by Maya Banks
Knowing she had little time, she flung open her door and strode down the hall toward Jacques’ cell on the level below. Her guards followed wordlessly behind her. Chances were, he would tell her nothing, but she had to try for Merrick’s sake.
When she approached the cell, she was surprised by Jacques’ appearance. He sat slumped over on the small bench against the wall, his hair unruly and his clothing in disarray. When he heard her, he looked up, his eyes dull and lifeless.
“Where is he?” she hissed.
He blinked, his eyes not reacting to her command.
“Tell me or I will have you killed right now.”
He rose unsteadily and walked over to grasp the bars where she stood. “Where is who?”
“Lord Merrick,” she ground out, her patience at its end.
The look of puzzlement in his eyes was not feigned. Surely he knew of Merrick. Hadn’t Merrick been taken in an effort to free Jacques?
He shook his head. “I have no idea who you are talking about.”
“Bastard!” she spat. “Was it not enough that you killed my parents?”
Pain and something that looked remarkably like regret flashed across his face. “My sins are great, and my time has come to an end. I’ll not survive to stand trial. He won’t allow it.”
Her eyes narrowed, and she leaned in closer to him. “Who are you talking about?” Kirk’s confusion when Montagne’s name had been mentioned flashed in her mind. Was it possible he had not been acting under Montagne’s orders? Was there more than one faction vying for control of her country?
He shook his head again and shuffled back to the bench, leaning over to bury his face in his hands.
“Damn you, talk to me!”
He ignored her, and she swung around in rage, stalking back to her chambers. She had no time to deal with an uncooperative murderer. Merrick’s life was in danger, and she must save him.
How to get out without being seen? The guards would never let her go out alone. She shut the door to her chambers and crossed the room to her window, peering out at the ground below. While too far to simply jump, she could make her way down the ledge then drop to the roof of the solarium. From there it was a short distance to the ground.
Shoving the window open, she threw her leg over the sill and ducked out. Minutes later, she dropped to the ground and crept stealthily to the stables. Would her prize mare still be there? Or would Jacques have ridded the stables of the horses belonging to her family?
She bent over and sidled down the stalls, praying the stable master wouldn’t hear her. To her relief, she found Zora in her stall, and the horse neighed and stamped in greeting when Isabella held out her hand.
She threw herself on the horse’s back and urged her out of the stable. They bolted past a surprised groom, the horse’s hooves beating against the ground.
They thundered down the mountain and toward the western cliffs. The wind blew cold over her, but she only felt the heavy regret in her heart. Regret that she had never allowed herself to simply love him in return. Regret that she had looked away as he laid his heart in her hands. I love you.
“I do,” she whispered, the words spilling from her mouth and disappearing into the wind.
God what a fool she had been. She couldn’t countenance a future without him.
Future. The word inferred hope, and for the first time, she had little. She had castigated Merrick for his lack of faith, but now in the face of living life without him, she felt hers flagging. God, let him be alive.
A short distance from the cliff, she halted the horse and slid from her back. She raced forward, her gaze darting over the terrain, looking for any sign of Merrick or his abductors.
As she topped the slope of the cliff, she saw him. Bound in a kneeling position on the very edge of the cliff, his arms were pulled behind him and a gag stretched across his mouth. Her relief nearly made her hasty. She pulled up and carefully scanned the area, looking for signs of danger.
The only sound was the ocean crashing below the cliff. Unable to keep from Merrick any longer, she bolted forward. When he saw her, he immediately began twisting, his eyes warning her to stay back, but she couldn’t leave him.
She dropped to the ground in front of him, her heart nearly bursting with relief. Yanking her dagger from her boot, she reached behind him to hack at the ropes binding him.
His muffled protests flooded her ears, and she sat back. “Of course, how stupid of me,” she berated herself. She reached up to free his mouth from the cloth.
“Isabella, get out of here,” he rasped. “Leave this place at once.”
“I won’t leave you,” she said fiercely.
She reached around to cut the ropes at his arms but froze when she heard a sound behind her.
The slow methodical clapping of hands echoed across the cliff top, and she whirled around.
As she took in the man walking from behind a pile of rocks, she swayed, her legs threatening to collapse beneath her.
“Well, well, well, baby sister. How nice it is to see you again.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Shock then euphoria shot through Isabella. Her brother was alive! “Stephane, how did you…” She broke off, her gaze flitting over his hands, both of which were perfectly intact. “I don’t understand,” she said numbly.
He reacted with no joy to see her alive. On the contrary, his eyes glittered malevolently as he slowly sauntered closer to her. He looked haggard as though he hadn’t slept in days.
“I underestimated you, sister dear. I never expected you to become such a problem.”
She stared dumbly at him. “What are you talking about?” The world moved slowly around her, her befuddled mind straining to make sense of the scene before her. She should be shouting to the mountains, yet, everything about this stunning revelation troubled her.
“Poor Isabella. You really have no idea, do you?” He smiled snidely, stopping a few feet in front of her.
