Strength Read online

  “I remember,” Ellanden said softly. “I remember everything.”

  There was a moment when time stood still. Then—

  Seven hells!

  As the Carpathian drew his blade, Ellanden ripped a sconce off the wall and plunged it deep into the man’s side—exactly where he’d boasted of stabbing the captive fae in the woods. A feral roar exploded out of him, but it never made it off the ship. Faster than sight the fae whipped out an arrow and shoved it into his mouth, burying it to the hilt.

  “From my friend at Alenforth,” he breathed, giving it a vindictive twist. “With his regards.”

  With that, he ripped out the arrow—taking a good deal of the man’s face with it.

  Evie and Asher froze in shock. Cosette was grim. Seth looked like he was reassessing a few things. Only Freya took a step closer, peering down with a disapproving frown.

  “Must you be so disgusting?”

  The fae shot her a look, then collapsed against the vampire.

  “Just don’t set the ship on fire.”

  “Come on.” Evie stepped quickly over the body, leading the way onto deck. “We’ve got to get this thing out of the harbor before anyone else realizes what’s going on.”

  There was no real strategy to the way the friends accomplished this. No real finesse. The lines were cut, the gangplank was kicked aside, the anchor was pulled from the water and dumped unceremoniously upon deck. Once that was finished the ones who were able climbed swiftly up the rigging, cutting whatever ropes they could find that were holding the sails back.

  It was a small miracle—but it worked.

  As the giant sheets unfurled, they took the ocean breeze with them—opening into a gentle curve as the ship started drifting out towards the sea. Direction didn’t matter. At this point, all the friends wanted was to slip into the night before anyone on land was the wiser.

  There was a moment where they actually thought they’d made it.

  Then the heard the shouts.

  “Shit!” Evie leaned over the railing to get a better look, squinting into the darkness as her hair whipped around in the wind. “There’s two of them!”

  Despite the overall speed of their little insurrection, it seemed not every crew member was drinking at the taverns. No sooner had they slipped into the water than a pair of ships appeared behind them, closing in on either side. Even so far away Evie would see the silhouettes of sailors racing about on deck, lighting torches and pointing ahead. Each ship boasted a full complement and they wouldn’t stay far away for long. They may have just taken to the water, but they were catching up fast.

  “Let’s get you inside,” Asher murmured, still supporting the fae. “You need to rest.”

  The others turned around incredulously. He alone wasn’t gazing out at the water. He alone didn’t have a look of terror splashed across his face. Even Ellanden woke up enough to stare at his friend in disbelief, wondering if perhaps he’d suffered some kind of mental trauma on the beach.

  “Are you serious—”

  “Stop moving your arm,” Asher commanded quietly, lowering him onto the deck. “It’s a miracle you’re still even breathing, so let’s not push things farther—”

  “Ash.” Ellanden wrenched himself free, pointing blindly into the night. “What does it matter? There are two Carpathian ships out there—”

  “Oh—that?” The vampire glanced over his shoulder before shaking his head. “I already took care of that. Don’t worry about it.”

  ...come again?

  “Don’t worry about it?!” Seth stepped in between them, staring at the vampire straight on. “I have no idea what chance you think we have, but unless you’ve got some sort of—”

  Asher rolled his eyes, passing off the prince.

  “Take him.”

  In a fluid motion, he took the bow off Cosette’s back and fitted an arrow into the string. A moment later he leapt onto the railing, pointing that arrow straight at the oncoming ships.

  The friends stared up in silence, then Freya shook her head.

  “Seven hells...he’s gone mad.”

  It looked utterly ridiculous. A single man with a bow against two Carpathian ships. While it may have been a striking image, it was hard not to agree with the witch’s assessment.

  “Babe,” Evie approached him slowly, “I like the confidence, but—”

  He pointed the arrow suddenly at Freya’s heart. “Light it up.”

  It took the witch a moment to figure out what he meant. Another moment to unlock her frozen hands long enough to douse the arrow in fire.

