The man bowed his head to her, then vanished.
Feeling more than uneasy, Brett reminded himself the man had used fae transport. He did not just vanish into thin air. Brett hadn't gotten used to that either. But what concerned him more than anything was the way Ena was looking at him with concern and sympathy. He swore tears welled up in her eyes. And then he noticed everyone else was looking at him, too, with the same heartfelt concern.
"He doesn't know what he's talking about," Brett said. "Humans might not heal quickly, but we do heal."
No one seemed to think Brett knew what he was talking about. He felt fine. Tired, which made him wonder if that was why Ena had allowed him to sleep longer when everyone else was up and about and getting themselves ready to leave. Maybe she had a sixth sense that he was not well. But he didn't feel badly. Just ached where the sword had sliced him, the wound still burning. That was it. Which would be normal. He thought.
Ena finally nodded and turned around in the bench seat of Ryker's wagon. Again, Brett glanced around at the dark woods as Ena motioned for Ryker to get on his way. Brett was surprised she didn't fly above, like she had told him she would, maybe still not trusting these people.
What if these people didn't really think he was bound to die on them soon, but was more interested in taking him as a prisoner? A human? What could he offer them? Nothing. Except being a curiosity, he suspected.
They had made good headway today, having only stopped to rest the horses, water, and feed them, and stretch their own muscles a few times, though Brett didn't like the way everyone was looking at him each and every time, as if any moment he was going to keel over and expire on the spot. Didn't Ena say he'd make it to the border at least?
Muriel glanced at Ena, and then she nodded. Muriel said to Brett, "I must check your wound."
Then he worried. Had her poultice infected him as he had thought it might? It was like going to a hospital and picking up an infection the patient hadn't had before the treatment.
"Really, I'm fine," he said, when she started to lift his tunic.
And then with a mighty roar coming from all around them, the thieving brigands struck—ten of them, with their swords out and swinging.
***
Esmeralda watched part in horror, part in anticipation as the smaller, much faster sailing ships headed in her direction. It appeared they would reach her well before the other ship did. But it was drawing closer also.
A flash of fire exploded from the side of the tall ship and a cannonball hit the water near her raft. Her mouth agape, she stared at the ship. Why were they shooting at her? Rescuing her, taking her hostage—that, she could understand.
But sinking her?
Chapter 7
Esmeralda couldn't believe the tall sailing ship was attacking her! As if she was some major threat to their existence. Were they crazy? She could understand if they fired upon the smaller sailing ships that could be their enemy, but what was she to them? On a tiny raft?
They fired another cannonball, and she saw it coming. Her heart pounding, she tried to paddle out of its path, but she knew she wouldn't make it. Right before it struck, she dove into the water. With a huge crash, the ball splintered the raft into pieces, not any of it big enough to hold onto.
She prayed no sharks would come to find her floating in the water, a ready meal to eat. Thankfully, she could float on her back for a long time and was a good swimmer. She looked in the direction of the three sailing ships. Why wasn't the tall ship firing on them?
At least she was such a tiny target now, she suspected the tall ship wouldn't waste any more cannonballs on her.
The tall ship turned away and faded into the distance. She narrowed her eyes at the horrible fae as she paddled in place to keep afloat, the wind making the water too choppy to really float on her back for now.
Then she saw the first of the three smaller sailing ships flying a griffin flag, and she wanted to sink to the bottom of the ocean. Who commanded the tall ship then?
She couldn't swim anywhere and get away from the small sailing ships. And she was certain she'd never have a chance to escape the island again.
The griffin fae that reached her first were not smiling when they pulled her out of the water and onto the ship. They locked her up in the captain's cabin, where she stripped out of her clothes and, whether he liked it or not, she found some of the captain's clothes and put them on.
Well, just the tunic and trewes. His boots were too big, and she had no need to wear his feathered hat, nor his fancy velvet coat. Though she was cold. She climbed into his bed, pulled the covers and blankets over her, and fell asleep.
She must have slept for some hours when a man asked another, "Is she ill?"
The other grunted, clasped a hand over her forehead, and grunted again. Sometime while she'd slept, she'd shoved her covers aside, having grown hot. She wondered if they'd started a fire in the stove to warm the cabin for her. She dared not open her eyes, afraid they'd throw her in the brig in the bowels of the ship. Still, she was dying to ask who had sailed the other ship and why had they fired upon her.
"You are awake," the man said, who had done the grunting. She only knew so because of where he still stood in the cabin. "What possessed you to attempt to escape us?"
She turned then and glowered at him. He was the most handsome man she'd ever seen. Dark brown hair curled about his ears. Blue eyes studied her that were as dark as a stormy sea. His mouth was curved down. His bare arms were folded across his chest, the sleeves pushed up on his tunic as if he worked hard physically at the job, and not just as the captain of the ship, giving orders. Maybe he wasn't the captain.
She looked at the other man. He was older and wore an amused smile. "Princess. The king is not happy with you leaving the way in which you did."
"I am not his to ransom," she said, knowing very well she was if she couldn't manage to escape on her own. She suspected now that the land mass that she had seen in the distance wasn't the mainland but the griffin fae island.
