Page 15 of Broken Hearted (Cursed Fae #3)

S unlight hit my face and I awoke with a splitting headache.

“Mmm,” I moaned.

“Isolde? Are you okay?” Adrien’s panicked voice brought everything back. My eyes snapped open. We were floating. Everyone was treading water to stay afloat. I craned my neck to take in more of my surroundings and a spike of fear rushed through me.

We were in the middle of the ocean with no lifeboat, no land in sight, and treading water for …

“How long has it been?” I asked.

Adrien looked relieved that I was speaking, and I just now realized he was holding me afloat in his arms, in my white nightgown, soaking wet.

I scrambled out of his arms, but he kept his hands firmly on my biceps as I began to kick with my legs to keep from sinking. Since I wasn’t the best swimmer, I let him assist me.

There were only eight men with us. Did that mean the rest were …?

A lump formed in my throat.

“We’ve been in the water for about four hours,” Adrien said, and I noticed the men looked exhausted. Some were still bleeding from open gashes on their faces and necks.

“I’m so sorry I couldn’t save everyone. There were too many. If I had my powers I could make a boat of ice,” I told them. Even now I could feel the restrictive blanket over my power and a slight burn of the rune between my shoulders.

“Milady, ye saved our lives,” one of the men said.

“We’re grateful, even if we’ll still drown,” another said.

Drown?

My gaze flew to Adrien and the green rune on his chest, and he sighed. “We will eventually tire of treading water,” he admitted.

No.

“Let’s swim. Maybe there’s land nearby,” I offered.

Adrien shook his head. “There isn’t and you’ll tire faster swimming. We’ve been alternating between floating and treading water, but we will eventually need fresh water to drink. And when night comes …”

“No,” I said stubbornly as I shook my head. This wasn’t happening.

But it was true. We were stuck here in the middle of the ocean about to die. I craned my neck, searching for a boat in the water or land, but there was just a blue line as far as the eye could see.

“Try to cut through my rune. Do you still have my dagger?” I asked him.

He nodded. “And the crystal.”

A trickle of relief ran through me. At least one thing was going in our favor.

I turned my back to Adrien so he could see where the rune clung to me and felt him deftly grasp my shoulder blades. Seconds ticked by, but that restricted feeling was still there.

“Did you try to cut through it?” I asked him, panic at the edge of my voice.

“Thrice,” he confirmed.

No.

I peered at the men in the water with me. They were both seelie and unseelie. I was glad to see Adrien’s first mate, Brimsley, was still with us. “What powers have you all got? We can figure this out.”

“I can lift three times my weight,” one said.

Okay, useless right now.

“I am powerless, milady,” another mentioned.

“I sense where all the good fish are,” another spoke up.

That could be useful when we were starving, but not if we had to swim miles to get there.

“Powerless,” another said.

“I have bad taste in women,” another said, causing the men to laugh.

Well, I appreciated that morale was still high. It seemed Adrien had hired a lot of fae without powers. They probably wouldn’t have been able to find work without him.

“I can control the wind a bit,” a shy teenage boy said, as he paddled to stay above water.

My head snapped in his direction at the same time as Adrien’s. “Mathis, you didn’t tell me that,” Adrien said.

His cheeks went red. “Sorry Cap’n. It’s not always easy to control, and I got fired at my last job for snapping the mast in half.”

Whoa, that was some strong wind power.

Adrien nodded, swimming closer to him. “That’s okay. Do you think you could call the wind now, to blow us southeast?”

Adrien had picked up on the same idea I had. If the wind carried us we wouldn’t need to swim. We could cover more area that way and wouldn’t tire as easily.

“How far is the nearest land?” I asked Adrien.

Adrien looked at me. “If we go straight through the belly of the sea, there is an island about two leagues from here. It’s not inhabited, but reaching it would at least give us a chance.”

The fae boy, Mathis, nodded. “I could try.”

My legs were already fatigued from keeping afloat and the men had been at this hours longer than I had.

