Page 16 of A Spark in Time (A Knights Through Time Romance #21)

T he storm hit like a spurned lover—sudden, violent, and absolutely determined to make everyone miserable.

Things that should have sent me below deck: waves the size of buildings, lightning that could fry me where I stand, and wind that wanted to relocate me to Crete. Things that actually sent me below deck: absolutely nothing, because I’m apparently an idiot.

Bebe gripped the rail as the Nereid climbed another mountain of water, her dress plastered to her body like wet tissue paper. Rain hammered down in sheets, turning the world into a blur of black water and white foam. Thunder cracked overhead, so close she could taste copper on her tongue.

It was glorious.

After weeks of being dressed up and displayed like a prize poodle, the raw honesty of the storm felt like absolution. No pretense here. No divine messenger act. Just her and the sea and the kind of danger that didn’t care about prophecies or politics.

The ship plunged down the wave’s back side, and her stomach dropped somewhere around her ankles. She laughed—wild, breathless—and the wind stole the sound before it fully formed.

“Are you completely insane?”

She didn’t need to turn to know it was Kassander. His voice cut through the storm like bronze through silk.

“Probably!” she shouted back, not loosening her death grip on the rail.

He appeared beside her, one arm wrapping around the rigging, the other hovering near her waist like he was prepared to grab her if she went overboard.

Water streamed down his face, turning his golden hair dark, his tunic transparent.

The storm had stripped him down to the essentials—muscle and scars and barely controlled worry.

Sweet suffering gin fizz, wet Thessalian warriors should be illegal.

“Káto!” Go below! he ordered.

“No!”

“Den ?tēsa—That wasn’t a request!”

“ Kalá! Good , because I wasn’t asking permission!”

Lightning split the sky, illuminating his face for a heartbeat. He looked murderous. Also magnificent. It was a confusing combination that made her pulse do things that had nothing to do with the storm.

“You’re going to get yourself killed!”

“At least it’ll be my choice!” The words ripped from her throat, raw and honest. “Do you know how long it’s been since anything was my choice? Since I could just—just be without someone watching, judging, deciding my value?”

The ship rolled hard to starboard. His free arm shot out, caught her around the waist, pulled her against him. They stood pressed together, his body a wall between her and the worst of the wind.

“This isn’t freedom,” he growled in her ear. “This is stupidity.”

“Sometimes they’re the same thing!”

“Not if you’re dead!”

She turned in his arms to face him, which was a mistake because now they were chest to chest, her hands trapped between them, his arm still firm around her waist. Rain ran between them like tears or champagne or time itself, washing everything away.

“Why do you care?” she demanded. “I’m not your responsibility anymore! You just offered me everything—home, love, your whole life—and now you’re acting like I don’t matter!”

“You were never my responsibility!”

“Then why?—”

“Eísai megáloprepēs—You’re magnificent, you infuriating woman!”

He thinks I’m magnificent. Not divine, not useful, not decorative—magnificent.

The words hung between them for a heartbeat, impossible to take back.

Then his mouth was on hers, or maybe she kissed him, or maybe the storm itself pushed them together.

It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except the heat of him against the cold rain, the taste of salt and rebellion on his lips, the way his hand tangled in her soaked hair like he was trying to anchor them both.

The kiss was everything Athens hadn’t been—wild, desperate, honest. No calculation, no performance, no careful distances. Just hunger and storm and the kind of want that could drown you if you let it.

She kissed him back like she was trying to swallow the storm itself, like she could drink freedom from his mouth, like maybe if she held on tight enough, she’d finally stop feeling like she was falling through time.

Thunder crashed. The ship bucked. His grip tightened, and she made a sound that the wind immediately stole.

He tasted like rain and danger and every bad decision she’d ever wanted to make. Her hands fisted in his soaked shirt, pulling him closer, and he groaned against her mouth—a sound that went straight through her like lightning.

“ístia! Echthriká ístia eis balon!”—“Sails! Enemy sails to port!”

They broke apart, breathing hard. Kassander’s eyes were wild, darker than the storm-tossed sea.

“Spartans?” she gasped.

“Pirates, more likely.” He didn’t let go, not yet. “They hunt in storms when ships are vulnerable.”

“Are we?”

His smile was sharp as a blade, twice as dangerous. “We’re never vulnerable.”

Another shout from above. More sails. Multiple ships.

“Get below,” he said, but differently this time. Softer. “Please.”

“Kassander—”

“I can’t fight them and worry about you going overboard.”

She wanted to argue. Wanted to stay here in the storm with the taste of him still on her lips and the whole world reduced to wind and water and want.

But she could see his men running to positions, heard the scrape of swords being drawn. This wasn’t her kind of fight.

“Don’t die,” she said.

“I never do.”

He kissed her again, quick and fierce, a promise or a goodbye. Then he was gone, shouting orders in Thessalian, all warrior now.

Bebe stumbled toward the hatch, the ship pitching under her feet. Behind her, she heard the first clash of bronze on bronze as grappling hooks caught the rail.

Of course. The moment I finally find something worth keeping, the universe sends pirates to take it away.

She paused at the hatch, looked back. Kassander stood at the helm now, sword drawn, rain making him look like something out of a myth—Poseidon’s own son defending his ship.

Lightning illuminated the attacking vessels, their sails like wounds in the sky.

Three ships. Maybe four.

They were outnumbered three to one.

Please, she thought, not sure who she was praying to. Please let him keep his promise. Let him never die.

Then she was below deck, the storm muffled but not silenced, her lips still burning from his kiss, her heart hammering harder than the thunder above.

She touched her mouth where he’d kissed her, thinking of olive groves and vineyards and the future they’d just promised each other—a future that might end before morning came.

The ship rolled again, and she heard the singing of swords, the shouts of men, the particular sound of violence that she was beginning to recognize too well.

She pressed her hand to the hidden ring at her waist, felt it pulse with warmth.

You brought me here for something, she thought at it. Don’t let it end before I figure out what.

Above, someone screamed.

The battle had begun.