She’d already planted the seed with Wynter, making him aware that Dilys’s preference for her other two sisters was the latest in a long line of rejections, and leading him to believe those rejections had caused her a deep emotional wound that was becoming too painful to bear. Tomorrow she would once again mention her desire to visit the Skoerr Mountains and see the sun that never set, only this time she would include a little push of Persuasion—one subtle enough to escape the Calbernans’ detection—to help Wynter realize that a solitary trip to the icy, remotest reaches of Wintercraig was exactly what Summer needed to help her get over this latest suitor’s rejection.
Once there and away from the Calbernans, with their Persuasion detection, she would use the full force of her gifts to arrange some sort of tragic accident that would claim her life. Before, when she’d contemplated going away and not coming back, she’d thought she would fake her death and live out the rest of her life in seclusion. But now, considering how quickly the madness was claiming her and the way her fury had fixated on her sisters, her plans had changed.
Even if she isolated herself in the remotest reaches of Mystral, there was no way to guarantee that in her madness she would stay there or that the people she loved would be safe from her. Khamsin had been sent away to Wintercraig, after all, and their father had still pursued her there and tried to kill her.
No, there was only one way to make sure she never harmed anyone. She no longer intended to fake her death. She meant it to be real.
After a morning spent sailing the fjord with Spring and Autumn Coruscate, Dilys lay on his bunk in his ship the Kracken’s spacious captain’s cabin, staring up at the well-fitted beams of the deck overhead while he tried to make sense of the feelings that had cast a pall over a day he should have thoroughly enjoyed.
“Dilys?”
Dilys turned his head as the door to his suite opened, and his cousin Ari entered, ducking his head to clear the doorway.
“They told me I’d find you here.” With a casual intimacy that bespoke a lifetime of friendship, Ari snagged one of the cabin chairs, flipped it around and set it down beside the bed. He straddled the chair and rested his arms along the back. “What’s wrong, cousin? You were very quiet this morning and then you left the palace after dropping off the myerialannas this afternoon and came out here.”
Dilys stifled a grimace. He should have known his odd behavior today wouldn’t get past his cousins.
“What happened? Are things not going well with Myerialannas Spring and Autumn?”
“Ono.” If only his problem was so simple. “I mean, things with them are going just fine. That’s not it.”
“Then what is it?”
Dilys linked his hands behind his head and stared up at the ceiling. Calbernans were, by nature, very social. They needed the close connections with friends and family, the confidences and interactions that built intimacy and nourishing emotional ties. But Dilys hadn’t confided his growing disquiet to Ari or Ryll all week, and that wasn’t like him. Maybe it was time he did. Maybe talking about it would help solve the problem.
“Spring was the Season that was chosen for me. You know this.”
“Tey. Or Autumn. Lucky son of the sea.”
“Tey, very lucky,” he agreed without any particular enthusiasm. “It only makes sense that Spring would be the Council’s choice for me. Having met them, she is clearly the leader of the three. She has the bearing of a queen.”
“But you find yourself more drawn to Autumn.”
“No. I mean yes, but no.”
Ari lifted his brows. “Well, that clears things up.”
Dilys bared his teeth and growled. “Yes, I find Autumn the more appealing. She’s warmer and more approachable than her reputation suggests. I enjoy her company immensely. She makes me laugh more than any woman I’ve ever met. And she has made it clear she would not refuse an offer of marriage from me. That’s not the issue.”
“You find the most beautiful woman in the world more appealing than you thought possible, the Queen’s Council has approved her as a potential liana, and your courtship of her is going well. I’m sorry, cousin, but I really don’t see the problem.”
“Of course you don’t. Because there shouldn’t be a problem.” Beset by sudden frustration, Dilys sat up and scrubbed his hands over his face. “Argh! What is it about her? It makes no sense. I’m a fish on the hook, only I never saw the bait and I still can’t see the hook! I just know it’s there.”
“Autumn has you on a hook?”
“No! Not her!”
“Then Spring?”
“No, not her either!” Dilys flung himself out of the bed and began pacing the width of his cabin. “If it were either of them, would I be clawing the walls? They’re the ones I’m here for. The ones I was sent to court.”
“Ah.” Ari pushed several long ropes of hair over his shoulder. “So I take it the ‘she’ wielding the hook in question is the little sweet one, Summer.”
Dilys threw his hands up in the air. “I told you it makes no sense!”
Ari shook his head. “Of course, it makes sense. She’s beautiful. She’s kind. After fifteen years of fighting other people’s wars, coming home to her would be like escaping to paradise. Who amongst us wouldn’t find that appealing?”
“Appealing
“That’s a little harsh.”
“Oh? What would you call it, then? She runs the other direction every time she sees me. She hasn’t spoken more than two words to me since the day we arrived.”
“Now, that’s not true. I’ve counted at least a dozen.”
Dilys’s stopped his pacing and turned to glower at his cousin. “I’m going to take your skull and smash it into the wall until your brains are soup.”
Ari laughed, utterly unafraid. “You’d have to catch me first.”
“My point is,” Dilys said through gritted teeth, “she’s not even close to what I need. She clearly wants nothing to do with me. So why is she the one I can’t stop thinking about? And my dreams . . .” His voice trailed off as he remembered in vivid detail the erotic dream turned nightmare that had ripped him out of sleep this morning.
“What about your dreams?” Ari’s voice had lost its teasing tone.
Tension shot through Dilys. His first instinct was to snarl and snap. The dreams of Summer, her hands on his flesh, his on hers . . . the seductive, silken feel of her nakedness against his . . . those were intimacies that belonged to him and him alone. Not to be spoken of. Not even with cousins he loved like brothers.
“She’s in my dreams every night,” was all he finally admitted. “She has been from the start.” He refused to tell Ari how erotic those dreams had become, how in his sleep he made love to Gabriella Coruscate over and over and over again, how it felt like the most right and perfect thing he’d ever done. Or how, lately, those dreams had begun ending each night with fury and violence. How this morning, he’d come awake shouting, torn from a nightmare so vivid he could still smell the acrid stench of Autumn Coruscate’s burning flesh, still see Gabriella standing in the doorway wearing an expression so ferocious and deadly only a fool with a death wish would dare cross her.