Page 154 of The Sea Witch
Strickland glanced at the sailors holding him. “Take him to the brig. I want a guard on him at all times.”
“If he’s ever left alone,” Oliver added, “I will personally and with great gusto administer fifty lashes to whomever was supposed to be watching him.”
“Aye, sir,” the sailors gulped.
“The Redthorns are a dangerous—” Ben said.
Strickland’s cheeks flushed. “Warne.”
The mage stepped forward and made a pattern in the air with his fingers.
Everything around Ben went dark. When he next opened his eyes, he was lying on a cot in the brig. A guard impassively watched him from the other side of the glowing bars.
Ben sat up and put his head in his hands.
Alys and the crew of theSea Witchwere sailing to their deaths, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
Chapter Thirty-Four
A sharp searing pain filled Alys as she reviewed a chart in her quarters. She clutched her chest, gasping.
“Are you ill?” Stasia demanded.
“I’ll fetch Fatima.” Luna ran for the door.
“Not illness,” Alys ground out.
Luna paused, one hand on the doorknob.
“If not illness, what?” Stasia asked urgently.
“It’s...” Alys rubbed at her heart. The pain began to recede, leaving emptiness in its place. Her soul rattled within the cage of her body. “Ben.”
She dragged her gaze up to Stasia and Luna’s alarmed faces.
“The link we shared.” Alys drew in a sharp breath. “It’s gone.”
“He is...” Stasia cleared her throat.
“I don’t know.” Alys pushed herself upright, fighting the urge to curl in on herself. “He could be too far away for the connection between us to hold. Maybe it shattered. Or the spell that created it simply dissolved. Spells do that. They have a lifespan.”
The navigator and quartermaster shared a skeptical look.
“He isn’t dead.” Alys’s voice rang off bulkheads. “I would know it. I’d feel it.”
“With the link between you vanished,” Stasia said carefully, “how could you know or feel?”
“Because I would,” Alys snapped. She dug her knuckles into her chest. “Forgive me, Stasia. But he can’t be dead. He just can’t.”
Stasia’s lips pressed into a slash. “It is, as you say, likely that the physical distance between you two is too great to support the magic that connected you. Only that.”
“Yes.” Alys squeezed her eyes shut, fighting to keep steady on her feet. “Yes, that’s what it must be.”
The following morning, Alys stood on the forecastle deck, her spyglass trained on the island ahead of theSea Witch. It was a small strip of land, only a mile across, with a thick green forest that lay just beyond the beach that ringed the island. It seemed vaguely familiar, but then, there were countless beaches across the Caribbean that looked alike. There were no columns of smoke from fires cooking breakfast.
“Is this what we seek?” Stasia asked beside her.
“The tides protect us if it isn’t.”