“Sir?” Brimsley called to his captain. “I’ve followed yer for many years and I knew the dangers of takin’ Beatrice to the belly of the sea, but going there with no boat. We’ll be eat’n alive by sirens.”

“Sirens!” I shrieked.

Adrien gave Brimsley a stern look. “We have two choices. Either drown here or take our chances with sirens and possibly survive this. There’s no land closer that we could reach.”

With a resigned sigh, the man relented. “All right. If the sea takes me, then she takes me.”

“The sea isn’t taking anyone,” I announced. “We’re going to get through this.”

But the tanned and weathered men just gave me polite smiles. Like they didn’t agree.

I glanced at Adrien in panic and he slipped his hand into mine and squeezed. A calmness spread over me then. We were in this together.

“All right men, and lady,” Adrien announced. “Prepare for some wind. Mathis, ready when you are.”

The young fae swallowed hard and pulled his water-shriveled hands out of the ocean and held them up, palms to the sun.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

I tensed, unsure of what to be prepared for. Choppy waters, wind, waves? Adrien hadn’t let go of my hand and now his grip tightened as a breeze picked up around us.

“Try to concentrate the wind on lifting the water beneath us. Create a wave to carry us to shore,” Adrien coached.

The boy gave a stressed frown, but nodded. The wind whipped harder, spraying saltwater in my face as the water began to churn.

Our bodies jolted left and right.

“Push the wind just against the water beneath us,” Adrien tried to coach him. Mathis seemed unskilled but powerful: a highly dangerous combination.

Finally, a huge gust of wind slammed into the water next to us, and then we were lifted a few feet as the water rose up around us. Mathis had created a wave and we rose with it high above the rest of the water.

“Now push the wave southeast,” Adrien called over the wind.

Mathis pursed his lips together as if concentrating deeply and then all of a sudden, we were moving.

Some of the men and I gave a shriek of surprise as we went from being stationary to blazing forward, our bodies cutting through the water as quickly as if we were on a boat. The force of speeding through the water so quickly pushed into my legs and stomach, yet Mathis miraculously kept our heads above the wave.

“You’re doing great,” Adrien encouraged, but I could hear the nerves in his voice.

This was really fast. And we were quite high. If anything went wrong we could be dragged under and drown.

We whipped through the sea with the wind batting against our skin and water spray dousing us. Though I couldn’t complain because after about fifteen minutes, I saw land dotting the horizon.

“Land ahead!” Adrien cried just as the wind stopped and the water dropped out from under us, sending us plummeting down.

I wasn’t able to take a deep breath in before I plunged under the water. The wave broke, which sent me into a spin and dragged me under deeper.

I kicked both feet and moved my arms to work my way back to the surface, but I quickly realized I’d been pushed too deep and I wasn’t sure which way was up. Dizzy with panic, I twisted left and right trying to get my bearings.

Finally, I caught a glimpse of sunlight above me.

I kicked and clawed my way up toward the light, but my stupid nightgown tangled my legs.

I wanted so badly to inhale, but I knew my lungs would only fill with water if I did.

The surface still looked to be a good twenty feet above me when weakness overcame my limbs. I cursed the stupid rune stuck on my back. Without it, I’d simply use my power to propel myself to the surface. Now I was going to drown just feet from my goal.

I breathed involuntarily, my body unable to hold out any longer and took in a huge lungful of water. That’s when Adrien swam into view and grabbed me by the waist, yanking me upward.

My throat burned as we reached the surface, and Adrien immediately began pounding me on the back. Hard. I hacked up a mouthful of water, struggling to get air into my lungs.

“I’m so sorry. There was some interference. My power just … stopped. Like I was overridden,” Mathis said as he panted beside us.

Adrien rubbed my back, patting me as I struggled to breathe. My throat and lungs burned but I was able to get some oxygen in my lungs.

“Check him for a dampener rune,” Adrien told one of his men but never took his eyes off me.

“Isolde. Are you okay?” he asked.

“You …” My voice was a croak. “Saved me twice.”

He looked relieved I was conscious and speaking. “We aren’t keeping score, beautiful Isolde.”