"Oh, but you are," the younger man said. "I am Captain Baldur and this is my first mate, Canton. While you are on my ship, you will stay here in my cabin. You will eat what we eat, drink what we drink, and otherwise, will not speak unless we ask you a question."
As soon as he spoke the words, she asked, "Who were those men who fired upon me?"
Canton chuckled, saluted the captain, then said, "By your leave, captain, I need to check on the men."
"Aye, go."
Canton smiled more broadly at Esmeralda, annoying her, then left the cabin.
"Your food and drink will be served shortly." Then he bowed a little to her and left her alone in the cabin.
She immediately left the bed and headed for the door, but found it locked. Fine, if the captain wouldn't tell her who fired upon her, she would ask whoever brought her meal to her.
Two sailors arrived, one to unlock and open the door and guard it, while the other served her meal to her. She posed the same question and both ignored her. No smiles, no expressions whatsoever. She suspected the captain had told his men not to speak to her about anything.
She wondered then if it was because she was being punished for trying to escape. She waited for the men to leave, then as they locked the door, she checked one of the windows. It was sealed shut. So was the other.
In utter annoyance, she sat at the table and began to eat her fish and drank her wine. If they thought they'd "punish" her by giving her the silent treatment, they didn't know that the king's staff had been doing that for years. She much preferred that to being berated.
Though sometimes that added a little spice to her life. She had learned never to react, and that bothered them even more.
Then she spied the captain's desk. And wondered if he had a captain's log she could access and read. Would it say who had fired on her? Maybe he hadn't had time to write in his ship's log today. She hurried over to the desk, knowing the sailors could return for her empty tray at any time. She
pulled at the drawers, but all of them were locked.
She felt around her hair to see if she'd managed to keep any of her hairpins and in her tangle of curls found two. She moved away from his desk and sat down on the bed, not wanting to be caught at trying to break into the desk when the men returned to get her tray. She would make the attempt later tonight, when she was supposed to be asleep.
Still feeling tired for all that she'd been through, she curled up on the bed and didn't wake until she felt an icy cold hand on her forehead. Again, she played possum, wanting to listen to them if the men talked about anything important in front of her, which she suspected they wouldn't do if they knew she was awake. It had grown dark in the cabin, and all she saw was a bit of lantern light behind her that was reflecting faintly off the wall she was facing.
"She is ill," the captain said, sounding irritated to high heaven.
"It took remarkable courage for her to attempt an escape in the middle of the night on that raft, you must admit," Canton said.
"Goddess save me, it was the most idiotic thing she could have ever done. She hadn't a clue where she was going, and she could have died out there. And she would have if we hadn't come to her rescue. And for what? So she wouldn't have to wed a nobleman? She must be daft."
"She is a hawk fae," Canton said, as if that explained her craziness.
That had her scowling.
"She is awake," the captain said, and she couldn't believe he'd known.
How could he?
"My men have been instructed not to speak with you should you try to entice them to answer your questions or engage them in conversation."
She turned then and glowered at him. "I am used to being treated thus, so your punishment is no punishment to me at all."
That got a hint of a smile from him.
Now that truly infuriated her.
Then he frowned. "You are sick with fever. If you die before we reach the griffin island kingdom, we will have to unceremoniously toss your body overboard to feed the sharks."
She didn't understand that. They had taken a few hours to reach her from the island. They must have already traveled that distance as dark out as it was.
Seeing her confusion, the captain smiled. "We were raiding the hawk fae kingdom, searching for you, intent on getting you back and when we found no sign of you, we left when one of our lookouts watching the tall ship saw you and immediately reported it to me. If you had witnessed us leaving the land, that's where we had been."
She was so angry that she hadn't found the land herself and that the captain was so smug about it, like she was some silly nitwit who couldn't find her way out of her bedchambers, she looked for a weapon. And saw a sword hanging on the wall above the bed. Before she could spring from the bed and grab it, he seized her wrists and laughed.
"You think to do what, princess? Kill me with my own sword? Then make my crew take you to the mainland?"
"What ship fired on me?"
"Your own people. They must have assumed you were one of us attempting to reach the mainland as your journey into adulthood and would soon be raiding like we are. They couldn't reach us with their cannons, but they could you. It was a last resort, a sign of frustration."
She couldn't believe it. Then again, his words sounded possible. And that made her even angrier. "King Tiernan, my brother, would pay handsomely for my release," she said, trying to jerk free of the captain's strong grip on her wrists.
"You don't know that. He might deny you were his sister, unwilling to pay for you. What would he get in return?" He looked at her with disdain.
"His sister."
"And in your culture, that means you would be dead."
"He is changing the way the people think, the way he rules."
"So you surmise. Sure, there have been rumors circulating among my people that that is the case, but it doesn't mean any of it is true." He turned to his first mate. "Secure my sword, daggers, any kind of a weapon the princess could get her hands on."
"Aye, Captain." After the first mate gathered up all of his weapons, which were considerable, he locked them in a sea chest.
