Page 72 of Devil of the High Seas
Lord Camden stood just beyond them, half silhouetted by smoke and sunlight as he held a pistol aloft.
“No one hurts my child,” Camden said in a voice that could freeze water.
Gavin groaned as his body surrendered to the pain in his shoulder and he collapsed on the deck, breathing hard. Camden approached and held out a hand to him and lifted him back onto his feet.
“Josie? My brother?”
Josephine’s father didn’t answer, but slung Gavin’s good arm over his shoulder and helped him walk down the deck. Gavin’s eyes sought out the two still figures lying upon the deck.No... Surely they couldn’t be...
The two people he loved most in this world weren’t moving. This ship had cost him everything. He stumbled down the steps and ran toward the crowd gathering around their bodies. Griffin lay half sprawled over Josephine.
He hadshieldedJosephine with his body. Gavin had always been the sword and Griffin the shield. But it was the shield that had saved the woman Gavin loved, not the sword.
He fell to his knees next to them. Brianna was there, blood splattered across her chest, though none of it was her own. She held Josephine’s hand and was leaning over her, checking her breathing. Josephine’s face was covered with soot, but she looked as though she were sleeping.
“She’s alive, Gavin, but I believe she’s taken in too much smoke.” Brianna’s hand moved to Josephine’s throat, checking her pulse. Her chest rose and fell evenly. Gavin fought to breathe through the fear that suddenly seized him as he turned toward his twin.
“Griffin...” He turned his brother over, seeing the spot where a bullet had passed through his abdomen. His brother was alive, but his breathing was shallow.
“Gavin...,” his brother whispered, his eyes fogged with pain. Griffin tried to raise a hand. Gavin grasped it and held it as he brushed the hair away from his brother’s eyes. In that moment, he had a strange feeling that he was watching himself die as he gazed at his twin’s face. Their pain had always been shared, just like their joy. Would they share the feeling of death?
“Owed you... alife... brother...,” Griffin rasped, then his eyes rolled back in his head and he passed out.
“Help him! Someone,please!” Gavin’s voice broke in agony. A thousand images of them as boys flashed across his mind, and the gaping emptiness left by their years spent apart tore him open. He’d been such a damned fool to run away.A coward.If he’d stayed, everything would have been different. Everything...
“Someone help me move him back to the ship,” Brianna said, and several men helped lift Griffin and carried him toward theSerpent.
“TheSirenis sinking. We need to move, lad.” Camden put a hand on Gavin’s uninjured shoulder.
His ship was lost. The thing he had so foolishly believed was worth fighting and dying for was soon to be swallowed up by the sea. He couldn’t even feel pain now. He could only feel emptiness. He could not mourn theSirenas the blue waters of the West Indies took her. He got to his feet as Camden lifted Josephine in his arms.
“Let me take her.” He reached for Josephine but Camden hesitated in giving her to him.
“You’re wounded, lad. You’ve lost a lot of blood. I will carry my child. We’ll see to your arm, and then you may sit with her,” Camden said. His tone was firm but gentle, and Gavin felt too bloody tired to argue with him. He wanted to hold her for a moment but Camden was right, he couldn’t carry her to the other ship.
Camden navigated the gangplank between the two ships, and Gavin followed behind him. When he reached theSea Serpent, Dominic took Josephine from his father.
“Let’s get her settled below to rest,” Dominic said. “Then you need someone to look at your shoulder.” His tone was surprisingly gentle for such a fierce pirate.
Because my brother is dying...
A great and terrible hollowness filled him like a black night sky devoid of stars. Blood dripped down his arm and he stumbled when he tried to descend the companionway as he followed Dominic.
“Here, lad.” Camden helped him the way a father would an injured child. “This way... Easy now...”
The pain and the loss had numbed his whole body as he struggled to walk toward the surgery. If he lost his brother or Josephine, it would surely kill him.
CHAPTER17
Josephine felt like she was underwater, a dark and terrible weight pressing down on her from all sides. She fought to breathe, and the first thing that she became aware of was the warmth of a hand holding hers. The grip on her hand tightened as she struggled to open her eyes. She craved to see only one person, but the man watching her wasn’t him.
“Where’s Gavin?” Her voice was a bare rasp. Each word scraped against her throat.
Her father stroked her hair back from her face, his eyes soft. “He’s with his brother.”
“Brother?” Griffin... Griffin was here. Her father was here. But how? At first, it all tumbled about in her head before she finally remembered...
Griffin cutting her free of the foremast while she was barely alive. Smoke and heat had nearly overwhelmed her. Then, as they had escaped the fire, she had seen Beauchamp charge them. She saw a pistol raised and the flare of a spark as Griffin turned. Then... nothing.