Something about hearing him call me beautiful made my whole body warm.

I was exhausted from the struggle, and my arms and legs felt so weak. Adrien pulled me closer to him without question. I relaxed, letting him take my weight and feeling a little guilty about it as he trod water doubly hard to make up for it.

“No rune, Cap’n. Something else is afoot here.”

“Probably sirens,” one man said.

“Or the belly of the sea. Messes with powers too, my buddy said.”

Belly of the sea. We were here?

I peered around, but saw no glowing water as Adrien had described earlier.

“You can only see it at night,” he whispered to me.

We’d be long dead by then.

I looked over Adrien’s shoulder at the speck of green in the distance. An island. I didn’t think I’d be able to swim that far. It was difficult to gauge distance while bobbing in the sea, but if I had to guess, I’d say we were still at least three miles away, maybe more.

I already wasn’t a good swimmer, but now I was exhausted and waterlogged from almost drowning. Getting to shore was our only hope though, so we had to at least try.

“All right,” I said, steeling myself for what very well may be the last hour of my life. “Let’s try to swim for it.” I gestured toward the island in the distance and let go of Adrien so that we were both free to swim, but his grip on me tightened.

I glanced at his face to see him frowning. Unveiled concern shone from his eyes. “That’s a long distance. It would be difficult for even the best swimmer,” he said, pausing.

Tilting my head skyward, I guessed the time of day from the position of the sun. It was past midday, but blessedly still a few hours until nightfall. “Well, then we’d better start now.”

I tried to disentangle myself from Adrien’s grasp again, but he wouldn’t let me.

I sighed. “Adrien, you’re going to need to let me go so we can swim.”

His gaze bounced over my face, seemingly memorizing each feature. “I don’t know that you can make it,” he confessed, his voice soft and gentle.

A rush of fear swept through me, but I forcefully shoved it away. Adrien’s concern was valid, but now wasn’t the time to panic.

“What choice do we have?” I asked, defeat in my tone.

Adrien’s frown deepened, but he didn’t refute me. He couldn’t. He might not like it. I might not like it. But it was swim for the shore, or give up now and die.

When I scanned the faces of the other sailors bobbing in the water around us, I could tell that they knew the truth: not all of us were going to make it to land alive. But grim determination lined their features. No one was ready to give up yet.

With a reluctant nod, Adrien finally loosened his grip enough that I could slip from his grasp. I knew without him having to say it that he wanted to snatch me back, but he restrained himself.

I trod water clumsily, immediately feeling fatigue pull at my limbs, but I refused to let it show.

Adrien swiveled in the water so that he faced all of us. “Mathis, if your powers come back, let us know.”

“Yes, Cap’n,” Mathis said, but I was worried about the young sailor. He looked almost as tired as I felt.

“It’s going to be a long swim,” Adrien said to all of us. “Do what you can to conserve your energy. Take it slow and steady if you have to. This isn’t a sprint. It’s a marathon.”

We all nodded and then his gaze landed on me. “If you start to weaken, say something and I’ll carry you.”

“You can’t swim for the both of us,” I argued.

“I can and I will. I won’t let you perish in these waters,” he told me, and the determination on his face almost had me believing that was true.

* * *

We’d been swimming for only ten minutes, but were making steady progress when a cramp seized my thigh. I gasped at the suddenness of the pain and pitched forward, dunking my head and only just avoiding sucking in seawater.

“What’s wrong?” Adrien asked when I resurfaced half a second later.

The rest of his crew was at least twenty feet in front of us and even though I knew Adrien could easily outpace me, he’d refused to get more than a half-stroke ahead of me.

“Nothing,” I lied. “Just needed a little break. I’m good now.” I plastered a smile on my face that was probably more grimace than anything else.

Adrien peered at me skeptically, but I gritted my teeth and forced my legs to keep moving on willpower alone. A dagger felt like it was twisting in my leg with every kick, but I went on through the pain. Adrien’s gaze weighed on me as silent tears leaked down my face that I hoped he mistook for seawater.

