Page 18 of Hooked by a Hero (Tales from the Brotherhood #4)

Brunning was frantic. “We cannot go into a storm at full sail,” he insisted. “The wind alone will snap the yardarms and might even break a mast. Something must be done.”

“Yes, something must be done,” Tumbrill growled, turning back to Caspian and shaking him again. “We will make these disgusting lovers walk the plank.”

“No!” Elias shouted, his heart beating in his throat.

“Yes, go ahead and do that,” Caspian said, smiling.

Elias stared at him in disbelief. What was Caspian thinking? Did he imagine Tumbrill’s threat was hollow? Elias could see as clear as day the blackguard was serious, despite having insisted before that Caspian should live as their navigator. Rum turned men into fools.

“You cannot!” Elias shouted. “Who will navigate if you dispose of Caspian?”

“Coming to your lover’s defense, are you?” Tumbrill demanded.

Another crash of thunder sounded, closer than the one before.

“Tumbrill, the sails!” Brunning shouted.

“Damn the sails!” Tumbrill bellowed in reply. “Set the plank!”

“This is madness!” Elias shouted as rain suddenly started to lash down harder.

“Let him do it,” Caspian insisted. “You’ll see.”

Elias’s mouth dropped open, but he was too shocked to say a word. A tiny part of him urged him to trust Caspian, but he knew Tumbrill was not bluffing.

“I’ll get the plank,” Dick said, pushing away from the railing and hurrying down the deck.

Tumbrill pulled Caspian along after him, and out of sheer panic for his beloved, Elias followed, though it was becoming more and more treacherous on the deck.

“If you won’t give the order to save this ship, then I will,” Brunning growled, then stepped away from them, calling out, “Reef the mainsails, furl the foresails, and heave to!”

Whether anyone followed the order, Elias did not know.

He raced after Dick and Tumbrill as they pulled Caspian to the center of the main deck.

Dick clumsily removed part of the railing where the gangplank had been set when they’d departed London.

He found a smaller plank and fit it into place with surprising dexterity for his drunken state and the ferocity of the storm blowing over them.

Caspian did nothing at all to free himself from Tumbrill’s grip.

Elias tried to intervene and yank his beloved away, assuming Caspian was once again too weak to resist, but he could do nothing to separate the two men.

They seemed to be involved in some sort of battle of wills, Caspian staring at Tumbrill as if daring him to do it, and Tumbrill grinning at Caspian in return, as if he planned to enjoy every second of Caspian’s demise.

“This is madness!” Elias called out. “See to the ship, not this feud. Do you want to kill Caspian or have us all lost at sea?”

“Death to all sodomites!” Tumbrill shouted.

Elias grabbed handfuls of his wet hair in frustration.

He glanced back to the deck, which was now teeming with activity as those sailors who were sober or only slightly drunk rushed to secure the ship, as should have been done an hour ago.

Some of the passengers rushed to help them, though they did not look as if they knew what they were doing.

Ruby and Hunt appeared at the top of the fore hatch in the midst of the madness as well. As soon as they spotted the confrontation at the side of the ship, they raced forward, dodging sailors and waves, to join them.

“Plank is set, sir!” Dick called out as if he were playacting the entire execution. “The guilty can be dealt with now.” He grinned at Elias as well as Caspian.

“You heard the man,” Tumbrill said, solely focused on Caspian, despite the increase in both the storm and the frantic activity around them. “To your death!”

He manhandled Caspian up onto the plank. Elias called out wordlessly and tried to stop Caspian from what looked like his willingness to mount the plank.

Dick grabbed him to stop him from interfering. “Your turn is next, Dr. Sod.”

“What are you doing?” Hunt shouted as he and Ruby reached the plank. “The ship has sailed into a storm.”

“Off you go,” Tumbrill bellowed, ignoring Hunt. He shoved Caspian in the small of his back.

Caspian was still as calm as could be, despite Elias being frantic. Everything was wrong. Lightning now cut through the sky as wind and rain swirled around them. The situation was so dire that he could barely keep his wits about him.

In the midst of all the chaos, Caspian turned to grin over his shoulder at Tumbrill, as if he’d won the fight instead of very much losing it. He glanced next to Elias, winking and then blowing him a kiss, then walked to the end of the plank and dove gracefully off into the churning ocean.

“No!” Elias shouted, his heart feeling as though it was torn from his body as Caspian disappeared into the dark, frothy waves. “No! Caspian!”

Shock and horror stole his sense for a moment.

He could only gape at the sea, loss washing through him and drowning everything else out.

Caspian was gone. The man he cared for more than any man he’d ever met and who he would have gladly spent the rest of his life with had been swallowed up by the sea, and he hadn’t been able to do a damn thing to save him.

“Dr. Pettigrew, you must come away!” Ruby shouted behind him.

Elias blinked, but the numb feeling of grief continued to hang over him.

He felt hands on his arms and assumed Dick would lift him onto the plank so that he could join Caspian in his watery death.

It was what Elias wanted. He wanted no part of a life without Caspian.

The two of them were meant to be together, and if that could not be in life, then it would be in death.

“Elias, come!” Hunt shouted.

It was Hunt’s hands on him, not Dick’s. Dick and Tumbrill were nowhere close, though Elias had no memory of the two of them leaving him.

He turned as Hunt dragged him away from the side of the ship and saw the two of them stumbling aft.

It seemed they had come to their senses at last and joined the others in attempting to gain control of the wildly tossing ship.

“It is too dangerous abovedeck,” Hunt insisted, pulling Elias toward the fore. “We must take shelter.”

Elias nodded, though he felt too numb to move on his own. Caspian was gone, dead, separated from him forever. They’d hardly had a chance to be together. They’d never even made love.

That thought was silenced in the most violent way possible as lightning tore out of the sky and struck the main mast. The electric force of it stole the air from Elias’s lungs.

It also jolted sense into him. He glanced up as the men who had scrambled up the mast and along the yardarms to furl the sails as they shouted and held on for dear life.

A second, louder crack split the air as the mast jerked to the side, then slowly began to fall, snapping ropes and ripping sails as it did.

“The ship!” Ruby shouted, terror in her voice.

Elias joined Hunt in pulling her toward the hatch as the mast collapsed fully, taking part of the sails on the mizzen mast with it.

“Take cover,” Hunt shouted. “Go below.”

“But what good will it do?” Ruby asked as they scrambled frantically for the hatch. “The main mast is gone. What if it drags the ship under? We’ll be lost. We’re already lost!”

They reached the hatch and Ruby and Hunt descended, but Elias turned back to study the chaos across the deck.

The main mast had snapped halfway up and the top half now hung sickly over the side of the ship, unbalancing it.

Sailors screamed and scrambled as they tried to save themselves and the ship both, but to Elias, it looked like a lost cause.

He would not have to wait long to be reunited with Caspian.

The entire ship would break apart and sink into the deep in no time at all.