by Amy Richie
A pang of sharp emotion washed over me, much like the waves had only moments before. My face screwed up with the effort it took not to howl out loud again; the insides of my eyes were already starting to burn. How many tears could one person shed in a single day?
Besides Edna, inwardly correcting my thoughts. Thinking of the baby brought fresh tears, tears that streamed down my face in a steady torrent that wouldn't be stemmed. Lucky for me, no one was there to see this breakdown either.
“What is wrong with you?” I cried out loud. “When did you get so sappy?” My words didn't travel far from my face, the wind whipped them back to me and swirled them around my head, piercing and accusing.
I cared about her, I realized with a small groan. I cared about all of them, and I cared if I saw them again or not. I didn't want to be sent away because I would miss them all. Even Constantina.
Clenching my jaw against another wave of hysterical crying, there were too many other things to worry about just now, the rising water being the highest on my list. My legs were already covered almost completely.
Out on the rocks might have been the best answer, but the water was intimidating. Maybe if I could walk, I would have taken the opportunity. With two working legs, I might have actually had a chance. How far could I get crawling out?
I glanced around the cave, frantic for anything that would help me move out of the water. Further back, the ground was higher and wasn't submersed in water yet. If I could just drag myself back there, I wouldn't freeze to death before Dais came back.
I had to take several deep breaths before I had the courage to try and move. Pushing one hand against the floor of the cave and the other on the wall behind me, I heaved myself forward. The pain that had just been bearable while I was sitting still, raised several degrees when my leg jerked.
I hadn't even moved an inch, just bounced a little.
“Ouch,” I cried out, dropping both hands into the cold water. “Ouch.”
Don't give up.
Something deep inside me was urging me on, not letting me lie there and cry like I wanted to.
I sucked in a deep breath and help it in my lungs for several long moments. I had to try a different way to move, I realized. I would have to move my injured leg first, and then the rest of body could follow.
Using Dais's shirt as a sling, I wrapped my leg and hauled it upwards with a grunt.
Pain like I had never known before sliced through me, making me cry out like a wounded animal. A strange vision of a rabbit caught in one of Dais's traps filled my brain.
He had come to me with tears in his precious eyes and pulled me into the woods near the big house where he had set a trap to catch some of the small animals. One of the Cyrus's men had showed him what to do, but the sound the rabbit made with its leg caught in the trap froze him.
The sounds coming from my throat were the same.
I didn't have the strength to pull my face from the water.
As I lay there with my leg throbbing and my stomach heaving, my thoughts traveled to Cyrus. He had been the first man to love me, the only man to love me. Quite possibly he was the only person to love me since my parents and Nanny Grace.
Life could have been so different for me and for Dais if Cyrus hadn't been a pirate. If only he had come for us right away, we could have went with him and learned what it meant to be a family, what it meant to love and be loved in return.
Things could have been so different. I wasn't sure if it would have been better, but it would have been different.
The water flowed in and around me, going inside my mouth as I breathed in and out. I knew I needed to sit up, but it was too hard.
Was Cyrus afraid when he died? Did he think of me?
“Rani!” a deep voice called my name.
It was probably the ocean calling for me.
“Rani.”
I would join the others that had been taken to their watery graves.
“Rani.”
Maybe Nanny Grace was right and I would see my parents again.
“Rani.”
And Cyrus. I would like to see Cyrus again. My eyes fluttered closed, and then back open again.
“Rani,” the voice was much closer. “Are you okay?” A rough hand was shaking me back awake. I looked up at the face that was just inches above my own and smiled.
“Cyrus?” I croaked.
“Oh,” he gushed out. “You're alive.” He pulled my head out of the water. “You're alive,” he said again.
I forced my eyes open wider so I could see him again. “Cyrus?”
“Yes,” he smiled weakly, “I'm here.”
But that wasn't right. How could he be here? Did I die already?
Chapter 25
“You're not real,” I whispered, clinging to his arm anyway. “You can't be real.”
His lips curved upward into the smile I had missed for so long. “How can I not be real?” he grumbled.
“You're dead,” I explained as if he might have forgotten that in the business of trying to save me from the same fate.
“I don't feel dead,” he chuckled. “But I'm not sure how long that will be true if we stay here.”
“I hurt my leg,” I quickly told him. “I can't walk.”
“Dais told us.”
“Us?” I faintly echoed the word back to him. Had the others come looking for me too?
“Quinn is here with me.”
“He's dead too,” I nodded, remembering Ike's words before we left.
“Wrong again,” Cyrus chuckled, his hot breath tickling the hairs at my temple.
“But how ...?”
“I'll explain everything once we get you somewhere safe.”
“Dais went for help,” I murmured, still not sure if I was trying to converse with a hallucination.
“He found it,” he grunted close to my ear.
“You?”
“Of course me,” he chuckled.
