Page 21 of A Princess, Stolen (A Kiss of Revenge, Blood, and Love #1)

H e was standing less than ten paces from me, his face in darkness while cold starlight streamed over his shoulder-length hair.

He wore black from head to toe; even his headband was black.

He looked wild and unruly, like a pirate.

Yet, what frightened me most were his eyes.

Anger burned in them. Dark and light, blazing like gray phosphorus.

I swallowed. The others turned their heads to me too and a face immediately bonded to my synapses: a broad, beefy one with a conspicuous bull’s head tattooed on his forehead.

Taurus . That was how I would have drawn him anyway.

Next to him stood a gaunt man with glowing eyes and yard-long dreadlocks, someone who seemed as huge to me as a colossal tree trunk.

He wore an oxblood-red bandana from which thick, black locks curled out from underneath like the bodies of fat snakes.

I blinked and glanced from one to the other—the stupidest thing I could have done. Close your eyes! everything inside me screamed, but I was paralyzed, frozen like a deer in headlights, completely unable to act.

In my fear, I only now noticed that most of them had risen.

“I think we have a problem,” I finally heard Nathan say, his voice darker, rougher, and more strained than ever before.

His words hit me like a tidal wave. I suddenly understood deep down inside and wholeheartedly what this, this moment under the cool Atlantic sky, could mean for me.

It was a moment of fate, an endless moment between life and death.

Desperately, I rushed to the railing, but Nathan leaped over the bollards and ropes and cut me off.

I ran headlong back and jumped down the steps I had just climbed.

I fell far, farther than I imagined, and landed on my hands and knees with a pain-filled cry.

Pain erupted in my wrist and I let go of the life preserver, sending it shimmying across the deck like a drunken car tire before it hit the steps at the other end of the corridor.

I scrambled blindly to my feet, pulling up my skirt, not knowing where to go.

I heard the men yelling from above, but in my fear, I didn’t comprehend what they were shouting to each other.

My reflex was to flee even though my mind was already figuring out the bottom line: hopeless, futile, and pointless.

In those seconds, I understood the flight instinct of antelopes fleeing a pride of lions.

They ran, no matter how hopeless their situation was.

As long as they ran, they were alive; so I ran down the corridor, past my cell with the bars when a thud shook me. Someone had jumped after me.

“Stop or do you think you stand a chance?” someone yelled down the corridor.

I recognized the casual voice.

Instinctively, I glanced over my shoulder and spotted a young man with a too-long crew cut who almost seemed youthful. Younger than me.

“Come on! We won’t hurt you!” Troy raised his hands in a placating manner, grinning disarmingly.

In his loose jeans and oversized burgundy hoodie, he reminded me of a skater boy; one of the cool guys at a normal high school.

But, despite his sincere-sounding words and his reassuring gestures, I didn’t trust him.

Without answering, I kept moving and discovered an alcove next to my cell with a door leading outside right to the railing.

My pulse skyrocketed at the irony. If the life buoy hadn’t lured me to the right, I would have noticed this entrance sooner and would already be free.

I rushed outside without retrieving the preserver and spotted Nathan, who was obviously trying to cut me off.

He had run toward the bow, probably heading for the other staircase in the corridor, but when the door slammed shut, he whirled around.

My heart was pounding. For a few seconds, I couldn’t move under his piercing gaze. He radiated a threatening authority that would have made even the officers in Dad’s private army pale. It hung over me like a veil, and for a few seconds, I was unable to move even though I wasn’t tied up.

“The game is over! Come here now!” he hurled at me.

Sequences of that moment burned irrevocably into my mind, memories for the span of a human life: his face, which was now narrower rather than wide with a subtle jawline, his wild black hair that framed it, and the headband that he wore exactly the same way my blindfold was now. Horizontal across his forehead.

It was nonsensical, insane, and childish, but to me, it seemed as if he had betrayed me and the summer in the Palace of Shards. I shook my head, transfixed. “No,” I whispered and clenched my hands.