Then the captain released her. If she could use her hairpin to unlock that trunk, she could very well be armed when next he came to hassle her.
To his first mate, he said, "I will see you in the morning."
"Aye, Captain."
Once the first mate left, the captain proceeded to make a bed on the floor next to her bed. Well, technically his real bed. "You cannot stay in here with me!" she protested.
"These are the captain's quarters and unless someone else takes on the job of captain, I will sleep here." He dipped a cloth in a porcelain bowl of water and handed it to her. "You are feverish. Use that to wash your face to help bring the fever down. We don't have a lady's maid to take care of your needs so you will have to do for yourself."
Often, she did not have a lady's maid to help her. Some of that was because she very much didn't want to have to rely on one. That made it easier for her to attempt escape. But also because the royal staff treated her with such animosity, the servants did also.
She closed her eyes and laid the wet cloth on her forehead and fell asleep, until she felt the cloth lift and heard the sloshing of water, and felt the cloth laid again against her forehead, but not by her own hand this time. Nor several times later and she wanted to smile, but didn't. The captain, despite his words, had become her lady's maid.
But then the ship began to violently rock, dropping into troughs, then rising on another wave. She was certain the ship would break apart as lightning flashed overhead, and thunder cracked and boomed.
The captain quickly left his bedding and said to her, "Stay here." Then he left.
As if she was going anywhere! She shouldn't have had such a thought because as soon as she did, she felt the ship roll over onto its side, chaos, shouting and screams. She wasn't going to die from a fever and her dead body tossed overboard in the sea. She was going to go down with the ship, locked in the captain's cabin, her personal tomb.
***
Ena was so angry when the phantom fae thieves came out from seemingly nowhere and attacked them, that she immediately turned into her dragon form, and incinerated three men on the spot, sweeping her flame from one to the next and then the last. She couldn’t reach any others who were not in close proximity to her people fighting for their lives.
She snatched up one of the men who had barely missed cutting Muriel, and this time instead of taking him any distance from the fight, Ena just dove straight up, dropped him from a sufficient height, and swooped back down for another man. She really hadn't wanted her people to see the way she killed the other men. To her way of thinking, turning them into piles of ash seemed more honorable for a dragon.
She was trying to protect the women more so than the men in her party, figuring they were stronger and had more training in fighting than the women had, but when she saw Brett holding his injured side, the blood streaming through his fingers, his face ashen as he stumbled, trying to avoid being skewered, she grabbed the man fighting him.
She wanted to tell Brett to sit this one out, but there were still seven hardened criminals to deal with and they knew how to fight. When she returned, she found Brett protecting Cook's back while she watched his, both engaging an enemy.
Ena wanted to take care of the enemy fighting Brett, but Muriel was having a time of it, and so Ena seized the man she was fighting and took him for a ride that would be his last.
When she returned, she saw that Brett had killed the fae he'd been fighting and was engaging the one Cook was left with. Between the two of them, they struck him down. Ryker managed to get the upper hand with the man he'd battled. Jacob had taken care of two others. And Addie and Kerry managed to get the last of the men right before Brett collapsed on his butt.
"Brett," Ena said, shifting and going to his aid.
"You have to take him to a healer," Muriel said, tears in her eyes and in her voice.
; Ena shook her head. "I can't leave all of you behind."
"What if I take him?" Addie asked. "I'm a lousy fighter."
"I'm afraid if any of us return to see our healer in the village, we'll be noticed," Ena said.
"So we do nothing?" Kerry appeared just as distressed.
"I can make it," Brett said, irritated. But he couldn't even stand.
"What about taking him to his world?" Cook asked, sounding like she hated to even bring it up.
"Too many questions would be asked," Brett said. "The police would get involved when they saw I had been cut by a sword."
"Can you take him, Addie?" Ena asked.
"To the human world?" Her eyes grew huge. "I've never been."
Ena glanced at the rest of her people. No one had ever been but her. "I can't leave you to defend the gold on your own," she said to her people.
"How will you move two wagons without two drivers?" Brett asked, his voice breathy.
"We'll tie the reins to the wagon in front of it."
"You'll be short two fighters," Brett said.
"You can't fight, or drive a wagon in the shape you're in. You are not going to make it to the border, and we still have a long ways to go. You are not getting out of paying me back for my buying your clothes, either."
He smiled a little at her.
"Addie, go. Take him to where he can get immediate medical attention. And then bring him back to us as soon as possible."
"Here? I thought you would keep moving," Addie said.
"We will meet you at the border to No Man's Land."
"What if it takes time?" Brett asked.
"Don't take too much time. If Prince Grotto finds me and forces me to return, I will lose all my gold. And if that happens—"
"I know. You'll take it out of my wages."
"Go," Ena said, and prayed that Brett would survive the fae travel, though it never seemed to bother him. But most of all, that he would get the care he needed and could return to them pronto. "And, Addie, if he decides he'd prefer to stay in the human world, leave him and return to us at once so we can continue on our way."
"You will not get rid of me that easily," Brett said, slumped over. He looked pale as death.