  Evie took a step backwards, shaking her head.

  “Honey, what are you—”

  “Just a moment,” he murmured, squinting slightly into the wind.

  The friends watched as he stood there with perfect balance, the flaming arrow lifted to his chin. Despite the rocking of the ship he was so still that he might have been a statue, keeping his hands perfectly level as he peered silently into the night.

  Then, all at once, he let the arrow fly.

  Evie let out a gasp as the ship behind them caught fire. The entire ship. The flames shot up the mast like they had a mind of their own, engulfing the sails before devouring whatever was left of the deck. It was already beginning to sink when a second flaming arrow flew through the night, burying itself in the hull of the second vessel. It went down just as quickly, vanishing into the murky waves.

  “Am I dreaming?” Ellanden murmured, lifting a bracing hand to his chest. “Is this real?”

  Considering he’d lost well over half his blood, it was a fair question. But the others didn’t know what to tell him. They were still standing silent when the vampire leapt back to the deck.

  “You asked what took me so long on the beach?” He glanced at the flaming ships, shrugging with a modest smile. “I figured we might need some insurance for our escape.”

  Behind him the first vessel split up the middle, capsizing into the sea.

  Kerosene, the princess remembered suddenly. He smelled of kerosene and pine.

  “That’s where you were?” Cosette asked incredulously. “You were sneaking on to both ships while we were fighting? But you were only gone a few minutes—”

  “A few minutes is all it took.”

  Unlike the others, Asher felt no need to boast in his accomplishments. As the rest of them stared in shock at the flames dancing across the water, he simply turned back to his friend.

  “Enough stalling, it’s time to rest.”

  Chapter 4

  You’d think it would be impossible to sleep after what the friends had just seen. You’d think their minds would be reeling with nightmares and trauma, that the injuries they’d acquired would sharpen and they’d lie there for hours, trying to breathe through the pain.

  But that wasn’t the case.

  Within seconds of lying down each member of the quest instantly succumbed to fatigue, drifting into a dead slumber the moment they’d stretched out upon the floor. The only thing perhaps indicative of the struggle it took to get there was that they did it together. There were many rooms upon the vessel, crewmen’s quarters and a galley alike. But they lay down together on the floor of the captain’s cabin, loosely intertwined and dreaming.

  The only one who didn’t join them was Seth. He alone couldn’t be convinced that the danger was behind them, that more of those horrors weren’t chasing after them in the night. He bid the others goodnight, then slipped back outside and climbed to the top of the tangled rigging, staring silently out towards the sea. The others would find him there in the morning, fast asleep.

  Evie woke up naked. Not exactly what she had in mind.

  With a quiet gasp, she bolted upright—clutching the edges of Asher’s borrowed cloak as her eyes darted around the cabin. She needn’t have worried, the others had already left. Even her boyfriend was nowhere to be found, but she suspected from the noises she was hearing on deck that he was attempting to doctor the others. More specifically, a highly-
irritable fae.

  That’s fine, she thought, having fallen victim to the vampire’s ‘helping’ hands many times herself. Let him stay focused on Ellanden. Things are bad enough as it is...

  Even having discovered her newfound shifter abilities, the princess was expecting some degree of damage the next morning. Perhaps a cut that hadn’t quite healed. A fading bruise to remind her what happened on the beach. It soon became clear she’d massively underestimated things.

  “Son of a harpy!”

  She let out howl the second her feet touched the floor—curling them back up immediately and deciding to simply live below deck until further notice. Some degree of damage?! It felt like her entire body had been beaten to within an inch of her life and then dragged along the beach.

  Probably because that’s what happened...

  In a bloodshot haze, little pieces of the fight started coming back to her. The slash across her shoulder, the muffled crack in one of her hands. Everything began to blur after the Carpathian with the club had knocked her out of the air, bashing in her lungs in the process.

