Page 58 of Crossbones
I search her eyes for hate, anger, blame, anything to complement the guilt I feel. But there’s nothing—she doesn’t blame me, and that only makes it worse.
I scream and shout and cry until my voice is gone—I watch her once-vivid eyes grow dull.
I choke on my panic and slam my eyes tightly shut. I can’t watch her die—I can’t do it. I can’t watch—
Her screams fade to sobs, her sobs to whimpers, and then—silence.
I feel the moment her flame goes out and my heart shatters ruthlessly in my chest. The grief throws me into a frenzy.
I open my eyes and watch as her body falls to the ground. She’s gone.
I scream—
—and scream and scream, and scream—
I lash out and come into contact with muscle.
I hear voices that aren’t Malik.
I think I should know them—
A warm hand circles behind my neck. I’m about to yank away when the smell of bergamot, cedar and the ocean wrap around me—a sea before a storm.
Blackwell.He didn’t leave?
I grip the fabric of his shirt.
A lifeline? Or a tether to a storm I’m in danger of getting swept into…
He didn’t leave.
The room swims back into detail and in a brief moment of clarity our eyes clash, his grip tightens and those dark blue depths tell me I just may have found salvation in my destruction.
JAMES
We’d lured Malik out of his fort and now I’m storming the halls looking for Caspian. Harrison, Van, Flynt and four other crew members are with me. I’d already found Firth—he’d begged and simpered for his pitiful life. I wish I could have taken more time with him but I relished every moment of the knife across his throat.
I hear hoarse screaming coming from a bedroom and shove open the door. The sight that greets me tears a hole in my chest. Caspian is curled in a ball, shaking and in the throes of a nightmare. I rush over to him—he lashes out but I wrap a hand around the back of his neck.
“Caspian,” I murmur. “Hey, hey—I got you—” He grips my shirt in a death grip, his eyes open but entirely unseeing.
“Charlotte—Charlotte—oh God—no, please—” He keeps saying her name until he dissolves into sobs.
“We need to get him back to the ship,” Van says.
He helps me get Caspian into a shirt.
“Too far,” I say. “I have a place.”
I look up at Harrison who looks a little pale but nods without a word. We’ll take him to my contacts here in Ironhold—what we should have done from the beginning. Van shoves pants onto Caspian while I hold him to me. His sobs have subsided but he’s still shaking, and not lucid.
“Caspian,” Van holds his face between his hands. “Caspian—you have to walk out of here—can you stand?”
Caspian is burning up—he must have a fever from the lasheson his back. Van coaxes him out of the fog for a moment and he nods. Van takes one arm and I’m on the other, holding Caspian up between us and Harrison and Flynt lead the way out the door. The walk to the house is chaotic and tense. Caspian is in and out of consciousness and by the time we’re on the right street, I’m terrified he’s on the edge of death. He’s sweating through his shirt and is deathly pale.
We stop on the stoop of a large Victorian mansion deep in the inner city and Harrison pounds on the door. It opens to reveal a housekeeper who takes one look at the group of us and slams the door shut, but not before Harrison shoves a foot in the jam, stopping her from locking it.
“Go fetch John,” Harrison demands of her.