Warning bells clanged loudly in her head. Something was terribly wrong, but seeing her brother alive, realizing that she wasn’t alone clouded the awful truth. It couldn’t be. She couldn’t believe what stared her in the face. Jacques’ strange behavior, Kirk’s adamancy that Jacques had nothing to do with his betrayal of Merrick.
“Why don’t you tell me,” she whispered in a ragged voice.
He laughed abrasively. “Surely it is obvious to you.”
“Why?” she asked, the dread so thick in her voice she nearly choked.
“It really doesn’t matter why. All that matters is that I take the throne. Montagne put into motion all I needed to set aside the old ways, but you ruined it by appearing with the relics. Relics that should have been mine,” he ground out.
“Don’t be so certain of that,” she said softly.
He looked oddly at her. “It matters not. Now that you have so graciously retrieved them for me, I can ascend the throne as its rightful heir.”
She gazed at him in agony, searching her memories for some small clue to his betrayal. “I loved you, Stephane. Mother and Father loved you. Father was so proud of everything you did. You were the heir. Why murder them?”
Disgust flared his nostrils, and he snorted derisively. “Father had no confidence that I could complete the quest. He said my heart was not pure, my intentions not righteous. He said I only saw with my eyes and that a good ruler also saw with his heart.”
Stephane snorted in derision. “Sentimental old fool. He was too rooted in the old ways. I could not allow you or Davide to ascend the throne in my stead. The only way I could prevent that was to get rid of you all. But I couldn’t do it alone, so I enlisted the aid of others.”
Her chest swelled with sorrow to hear the hatred for their father in his voice. But her sorrow quickly faded as rage mounted in its stead.
That her own brother had been responsible for their parents’ deaths was too much for her to comprehend. Her hand gripped the handle of t
he dagger tighter, and she pulled it up to her waist.
“So you would kill me?” he asked mockingly. With a motion of his hand, two soldiers rushed up the incline. They stopped on either side of Merrick, their swords pointed at his chest.
“I wouldn’t advise doing that,” Stephane chided. “It would be a shame for the Englishman to die.”
“Kill him, Isabella.”
She blinked in surprise at Merrick’s voice. She had forgotten him entirely in the shock of seeing Stephane alive. She glanced between the two men, uncertainty flickering in the back of her mind.
Then she raised her eyes slowly to her brother once more, hatred emanating from every pore. “I could kill you right now,” she hissed, pointing the dagger at him.
“But you won’t.” He nodded at the two men behind her, and she whirled around, expecting an attack. To her horror, one of the soldiers planted a foot in Merrick’s chest and sent him toppling over the side of the cliff.
“You may have need of that knife to free your lover,” Stephane sneered. “Kill me or save him. It’s your choice.”
The world slowed around her, her brother’s voice a distant echo. Everything came down to this. She could avenge her parents’ deaths as she had sworn to do and put a knife through her brother’s heart, or she could let him slip through her fingers while she saved Merrick.
Revenge or love. Revenge had ruled her for too long. Love was her only chance to live. And she loved Merrick. Loved him as she had never loved anyone else.
Slipping the blade of the dagger between her teeth, she bolted past the soldiers and dove cleanly over the side of the cliff.
She plunged into the icy waters, the shock of it nearly causing her to inhale. With powerful strokes, she pulled herself downward, her eyes searching for Merrick, praying it wasn’t too late.
Then she saw him, bouncing along the bottom, the current pushing him farther out to sea. He struggled against his bonds, his movements jerky, like a puppet on strings.
She put a hand out to halt his movement, and their eyes locked. Putting her feet down, she dug them into the rocks to prevent herself from being sucked away. She sealed her lips over his and breathed into his mouth. Then she reached around him to free his hands.
Working rapidly, she slashed the bonds at his feet and hands. Once the ropes fell away, he kicked off the bottom, propelling himself to the surface. She pushed upward with her arms, intent on following him, but her body was pulled tight.
In panic she looked down to see what held her. Her foot was caught in the rocks. She dropped the dagger and bent over pulling frantically at her ankle. In her haste to free Merrick, she hadn’t even felt the constriction on her foot.
She kicked and pulled, her lungs screaming for air. The ocean floor swirled before her, spots dotting her vision. Despair flooded her. After everything she had endured, it appeared she would die after all.
Simon burst to the surface sucking great mouthfuls of precious air. Relief as he had never felt before drained him of strength. Weakly, he looked around waiting for Isabella to break surface beside him. He wanted nothing more than to take her in his arms and tell her how much he loved her.
He struck at the water with his arms as he twisted round and round in search of her. Fear constricted his chest, squeezing the air from his lungs. She should have surfaced by now.
His heart thumping painfully in his chest, he took in a great gulp of air and dove beneath the surface. He swam quickly down, looking for sign of her.
She was where he had left her, her braid floating eerily about her head. She struggled weakly, pulling in vain at her foot. He slammed into her, and as she had done for him, he breathed into her mouth offering a much needed burst of air. But she didn’t respond. Her body went limp against him.
Not caring if he ripped her foot completely from her body, he reached down and yanked with all his might. All that mattered was that he get her to surface immediately.
Her ankle came free, and he rushed them to the surface, his arm tightly wrapped around her waist. When they bobbed above the water, he grasped her face in his hand and shouted at her.
