Page 16 of A Princess, Stolen (A Kiss of Revenge, Blood, and Love #1)

Roughly, he led me out of the bathroom and a gust of sea air enveloped me like a lead coat.

I smelled the salt and the moisture filled my lungs like water.

My knees went weak. For a few seconds, I thought I couldn’t breathe.

There was water everywhere. Like in my nightmares.

Above me, below me. Inside me. A tidal wave of water.

It washed through this corridor, flushing out images from within me as if someone had opened a floodgate.

I saw Mom thrashing about, a tiny dot in a storm of gray waves.

“Nicholas! Nic!” Her desperate cry echoed from somewhere, perhaps from a hidden place in my soul. My vision blurred even behind the cloth, and suddenly, I was six years old again, floating in time without time, in the now and always.

Everything happens in those seconds.

My mom’s expensive silk dress billows out in the water like a white parachute, but it doesn’t save her; it pulls her down.

Mom goes under, but she comes back up again because she paddles frantically with her arms. They are like oars that beat up and down.

“Nic!” The whites of her eyes seem oversized, like those of horses locked in a burning stable.

“I’ll take good care of her! I promise!” Dad’s voice sounds fearful, pure desperation breaking through every syllable.

It plunges me into nothingness. I fall, miles deep, endlessly, and suddenly, all I feel is the cold like a thousand pinpricks and the seawater that keeps pouring into my mouth, nose, and ears.

I choke, cough, and cling to Dad so tightly that he has trouble staying above water because I’m thrashing about wildly.

“Dad! Daddy!” Above the stormy gray water with waves coming from all sides, flashes of lightning, ghostly lights plunging into the water with spidery legs.

Thunder rumbles. Mom! Where are you? The salt of my tears mixes with the spray.

I can’t see Mom anymore! The raging sea is like a mile-high monster devouring everything.

Still, I keep hearing her scream! Nic! Nic!

Nic! But the distant shouts only exist in my mind as it has long since faded.

Mom has disappeared. Mommy is simply gone!

Somewhere in the sea with the ghosts of the deep sea.

It takes my breath away. The horror presses it out of me, and with a jolt, I am catapulted out of the images like a roller coaster whose safety bar opens.

In a confusing moment between past and present, I heard myself gasping for breath. Mom! Come back!

“Hey, hey, slow down!” The voice came from another place, surreal to me, swirling around me like a whirlpool.

I staggered, hit something with my shoulder, and sank. The extent of my fear was like acid in which I dissolved. Nevertheless, I felt two arms wrap around me and lift me, and I tipped forward. Seconds later, I was dangling over a shoulder.

Someone was carrying me. When had I toppled over? I couldn’t think clearly anymore. All I knew was that I had seen images from the time I had forgotten, a tiny glimpse of the seventy-two hours I had lost. It hadn’t been one of my previous panic attacks, at least, not immediately.

I had no idea what it meant. I didn’t know why now, of all times. My mind jumped back and forth between the memory and what was happening.

I was set down relatively gently in the present, but then the man slapped my face even if it wasn’t hard.

“Hey, Willa, breathe, okay! In short, out long!”

I puffed out my cheeks as I exhaled like I was blowing out candles on a birthday cake. Once, twice, three times. I knew how to counter the panic since I had practiced it with Dr. Moore after the accident, after my nightmares triggered panic attacks.

“Twenty-one days,” I heard the man say, “that’s how long you have to hold out. By that time, your father should have met the demands. Do you understand?”

I nodded, my teeth chattering as if I was still fighting the waves and clinging to Dad.

Twenty-one days. I had no idea how I was going to survive another minute at sea.

Somehow, I managed to lie down, my cheek on the icy floor, my legs drawn up like a fetus.

He had taken me back to my private holding cell and I heard he was still here.

I closed my eyes in despair. Three weeks in this state, tied up and blind on a boat instantly felt like hell, like torture.

No, it was torture. Even if he had just called me Willa, not princess.

Even if he carried me instead of kicking me.

Even if he was still standing there, not radiating only hatred.

There was something else. Something warm and familiar that seemed almost comforting.

He certainly thought I had passed out from fear.

Perhaps that had softened his mood: knowing how scared I was.

Perhaps it gave him satisfaction. Somehow, I sensed both, but I could be wrong.

I swallowed again against the tightness in my throat.

I so desperately needed reassurance that nothing would happen to me here.

And right now, he didn’t seem as hostile as before.

This was my chance. And shouldn’t you talk to your abductors anyway?

Show them that you were flesh and blood?

That you loved and had feelings? That was what they always said in movies.

But what could I tell him? He knew everything about me and he knew that I loved Dad, otherwise, I wouldn’t be here.

Besides, it would probably make him furious if I mentioned my father.

Don’t provoke him , I heard Troy whisper in my mind.

Maybe I should ask him something. But what?

If his name was Nathan? Perhaps why Anger was his middle name?

My mind was in absolute chaos. How could I get him to talk to me?

I thought about the word that Troy had whispered to me, which I didn’t know.

“Tucekilemeur,” I whispered to myself, lying on the floor in a daze.

There was an awful long silence and then he asked in a dangerously low voice, “What did you just say?” It sounded ominous. Not warm, no longer comforting. “Repeat it! Now!”

“Tucekilemeur,” I whispered, full of fear.

He breathed in and out hard. I heard bitterness in it, and abruptly, he stepped toward me, so close now that his shoes were touching me.

“My past is none of your business! My family is none of your business!” He sounded as if he wanted to drag me to my feet, slap me, or spit on me.

I recoiled and he stopped. “Who told you that? Troy?”

“I didn’t mean to…”

“You have no right to say those words. To voice them aloud. To even think them! Not you! Especially not you…” I saw him in my mind, ashen with clenched hands. “I don’t want to hear another peep from you, okay?”

“But I…”

“Not a single word!” he spat in my direction. “Don’t forget what you are; a bargaining chip, a hostage, our prisoner. You’d better do what I tell you.”

I pressed my lips together. Nodded. Trembled.

When he finally stomped away, the bottom of the ship seemed to vibrate under his angry steps; it seemed as if he could light a fuse with his anger. Whatever Tucekilemeur meant, it flipped a switch. The only question was why Troy had told me if he knew how hot-tempered his leader was.

“My name is Willa Nevaeh Rae Hampton, I’m nineteen, and I have been abducted for ransom,” I whispered when he was gone. I couldn’t go crazy even if I started talking to myself. And in my mind, I heard Dad answer: “We’ll get through this, Willa Mouse.”

After Mom died, he had always said the same thing: We’ll get through this, Willa Mouse!

When I was a child and too scared to climb up the ladder to the slide for a while: We’ll get through this!

When I ended up in the hospital after a life-threatening allergic reaction and had to change my entire diet: We’ll get through this!

Dad and I had always been one. Inseparable and that’s how it would stay forever. “I’ll get through this,” I whispered now. “For you, Dad!”

And in my mind, he whispered: I’ll take good care of her! I promise .

Was that the last thing he ever said to Mom?