My eyes stung with the effort of keeping them open as Cyrus pulled me free of the cave. The pain was blinding, but I was determined not to close my eyes and risk losing him again. As promised, Quinn was waiting just outside the cave. He grabbed Cyrus and helped to pull us both across the hidden rocks.
“You're here too,” I whispered. My lips tried to smiled, but the pain was too great. It took over everything else.
“Where else would I be?” he rumbled.
“But the storm ...”
“Helped us to get here quicker.”
“Now be quiet,” Cyrus ordered, his voice rumbling in his chest, which was pressed tight against my ear.
“And Dais?”
“He's waiting for you.”
My eyes drifted closed, just for a moment; the rhythm of Cyrus's steady footsteps lulled me to a state of half sleeping. When I opened them again, we were inside the council building.
“How did we get here?” I mumbled, shifting slightly as Cyrus put me down on a high table. I gasped out loud when my leg brushed against the metal.
“She's hurt,” Sasha squealed, suddenly right next to my face.
“Her leg,” I heard Cyrus mumble. “I think it's broken.”
“Here,” Sasha's hands began to tug at me, “you need to get out of these wet clothes.”
“Where's Dais?” I asked groggily.
“Quinn,” Sasha ordered briskly, “get that fire going stronger.”
“What can I do?” Constantina asked. Her face loomed large and white above me.
“Bring Dais in for a minute.”
“Don't you think ...?” Cyrus began but was cut off in the same brisk tones.
“She isn't going to rest until she sees him.”
My mouth couldn't form the right words to thank Sasha, but maybe she understood.
“Mama,” a small voice called softly.
“Dais?” I turned to look at him.
“I got lost,” he explained. “I couldn't find the way back to town.”
“You couldn't?”
“
But he ran into us, so it worked out,” Cyrus explained quickly. “Now go on outside, son.”
“But ...”
“Cyrus is quite right,” Doctor Gourini added his voice in with the rest. “I need to get that leg set and possibly a few stitches.” He held up a large needle. “You just relax, Rani. When you wake up, you'll be good as new.”
“But ...”
As the darkness was already seeping in, I turned my face to search for Cyrus. Would he still be there when I woke up?
***
The light streamed through the window, poking its warmth at my eyes until I was forced to open them. There was a man sitting beside the bed I was lying in. a man with his head bowed, a head full of white-blond hair.
“Cyrus?” I croaked out.
His head snapped up. “You're finally awake.”
“You're still here?”
“I wasn't a dream yesterday, and I'm not a dream now,” he grinned.
“But you're dead.”
“Not dead.” His eyebrows shot up on his forehead.
“What happened? How did you get here?”
“We ... found Frank Black,” he said slowly.
“Ike said you did,” I nodded. “He's dead.”
“Yes.”
Was there sadness in his voice? “I thought he killed you. Ike said he did.”
“He meant to. Quinn was shot, but my father took the bullet for me.”
“Your father?” My forehead crinkled with my confusion. Hadn't Cyrus said his father was a bad man? I thought they didn't like each other.
“He saved me, pushed us both overboard.”
I gasped, my hand flying to cover my mouth. “That was saving you?”
“He stepped between me and the bullet, then got me away from Frank. There was a boat waiting below. I got Quinn on board and we made our way to the shore.”
I watched his face as he told his story, a story of sickness and foreign places filled with cruel people. A story about a mechanical dolphin and a man determined to rule the entire world. My breath came quicker and then slowed again as he came closer to how he managed to be on New Ortec just when I needed him to pull me out of the cave.
“I thought I was dead when I saw you,” I told him when he had finished talking.
“I know.” He smiled again. “You said so last night.”
My face flamed hot. “I said a lot of things I shouldn't have,” I murmured.
He chuckled deeply. “So I've heard.”
I turned away from him, only turning back when I heard his chair scrape against the floor. “Are you leaving?”
“Sasha told me to come get her when you woke up.”
“Will ...” My tongue slid across my bottom lip. “Will you stay here on New Ortec?”
He grinned again, his eye dropping into a slow wink. “Where else would I go?” He dropped his face suddenly very close to mine. “I'm never leaving again,” he whispered. He let his face drop closer still until his lips pressed lightly against mine.
I was still trying to catch my breath when Sasha and Constantina came in a few moments later. “Hello there,” Sasha greeted me brightly. “You gave us all quite a scare yesterday.”
“Sorry,” I mumbled, feeling hot again.
“No matter.” She clicked her tongue. “Just don't ever do it again.” She laughed loudly as my mouth fell open.
“Well,” Constantina bustled closer to the bed, “now that you're awake, Dais and I are going to go out to collect wood. The storm knocked down some good branches.”
“Good thinking,” Sasha nodded.
“It beats trying to use that dreadful ax.” She busied her hands around my head, unnecessarily fluffing up my pillow. “You just rest, Rani. Don't worry about anything except getting better.”
I looked quickly to Sasha as Constantina left.
