Surrender of a Siren (The Wanton Dairymaid Trilogy #2)

“Sweet,” a voice said. A large hand closed over her wrist. His voice. His hand.

She nearly wept anew. He was still there. In some absurd, maudlin spike of self-pity, she’d prepared herself to never see him again.

“What are you doing?” he demanded, his shadowy face protruding through the hatch. “Get back in your cabin.”

Oh, but of course he was still there. His mere presence signified nothing, she told herself sternly. It wasn’t as though he’d any means of escaping the ship. If he had, he surely would have taken it.

Even so, she hadn’t the courage to let him go.

She used his arm as leverage, hauling herself up the stairs even as the ladder pitched and rolled beneath her. “What’s happening?” The salty breeze whipped loose strands of hair across her face, and she used her free hand to tuck them behind her ear. She gripped his arm with the other.

“There’s a storm coming.” Deep lines etched his face. His own hair clung to his brow in thick, wet locks. “You need to remain below.”

“This isn’t so bad,” she protested, pulling the hair from her face once again. “It isn’t even raining.”

He caught her chin in his hand and stared down at her face. For a breathless moment, Sophia thought he intended to kiss her. She thought wrong.

“Look.” He swiveled her head toward the ship’s bow.

“Oh.” The wind whipped the sound from her lips as quickly as she uttered it. Before them, the sky boiled with towering, greenish-black clouds. If Sophia hadn’t suffered through enough geography lessons to know better, she would have thought they’d sailed to the very end of the earth and were about to tumble off the map into a churning void.

He turned her face back to his. The threat in his eyes was no less murderous than that of the sky. She’d never seen him look so forbidding.

“Now go below. And stay there.”

“Are you coming with me?”

His lips thinned. “No.”

“Ahoy!”

Shouts drew their attention to starboard, where a tall ship backed its mainsail in preparation to speak with the Aphrodite. Peering through the spray, she could barely make out the ship’s name painted on its side: the Kestrel.

The wind accelerated, screaming through the rigging overhead. The ocean’s surface erupted in a thousand white-edged crests, like a sea monster bearing row upon row of menacing teeth.

“Get below!” Gray steered her back toward the hatch.

Then the sky cracked open in a flash of white, just as thunder quaked the deck beneath their feet. For a terrifying, endless moment, the world blanked. There was no sight, no sound, only the pungent scent of sulfur and weightless shock.

With a swift yank on her wrist, Gray twirled her into his chest, wrapping his arm across her torso and forcing her down to the deck. Sophia cowered between the wooden planks beneath her and the human fortress of warmth and strength surrounding her. Protecting her. She took a mental inventory of her limbs, making sure they were all still there. Yes, there were her legs, curled awkwardly into her belly. One arm was pinned beneath her; with her other hand she still clutched his sleeve. She slid her trembling hand down toward his wrist, rejoicing to feel his pulse pound against the crook of her thumb. Her own heart thudded against her ribs. Muffled noises reached her ears—men shouting, wood splintering. But the only sounds that Sophia cared about were these twin rhythms: his heart, and hers. After a few moments, the weight pressing her to the deck eased, and she felt herself lifted to her feet.

“Can you stand?”

She nodded, locking her knees as she rested her back against his chest.

“Was …” Her throat worked. “Was that lightning? Did it strike the ship?”

“Yes. And no.” His grip tightened over her wrist. “It struck theirs.”

She craned her neck to look up at his face. His features pale and drawn, he stared hard out over the ship’s rail. Sophia followed his gaze. At first she scarcely noticed it, the faint red glow at the tip of the Kestrel’s mainmast. The ship was still some distance away, and Sophia had to squint to make it out. But it was there. Gray’s arm went slack about her, and she took a step forward. The light seemed to disappear for a moment, then sparked feebly and glowed anew, like an ember in a dying fire. But this fire was not dying.

The captain appeared at Gray’s side. Together, the two men stared up at the red glow. “Gray, can you see—”

“Yes.”

A tongue of flame spurted from the tip of the mast. Sophia felt Gray’s whole body stiffen. Fire slithered down a length of rope, igniting one tip of the topmost yardarm.

“Damn it, why don’t they raise the alarm?” the captain asked. “Where is her crew?”