“Isabella! Isabella!”
Her face was ashen, and worse, she didn’t breathe.
With strength and speed he didn’t know he possessed, he churned down the shoreline where the great wall of the cliff gave way to a small stretch of beach. Seconds later, he pulled her limp body from the water and laid her on the sand.
Tears rolled down his face, mixing with the water that cascaded from his hair. She had to live. He couldn’t go on without her.
Taking her by the shoulders, he shook her, trying to do anything to awaken her. He turned her over and pounded on her back. His despair mounted when she remained motionless.
Gathering her in his arms, he smashed his mouth to hers and forced breath into her lungs. But still she didn’t move.
He could feel the life ripping from his chest, the pain so agonizing he could scarcely breathe. Nothing in his life compared to this. Not losing his brother, not losing his father, not even the awful revelation of Kirk’s betrayal.
Breathing once more into her mouth, he lifted his head, despair creeping into his heart. “No!” he screamed, raising his head to the sky.
Tears continued down his face, the wind blowing cold on his cheeks. Lowering his head, he gave in to the great sobs that built within him. He stared in shock at her beautiful face then slowly slid his face down to her chest. He buried his head against her, allowing the sobs to tear painfully from his throat.
Then he felt it. The faint, but steady rhythm of her heart. Thinking he imagined it, he pressed his ear to her chest and willed the world to still around him so he could detect a beat. But no, there it was again. She wasn’t dead!
But she wasn’t breathing.
Knowing she needed life-giving air, he bent and began breathing into her mouth in intervals. After several seconds, she lurched up, water erupting from her mouth.
He held her tightly as she heaved, her body racked by the violent expulsion of the sea water from her lungs and stomach. When she had ridded herself of the water, she coughed weakly, slumped against his chest.
He felt her open her mouth to speak, but he hushed her. “Don’t speak. Just rest.”
He lovingly smoothed a few tendrils of hair from her temple then pressed tender kisses to her forehead. His tears of anguish now turned to tears of relief and overwhelming joy as she recovered in his embrace.
Faster they came until he wept in earnest. She looked up at him, tears pooling in her own eyes. “I thought I had lost you,” she said hoarsely, her voice cracking.
“It is I who almost lost everything,” he whispered. “I couldn’t bear it if you sacrificed yourself for me.”
She struggled to sit up, and he loosened his hold on her. “There is something I would say, Merrick. Something I should have said yesterday, but I stubbornly refused to focus on anything but my revenge and ascending the throne.”
She broke off into another coughing fit, and he rubbed his hand up and down her back to soothe her. She shook violently from the cold.
“Shhh,” he soothed. “Don’t try to speak.”
“No, there is something I must tell you,” she choked out.
“We can talk later,” he said firmly, wanting only for her to rest and recover. He held her tightly against him, desperately trying to infuse his warmth into her body.
He needed to hold her, to convince himself she was alive. She clung just as fiercely to him, her body trembling with the cold. Knowing she needed immediate attention, he rose and scooped her up in his arms.
He stumbled forward, his feet slogging through the wet sand. He must get to the monastery as quickly as possible. Father Ling could help them.
Her hands crept tighter around his neck, and she closed her eyes so that he could no longer see the sorrow reflected there. But it hung over her like a thickly cut veil. He tightened his grip on her, his
heart aching for the hurt she felt, for the horrible betrayal they both had suffered.
Her eyes still closed, she murmured in a choking voice, “My brother…Stephane…he murdered my parents. Davide. God… How could he? What could have made him do such a thing? The awful things he said about Father. None of it makes sense. Why murder Mother? Why worry over Davide or me?”
“I propose we find out,” he said grimly.
“Yes,” she said slowly. “We should get to the palace as quickly as possible and put an end to this madness.”
He halted his progress and stared intently down at her. “You aren’t alone, Isabella. I won’t leave you. We will do this together.”
She stared back at him, her eyes boring into his until he could feel her in every part of his soul. “And why do you help me, Merrick? Do you do so for England or do you help me?”
He allowed her to slide from his grip until she stood before him on shaky legs. Then he crushed her to him, his mouth slanting over hers. The little fool. Had she no idea how much he loved her? That his heart beat only for her? He kissed her wildly, having no patience for more wooing embraces. “England?” he asked with a ragged breath as he pulled away. “I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of such a place.”
She threw her arms tightly around him, and he could feel her tears against his neck. Suddenly all the times he had spoken of England and his duty came back to him. Her stiffness, the hurt in her eyes.
“I do this as much for you as I do for England,” he said softly, surprising himself with the admission.
For the first time since he had taken up the cause of England’s protection, he was placing equal importance on something else. Not something. Someone.
“Can you walk?” he asked. “Or should I carry you?”
“I can walk,” she said murmured.
They started forward once more, nagging doubt assailing him. The farther they walked, the bigger the knot grew in his stomach. Was it the idea of failing in his duty? No, it couldn’t be. He wouldn’t allow for failure. He’d come too far to concede to misgivings. He would see to England’s protection no matter the result in Leaudor.