“No?” He approached and laughed somberly. “In all seriousness, no?” He was tall with an athletic build. He was not a colossus like the tree trunk guy, rather slim but definitely fit. It would be pointless to resist.

Fleetingly, I considered jumping over the railing, but he was too close. He could jump after me and fish me out immediately or throw one of the nets over me. Or jump after me and drown me like a kitten before anyone from the trawler even looked. Problem solved!

So, I just turned and ran along the railing with no destination in mind.

“Damn it, I told you to stop!” Now he was shouting.

I heard him running but I didn’t know where to go.

Clumsily, I climbed the steps to the deck, stumbling over my dress, still barefoot, but caught myself in time.

I had reached the stern deck, but men were lurking here too.

They had formed a chain and were blocking my way to the ladder.

As if hit by a ricochet I staggered sideways and heard Nathan bounding up the stairs. Suddenly, I was trapped with him as if in the Colosseum arena.

As he approached, he looked like a young fighter for a just cause and I suddenly recalled a story from the Vietnam War that my dad had once told me.

A story about the power of a smile. An American officer suddenly found himself facing two Viet Cong soldiers in enemy territory.

Something on his rifle jammed and he simply smiled.

That prevented the Viet Cong from firing first. The American officer reloaded and killed them both.

So, I smiled now even though I wasn’t holding a Glock or an assault rifle.

Unfortunately, it had no effect because Nathan’s face grew even darker.

“Are. You. Completely. Crazy?” The words flew past me in the wind.

I stood there frozen, only the corners of my mouth drooped.

“Hey, talk to me!” It seemed like he was about to explode like a load of forgotten dynamite.

“What were you planning to do? Jump into the Atlantic?”

“There…there’s a trawler over there…” My blind panic turned into a deep fear.

My focus jumped back and forth. I only saw details, no longer grasping the bigger picture.

I saw men in dark blue overalls, some in jeans and a burgundy hoodie like Troy.

Slender men, strong bulky ones, but all still young, between twenty and thirty, strong, in the peak of their physical performance and strength.

Men like the bull-headed one with the bald head with bizarre tattoos on every patch of skin.

“You wanted to swim to the fishing boat?” Nathan sounded absolutely stunned.

“It…it’s behind us, parallel to us…I had the ring with the emergency light…

I can…I can swim well…it’s not far away…

” I realized that everyone was staring at me.

“It’s not far away,” I whispered to myself.

The aroma of liquor and cigarettes permeated the damp sea air between which the smell of rotting fish, wet rope, oil, and camphor lingered.

“Girl, do you know how far that actually is?” I heard someone ask, sounding like the voice of reason.

It belonged to a man who immediately made me believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He had long brown hair and a beard like the Son of God on the cross, and he looked like a preacher.

“On top of that, it’s pitch black and the trawler is definitely not moving parallel to us!

Besides, the ring’s emergency light is far too weak!

It would have been swallowed like a fly by a frog. What were you thinking?”

“Delphi is right.” I glanced from him to Nathan, who was now speaking.

My life was hanging by a thread—that much was certain.

“The captain and crew of the trawler would neither have seen nor heard you in the dark. I have been on such deep-sea fishing boats for years. You would have drowned.” Nathan stared at me sharply. “In that dress anyway.”

“I was going to take it off first,” I said. Thank God I had waited, otherwise, I would be standing here in front of them in my underwear.

“She completely crazy.” A gigantic shadow moved toward me from the darkness of the circle. “Why she not tied? How you do it?”

“Pan,” I whispered. It was the behemoth with the black curls and the oxblood bandana.

Nathan held him back with his arm as a barrier and looked at me with a strangely emotionless expression. “You know we have to make a decision now, don’t you?” I blinked, my heart beating far too fast. “The blindfold was there to protect you. Didn’t Isaac tell you that?”

“Yes.” I still felt Nathan’s anger since he wasn’t hiding it. However, there was something much deeper underneath. Fear. He was afraid of the decision, at least, that was what my overactive senses told me.

“What you did was basically suicide,” he said, crossing his arms.