Page 18 of A Promise so Bold and Broken (Compelling Fates Saga #2)

Chapter Eighteen

H er hands dug into the sand as she stared up toward the darkening sky, and Lessia tried to catch her breath from once again having crashed into the ground after misinterpreting one of Merrick’s impossible-to-anticipate moves.

As she pulled a wheezing breath into her lungs, a shadow blocked the sun, and her eyes narrowed when Merrick rasped, “You plan on staying down there all day?”

Ignoring his outstretched hand, she pushed herself to her feet, wavering slightly as the effects from the Vincere still lingered within her.

They’d been out here since dawn, when she, as usual nowadays, awoke before the others and repaid Merrick for all the times he’d stormed into her room.

Dragging off his cover, she’d jumped out of the way of his death glare and asked, “Are we training or not?”

He’d growled something back about rest also being important, so Lessia had pulled his quilt entirely off and brought it with her as she sprinted out of the room.

She couldn’t rest.

Her mind wouldn’t let her.

If she got even an hour of sleep these days, she was lucky.

A yawn crept up her throat as she glared at Merrick, who stalked in a circle around her.

But an involuntary hiss replaced it when one of his brows shot up, and his sword lowered an inch, a question in his eyes.

She could almost hear his voice in her mind as she violently shook her head.

You should rest.

She might not have gotten any sleep last night, and it wasn’t because of the dread she’d felt when she realized just how much the Fae here hated the Rantzier family.

Her family.

No, it had been the swirling guilt clogging her throat as she tried to imagine how she’d tell her parents why she’d left.

What if Frelina had told them, but they’d been so furious that her father decided not to come looking for her?

What if they’d decided Frelina was enough?

She shook her head again as doubt danced across her skin.

They couldn’t know.

Her father had loved her too deeply to leave her to fend for herself.

Hadn’t he?

“You done?” Merrick asked.

Eyes snapping to his, she shook her head again. “No.”

The Vincere had been a respite today.

A painful one.

But its effects were fading quickly.

So the only thing she could do to keep her mind occupied until her father’s ship arrived was to fight.

Keep her eyes fixed on Merrick’s lightning-fast movements, his glinting sword as it tapped every weak spot she left open, and let his grumblings when she didn’t follow his exact orders fill her head.

“Good.” Merrick gave her a smile that sent a shudder through her.

On most, a smile would have been encouraging.

But on Merrick…

It was more like a lethal promise.

Lessia’s hand shook as she wiped the back of it over her forehead, the sand sticking to her damp skin scratching her, but she made herself crouch, gripping her daggers tightly as Merrick charged her.

The clang of her daggers blocking his sword echoed across the beach, and she stumbled backward when he pushed against the cross she’d made with the blades to stop him from tapping her gut.

A growl left her when Merrick spun around so fast that sand danced around him, and she lost her vision for a moment as she straightened and blood rushed from her head.

As she blinked against the dark spots, Merrick’s arms circled her, and the cold of his sword soon rested against her bare neck.

“You’re getting sloppy,” he hissed into her ear, blowing a few of her sweaty strands into her face. “You need to surprise me! Not use the same movement you’ve done the past three times. I’ve said it before!”

“I know!” she gritted through her teeth.

“It doesn’t seem like you do!” Merrick snarled.

She fought the frustration urging her to bite him again. Bite right into his golden skin, letting iron mix with that wild scent of his. “Let me go, and I will show you!”

“Hasn’t she trained enough for today?” Raine asked as he strolled down to the waterline before them. “She looks a tad tired.”

“No!” she and Merrick hissed in unison.

Raine raised his hands. “No need to snap at me.”

His gaze swept over the sword at her neck before it lifted to just above her head, leveled with where Merrick’s eyes must be based on where his chest heaved against her back. “You have a few weeks at most, Merrick. With how much sand is tangled in her hair, I assume she’s not gotten much better than she was the past few days. What is the point?”

Releasing her, Merrick stalked up to him, his every step slow and steady.

If they hadn’t been on a beach, Lessia imagined each stride would bounce off the ground with icy precision, like a thunderous storm preparing to unleash.

“What is the point?” Merrick repeated as he halted right before Raine, the latter’s eyes widening at whatever he saw in Merrick’s face.

Merrick’s arm flew out behind him, and a long finger pointed her way. “The point is to survive, Raine. The point is to fight back. To not let evil win. You might have forgotten the point… but I haven’t. And neither has she. You know as well as I do that skill only goes so far. It’s that burning passion, the fever to do what’s right, that matters. And she has that!”

Rolling his eyes, Raine pulled out his flask.

But Merrick wouldn’t have it.

Slapping it out of his hand, he leaned in further, his furious whisper drifting toward her. “Solana had that fever as well, Raine. She wouldn’t have stood idly by, drinking herself into a stupor each night if it had been you who died. She would have fought beside us, regardless of how futile it might be. You’re betraying her memory with your actions.”