  With a secret whimper she lifted a hand to the base of her ribcage, flinching involuntarily the second she touched the skin. She didn’t want to guess what it might look like, but the pain had set in and every breath felt as though she was inhaling glass.

  No problem. She gingerly settled back on her makeshift bed. I just won’t breathe then. I won’t breathe, and I’ll stay down here—

  “Planning to stay down here forever?”

  Her eyes shot up to see Asher standing in the doorway. ‘Secret’ whimper? There was no keeping secrets from a vampire. Especially when his girlfriend was just below deck.

  “No,” she snapped defensively, flinching again as she tried to shift higher on the blankets. “I was just down here planning. Thinking strategy, tallying supplies...we are on a mission, Asher.”

  The vampire’s eyes twinkled, just as they had when they were kids. “You and Ellanden should start a club,” he replied, sitting down beside her. “People whose pride is literally going to get them killed one day.”

  “You really think that?” she asked brightly, forgiving him on the spot. “You really think I have more pride than anyone else?”

  He snorted sarcastically, propping her up against the wall. “Yeah, crazy. You won that competition as well.”

  The smile faded when he peeled back the cloak, surveying the damage for the first time. The princess stared back warily, trying to interpret the slightest change of expression. Vampires were notoriously hard to read, but a single glance at his face said it didn’t look good.

  “I don’t think it’s that bad,” she preempted, as though just saying it might be enough.

  He lifted his eyes slowly. “Have you seen it?”

  “No, but I...I decided I don’t think it’s that bad.”

  He stared a moment, then shook his head with a sigh. “You and Ellanden have that in common, too...”

  She gulped nervously, trying and failing to pull in a breath.

  Since setting off on their fateful quest, the princess had grown accustomed to many things that might have surprised her. Hiking for twelve hours without rest, no longer noticing if the sky above them had started to rain, actually looking forward to a supper of under-cooked squirrel. The one thing she couldn’t get used to was the rudimentary medical maintenance. Snapping bones back into place, bandaging wounds...those were the details her fairytales had always tended to leave out.

  “You should go check on him,” she said hopefully. “He’s in a lot worse shape than me—”

  “I already did check on him,” Asher said patiently. “I managed to get almost that entire wound sewn shut before he kicked me down the stairs.”

  Some might have found this shocking. The princess found it rather sensible.

  “Well, you can’t just go around playing doctor without people’s consent.”

  His eyes snapped shut with a grimace. “I keep telling you, that doesn’t mean what you think—”

  “At any rate, I don’t consent,” she continued haughtily, trying to keep herself upright before giving up and sliding petulantly to the floor. “I’m a shifter. I don’t need to suffer your feeble attempts to heal me any longer. I have the power to—”

  “That’s exactly what I was going to say,” he interrupted. “All the damage I’m seeing is on the inside. There’s nothing I can do. You’ll have to shift.”

  The princess stopped cold, the look of victory frozen on her face.

  “Uh...now?” she stalled. “Just...just shift right now?”

  He tilted his head, a sarcastic smile playing about his lips. “Unless there’s a problem. Unless you don’t want to for some—”

  “No, no, I’ll totally do it.” She grabbed him, pulling shakily to her feet. “I just need to be up on deck. You know, take advantage of the space. Get a little fresh air.”

  Avoid shifting entirely because that would be SO bloody painful.

  Also, I’m not entirely sure that I can...

  “Sure.” His eyes twinkled as he offered his arm. “Makes sense.”

  The two of them made their way out of the tiny cabin and up onto the deck. While the princess knew they had technically been drifting on the water all night, it was still a shock to look out and see nothing but open sea. On the one hand, their troubles with the Carpathians were clearly behind them. That being said, she had no earthly idea what was going to happen next.

  “Watch your step,” Asher said softly.

  She glanced down to see the mangled body of the Carpathian sailor lying where they’d left him at the base of the stairs. In the cold light of day, it was quite easy to see what had killed him. She wondered why anyone hadn’t bothered yet to throw his body over the side.