“Doctor Gourini says you have to stay in bed,” she ordered sternly. “I'll go and let him know you're awake.” She smiled fondly down at me, then followed Constantina out of the room.
Epilogue
One Year Later
I sat up straighter on the stiff seat and pulled the bundle closer to my chest. Beside me, Sasha clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth with a sharp sigh.
“I don't understand why it had to be on the hottest day of the year,” she grumbled.
“The hottest day so far,” I corrected.
Sasha glared at me. “This isn't good for Angelina,” she hissed. “Constantina told her to stay inside the council building today ...”
“But we know Angelina,” I finished for her. “Quinn will keep an eye on her.”
Indeed, he was sitting next to her a few rows in front of us—his eyes stuck on her. One of her hands rested on her protruding belly, but she was laughing with Betna about some silly thing they had seen Edna do.
“You just wait,” Angelina's voice carried back to us. “That one will be a boy and twice the work.” She nodded toward Betna's stomach, which wasn't bulging yet. Her and Marcus had announced a few days before that they were expecting, so it wouldn't be long.
“Do you think that's true?” Sasha asked me.
“That she's having a boy?” I shrugged. “I'm not sure.”
“No,” Sasha swatted playfully at my hand. “That raising a boy is harder.”
“I'm still not sure,” I confessed. “Dais was a good baby.”
“He was,” she conceded.
“And what about you?”
“What about me?”
“Do you think you and Doctor Gourini will have children?”
“We are much too old to be thinking about that,” she scoffed. “We just get to help all of you raise yours.” She pulled back the blankets in my arms. “Have you decided what to call her?”
“It's not time yet,” I reminded her, dropping my voice.
“Oh,” she clicked her tongue again. “Silly superstition if you ask me. I'm sure you and Cyrus have talked about what to name that daughter of yours.”
I peeked down at the sleeping baby in my arms. “Well ...”
“Yeah?” she prompted eagerly.
“We were thinking to call her Grace.”
“I knew it!” she squealed.
“Knew what?” Cyrus slid into the seat next to me.
Sasha winked at him.
“Did you tell her what we're naming her?”
“I ...”
I was saved from trying to defend myself by the appearance of Constantina and Adam. Sitting up straighter, I pressed my finger against my lips. Dais came to sit next to Sasha, his hair twisted from running.
“Normally, Owen marries people here,” Constantina smiled wide at him, “but since he is in the wedding today—”
Her words were cut off by a loud, shrill scream. Angelina stood up. “I think the baby is coming,” she screamed again.
“I knew it,” Sasha exploded, hurrying up from her own seat. “Didn't I tell her not to come out here?”
Baby Grace squirmed in my arms.
“I think you're going to have a playmate soon,” I laughed down at her.
“Should we go home then?” Cyrus asked, pressing his lips against the top of my head.
“You better take her.” I transferred the bundle to him. “I'm going to see what I can do to help.”
He laughed lightly, the deep sound traveling deep into my overflowing heart. “See you when you get home,” he winked.
I nodded and hurried off after Sasha and Angelina.
~~*~~
About the Author
Amy Richie has lived in a small town her entire life. She lives with her three kids and their bird, Perry. She began writing in high school but never took it seriously until a few years ago. She enjoys writing because it takes her out of her everyday life and gives life to the people in her head.
“When I was little I wanted to be a mermaid, then when I was in high school I wanted to be a vampire; now as an adult I’m a writer, which is better because now I get to be both.”
Visit her at: http://amyrichie.weebly.com
Also by Amy Richie
The Blood Vine Series
“Being a werewolf is harder than it looks. Everyone thinks it’s just morph at the full moon, kill, morph back. That’s not true. It’s a lot harder than that. Especially if you are seventeen years old.”
Willow
Fern
Ivy
The Jeweled City Series
Sapphire City
Strange things happen on Nortica; people disappear and voices call from the ocean. For Stella Shaw, things are about to get even more weird.
Welcome to Nortica. Population: ten.
After her latest run-in with the police, Stella’s mom takes her back to her childhood home, the island Nortica. But they find it much different than the stories Mom told. Most of the people have disappeared and the ones left are really weird.
When her mom turns out to be the next victim of the island, Stella is forced into a dangerous race to find her while learning the secrets that the ocean holds
Immortal Love Series
Timeless
Always
Everlasting
Infinite
After the asteroid, Jewell, cripples the earth, vampires come to the aid of the survivors. Some only want to help, others merely want to protect their way of life, and some simply have to be stopped.
Eva was created for one purpose … to kill notorious vampire Dominick Letrell. Neleh has devised a plan that cannot fail; travel back in time to when Dominick was his weakest and attack him there. Along with the help of David, the most intelligent vampire alive, the plan is set in motion.
Unfortunately, everything goes wrong and Eva is trapped in the past with no memory of why or how she got there. What happens when all the rules change? Timeless is a story of betrayals, secrets, and a love that will change everything.