A buzzing began in her head as Raine’s face went ashen, guilt pulling at his drunken features.

Tearing her eyes away, she stuffed her daggers into her waistband and forced her tired legs to move faster than they liked, taking her down to the water, away from the arguing Fae.

Lessia clasped her hands over her face when Loche’s deceived face flashed before her eyes.

“Stop it,” she mumbled to herself. “Stop it!”

She hadn’t chosen to betray him.

But the same guilt that slumped Raine’s shoulders drove the air from her lungs.

She might not have chosen it, but she’d done it all the same.

Like Raine, she’d given up.

There must have been a way for her to tell Loche of her oath to King Rioner before the king told him himself.

But she had barely tried…

A sharp slash of water made her eyes dart to the side.

Ydren swam dangerously close to the shore, her violet eyes fixed on Lessia and her large body gliding through the water like the snake that had once marred Lessia’s arm.

The wyvern’s head jerked up and down, and Lessia dug her boots into the sand when Ydren’s long tail whipped toward the horizon.

Something white glinted where the sky met the sea, and Lessia swallowed loudly when she realized it was a ship.

Her father’s ship.

A stifled sound left her.

She wasn’t ready.

Her eyes crashed shut.

She didn’t know how to do this.

How did you tell someone you were their daughter?

How could they forgive her for the thirteen years she’d robbed them of that knowledge?

She couldn’t do this.

As her mind began spinning out of control, Lessia heard something slosh, and she didn’t have time to react as a wave of water fell over her—drenching her tunic and trousers and making her hair fall down her shoulders like a heavy curtain.

Eyes flying open, she glared at the wyvern. “What was that for?”

She swore the wyvern gave her a pointed stare back.

Pushing some wet strands of hair out of her face, Lessia was about to flash her teeth at Ydren, perhaps even use her magic to tell her never to do that again, when she realized…

The water had forced her out of her spiraling.

Lessia brushed her arms, savoring the smoothness—it had also washed away the sand from her failing to heed Merrick’s instructions—and gave the wyvern a small smile.

“Thank you,” she got out.

With a dip of her large head, those terrifying spikes pointing in Lessia’s direction for a moment longer than she liked, Ydren spun in the water, swimming swiftly to the side.

Then the wyvern sent another wave of salty water over the still-quarreling Merrick and Raine.

Despite the ominous vessel growing larger on the horizon—the only silhouette disturbing the clear sea, apart from Ydren’s whipping tail—Lessia giggled when Merrick spluttered and Raine’s mouth fell open.

She was starting to like this beast.

Merrick’s head snapped toward her, and she tried to quench the laughter when he began walking her way, his silver hair plastered around his stern face and dark leathers shining from drops running down them.

But it proved challenging when Raine screamed something incomprehensible at Ydren, and her only response was to splash him with more water.

A wheezing sound escaped her lips when she took a stumbling step backward to escape Merrick’s glower, and for some reason, that made her laugh even harder.

Not even clamping a hand over her mouth could drown out the bubbling laughter.

Staring at her as if she’d lost her mind, Merrick asked, “This? This is what makes you laugh?”

Another wheezy giggle left her, and he shook his head.

Then he took one more step, threw her over his shoulder, and as she made a startled sound, he flung them both into the calm ocean.

“What the fuck, Merrick?” she spat as she broke the surface.

Saltwater stung her eyes as they widened upon finding Merrick grinning back at her.

Actually grinning.

Not the menacing curl of his lips that she’d seen before.

But a genuine smile.

Merrick’s hands shifted beneath the surface as he moved toward her, and she realized a second before he did it what he was planning.

“No!” She threw herself to the side when he sent a spray of water toward her. “Merrick!”

A low chuckle escaped him as she stared at his bright face.

Moving before he could anticipate it, she dragged her fingers through the water, pelting him with a surge of it.

His eyes crinkled as he shook his head, sending his hair flying around it, and she couldn’t help but smile back when he began swimming toward her, looking more like a young boy than the menacing Death Whisperer.

“What. Are. You. Doing?” Raine stared at them from the shore. “That’s Alarin’s ship, if you hadn’t noticed.”

Lessia’s smile fell.

And a moment after, so did Merrick’s.

Keeping her eyes down, she swam the few strokes needed to get to the beach to drag her weary body to a spot next to Raine.

“Merrick?” Raine hissed as the Fae followed her up the beach.

Merrick set his jaw. “What?”

Raine’s eyes were wild as they sliced from her to Merrick.

“You’re playing with fire,” he mumbled before he shook his head. “They’ll be here in a few minutes.”

Her eyes flew to Merrick’s as her heart began pounding against her rib cage.

“You are strong enough,” he said, sidling up beside her.

She gave him a shadow of a smile when his lips curled, trying to let the gratitude for the way he’d tried to take her mind off what was to come shine through.

Closing her eyes, she tried to let the conviction within him flow into her as she listened to the soft waves and wind whistling across the sea.

When she opened them again, the vessel had docked.