We went on for another couple of minutes like that when another cramp gripped my left arm. This time I couldn’t stop the pain-filled cry that burst from my lips. Adrien was there in an instant, his arms going around me as I started to sink beneath the waves.

“You’re cramping,” he said, guessing correctly.

All I could do was nod as slices of pain shot through my arm and leg.

“Lay back,” he commanded as he gently coaxed me onto my back. With his arms beneath me, he helped me float as he instructed how to stretch to work out the cramps and give my muscles a break. I bit my lip against the agony as I massaged first my arm and then my leg. Eventually, the ache had subsided to a piercing discomfort, but there was no way I could keep swimming. My muscles just weren’t obeying me anymore.

“I can’t go on,” I said, my voice catching. I had to swallow a sob that threatened to bubble up my throat.

“It’s okay. I have you,” Adrien said and then maneuvered so that he was at my head. He wrapped his arms around me, so that my back was on his chest, and started swimming us backward toward the island in the distance.

Adrien was strong and a fine swimmer, but he had his limits. I doubted he could reach the island if he was dragging me the rest of the way. His breath was coming out in huffs and puffs against my neck.

I had just worked up the courage to tell him to leave me behind when a scream rent the air. We both jolted, and then Adrien repositioned himself so we could turn toward the other sailors. They were even further ahead of us by now, but they’d all stopped swimming and were shouting to one another as they bobbed in the water, frantically turning in circles with their gazes cast on the water around them.

“Do you see Tanner?” one of them shouted.

“He was just here,” another yelled.

I quickly counted heads to realize that one sailor was missing.

No . My heart sank.

“What’s going on?” I asked Adrien.

He shook his head, indicating that he didn’t know just as a fin appeared.

“Shark,” I gasped.

Fear knifed me in the gut. I hadn’t thought extensively about how I’d prefer to die, but I knew that being eaten alive wasn’t the way I wanted to go.

I watched in horror as another fin appeared in the water. Then another and another. They started circling Adrien’s men, who shouted in alarm.

“Can you tread water?” Adrien asked suddenly, and I nodded. The cramps were only a dull pain now, and the adrenaline coursing through my body gave me a boost of energy.

Reaching down he pulled my faestone dagger and handed it to me. “Take this,” he told me.

As soon as my fingers wrapped around the dagger, he took off, swimming with broad strokes.

“Adrien, no!” I screamed and started after him. What did he expect to be able to do against sharks with only his bare hands?

Unbidden, images of Adrien being shredded to pieces rose in my mind. The water turning red with his blood. His life, slipping from him as he was pulled to the depths in the jaws of a shark.

I thought I’d felt true fear a moment before, but the terror that ran through me now was nothing compared to anything that I’d ever felt before.

I struggled to follow him, my movements stilted and jerky. Adrien was already halfway to his men when a pair of gray scale-covered arms shot out of the water and grabbed Mathis from behind. The young sailor didn’t even have time to scream before he was hauled under the waves.

What the stars was that?

A few of Adrien’s men pulled the short swords that had been strapped at their hips and slashed out wildly at the water.

“Sirens!” one of the sailors screamed and then one by one, scaly arms and webbed fingers jutted from the choppy water and pulled Adrien’s men under.

Sirens?

Shock ripped through me. I didn’t know much about the fabled sea creatures except that they were bloodthirsty and cunning. They were said to use their voices to lure sailors into the waters where they dragged them under to feast on their flesh. But in this case, we were all already in the water, so they didn’t need to use their deadly song to get us in the sea. We had swum right into their trap and were completely powerless.

Adrien stopped suddenly and turned toward me. “Swim, Isolde. Swim away!” he yelled, dread shining in his eyes.

He started to frantically paddle back toward me, his strokes fast and desperate.

I didn’t know what to do. Swim toward Adrien and the swarm of sirens, or away? And if away, what was I swimming toward? This was their domain. There was nowhere for me to hide, so I stayed where I was, frozen by indecision.

Adrien was only two strokes away when his eyes suddenly went wide and from one blink to the next, he was yanked under the water.