  “Lovely,” she answered, stepping gingerly over the corpse.

  The others were lounging together in the middle of the deck. Perhaps ‘lounging’ was too casual a word. Recuperating was more like it. At a glance their positions were rather casual, but it was clear they didn’t have the strength to make them anything else. The dead Carpathian wasn’t the only thing that looked worse in daylight. The friends were wearing that battle right on their skin.

  Freya had massive burns lacing up both arms—either from some devilish act of the soldiers or her own fire gone out of control. Cosette was leaning against the captain’s wheel, tilting so dizzily it would be a miracle if she could stand.

  As well as the princess could remember Seth’s leg had been broken, but now it was hard to tell. He alone wasn’t sitting on the deck, preferring to lean against the railing. But he was putting absolutely no weight on it, and every time the ship rocked a wince of pain shot across his face.

  That just left the fae.

  Ellanden had taken advantage of the vampire’s absence to arm himself and lifted the blade threateningly as they approached. “Not another step. The world could always use one fewer vampire.”

  Asher held up his hands innocently, settling beside him with a grin. “Far be it from me to impose. The last thing I’d want is to offend a facilitator such as yourself.”

  There was a burst of laughter, and even Ellanden bowed his head with a smile.

  Of all the things that had happened yesterday, the fae’s performance on the beach was perhaps the most unbelievable. It was also the most deranged.

  The vampire confiscated the sword, shaking his head. “That came far too naturally to you.”

  “I told you,” Cosette said to Freya, “he’s certifiable.”

  “Nonsense,” Seth argued, lifting a worn tankard in salute. “He’s outstanding. That was one of the stupidest and bravest things I’ve ever seen.”

  Ellanden grinned before he could stop himself, forgetting their eternal feud. A second later, he perked up as the smell of alcohol wafted over the deck. “Is that ale?”

  “Whiskey,” the shifter answered with a smile. “It seems the Carpathians were kind enough to restock the ship before departin
g for the taverns.”

  The fae stared up in amazement, looking like some small part of him had come back to life. “Are you serious?”

  “I’ll get you a tankard.”

  THE REST OF THE DAY progressed slowly. None of the friends was exactly at their best, and once they discovered the stash of supplies in the hull of the ship they decided to take a day to recuperate and returned to the main deck, basking in the sun and enjoying their well-earned feast.

  “What is this?” Evie asked, sniffing delicately at a piece of jerky.

  “I wouldn’t eat that if I were you.” Seth eased it from her hand with a wink, tossing it back on the pile. “Carpathians don’t have the same dietary standards as the rest of us.”

  Trying awfully hard not to wonder what that meant, she turned to Ellanden instead.

  “Speaking of Carpathians...” She raised her glass in salute. “You said we needed to get better? There were fifty Carpathian soldiers on the beach. Fifty. And not one of us died.”

  “That’s not true,” Ellanden muttered.

  The prince had abandoned the picnic and was cradling the pieces of his broken bow like a child. Only Cosette seemed to share his sentiments, sitting close beside him and rubbing his back.

  The princess lowered her glass, fighting hard to keep a straight face. “My apologies...I forgot two of you are in mourning.”

  Both fae missed the sarcasm.

  “There’s whiskey,” Freya said incredulously, waving the bottle. “There’s food. And for once, there’s no one trying to kill us. You’d think all that would be enough to put a smile on your face.”

  Ellanden shot her a glare and muttered something in his native tongue. Cosette smirked beside him before returning gravely to the bow.

  The witch threw up her hands, but Asher chuckled softly.

  “On that note, I should probably see if there’s anything for me—”

  Seth jerked back reflexively as the vampire pushed to his feet—a compulsive gesture he wasn’t able to control. He kept his eyes down and his hands moving, peeling a tangerine like it had never happened. But Asher came to an instant stop, staring down with the hint of a smile.