Page 20 of A Spark in Time (A Knights Through Time Romance #21)

T he world came back in pieces—rope burning her palms, voices in a language that wasn’t quite Greek, the smell of fish so strong it could have walked on its own.

Things that suggest you’re not dead: pain everywhere, the taste of salt and vomit, and someone yelling at you in Phoenician. Things that make you wish you were: all of the above.

“Easy, easy! She’s bleeding—gods’ balls, how is she still bleeding?”

Hands hauled her over the rail like a landed tuna. Bebe hit the deck hard, shoulder screaming where the spear had kissed her, and promptly threw up enough seawater to float a small boat.

“Alive then,” someone observed with the kind of detachment that suggested he’d seen worse. “That’s something.”

She tried to focus through the salt-blur. A weathered face materialized above her—sun-damaged leather with eyes in it, a gray beard that had given up on grooming sometime around the Trojan War.

“Captain Marcos,” he said, like that should mean something. “This is the Tyche’s Laugh . You picked an interesting place for a swim.”

She tried to answer but only managed a sound like a cat being strangled. Her throat felt like she’d gargled with broken glass.

“Get her below,” Marcos ordered. “Gently! That’s a lot of blood for someone still breathing.”

They carried her—not gently, despite orders—to what might charitably be called a cabin. More accurately, a closet with delusions of grandeur. Someone had attempted to clean it recently, which meant the rats were only mostly visible.

A boy, maybe twelve, pressed a cup to her lips. Watered wine, harsh enough to strip paint but at least it burned away the taste of salt and Kassander’s last words.

Live, silver girl.

The sob came from nowhere, ripping through her like another spear. Then another. Then she was crying so hard she couldn’t breathe, great gasping things that sounded like drowning from the inside.

The boy backed away, alarmed. “Should I?—”

“Let her be,” Marcos said from the doorway. “Grief needs its time.”

Grief. Such a small word for such a large thing. Like calling the ocean “damp” or the sun “warm.”

She cried until there was nothing left, until she was hollow as a reed, until the pain in her shoulder finally won the competition for her attention.

“Better?” Marcos asked, still in the doorway.

“No.”

“Good. Means you’re not in shock anymore.” He came in, examined her shoulder with surprisingly gentle fingers. “Clean through. Lucky. An inch lower and you’d be having this conversation with Hades.”

“Maybe that would be better.”

“Maybe.” He started cleaning the wound with something that burned like liquid fire. “But in my experience, the living have more options than the dead.”

She bit down on a scream as he worked. The pain helped, oddly. Gave her something to focus on besides the memory of blue eyes going dark.

“There.” He tied off the bandage with efficiency. “You’ll live. Whether you’ll want to is your business.”

He turned to go.

“Wait.”

Marcos paused, didn’t turn. “Yes?”

Bebe reached for her hem, fingers finding the hidden weight there.

She’d sewn them in so carefully—Lysias’s gifts, the golden chains and silver rings he’d draped on her like decorations on a particularly expensive cake.

One ruby alone could buy passage to Egypt.

The small emerald would fund a year of comfortable living.

She ripped the hem with her teeth, letting three small gems fall into her palm. They caught the lamplight like trapped stars.

“I need passage,” she said. “Away from here. Away from Athens. Away from...” She gestured vaguely at the sea, at the place where the Nereid had burned, at the space where he wasn’t anymore.

Marcos turned, his eyes dropping to the jewels. A slow smile creased his face—not kind, exactly, but understanding.

“Gold or jewels, lady. I don’t ask where they come from.”

“Even if Athens is looking for me?”

“Athens looks for many things. Rarely finds them at sea.”

She held out the jewels. He took them, weighed them in his palm with the practice of someone who’d weighed many things—gold, lives, choices.

“This is too much for simple passage,” he said.

“Then it’s not for simple passage. It’s for passage far, fast, and forgotten.”

“Ah.” He pocketed the jewels with the same casual efficiency he’d bandaged her shoulder. “That I can do. Egypt? Carthage? The tin routes to the north?”

“Egypt.” Where the sun might burn away the memory of storm-blue eyes. Where the desert might fill the hollow spaces. Where she could disappear into markets that didn’t know her as the Silver Siren or the oracle or the woman Kassander died for.

“Egypt it is. We sail with the morning tide.”

He started to leave again, then paused.

“The man. The one you’re not talking about. Was he worth it?”

The question sat between them like a third presence.

“Yes,” she said simply.

“Then you’re luckier than most. Most of us just get the grief without the worth.”

He left her alone with the rats and the rocking ship and the terrible understanding that she’d have to do what Kassander ordered. She’d have to live. Day after day, year after year, carrying the weight of him like the ring at her waist—invisible to everyone else but always, always there.

She touched the ring through its wrapping, felt it pulse cold against her fingers.

You brought me here for him, didn’t you? To learn what loss really costs. To set something in motion I don’t understand.

But the ring, as always, kept its secrets.

Outside, she could hear Marcos giving orders—casual, efficient, the business of sailing that didn’t stop for grief or love or the end of things.

Tomorrow they’d make for Egypt. She’d disappear into that ancient land, become someone else, someone who’d never heard of Athens or prophecies or Thessalian mercenaries who fought like gods.

But tonight, she lay in a cabin that smelled of fish and tar and tried to forget the sound of bronze through flesh, the taste of rain and rebellion, the way he’d said her name like it was the only prayer he knew.

Live, silver girl.

“I’m trying,” she whispered to the dark. “Gods help me, I’m trying.”

The ship rocked on indifferent waves, carrying her away from everything and toward nothing in particular, and Bebe Merriweather—who’d wanted adventure, who’d wanted to matter, who’d wanted to choose—finally understood that sometimes what you choose chooses you right back.

And sometimes it kills you.

And sometimes you’re the one left standing in the ashes, wondering if survival is victory or just another kind of defeat.

Tomorrow, she thought. Tomorrow I’ll start becoming whoever I’m supposed to be now.

But tonight, she pulled her ruined dress around her like armor and cried for a man who’d called her magnificent in a storm, who’d fought the world for her, who’d died telling her to live.

Tonight, she mourned.

Tomorrow, she’d learn what came after happily never after.

The ring pulsed once more—warmer now, almost comforting.

Almost like approval.