“What do you mean?” she asked.
“This. Us. All of us. They can’t live on a ship, I can’t live on a ship. We need a home. Kelly and his people need a home.” He sandwiched her hand between both of his and looked into her eyes, searching her face for understanding.
“Are you saying you’re going to stay here?” she asked him, voice small.
He shook his head. “I’m saying we need a better plan than sailing off to…we don’t even know where.”
“To get my ship back,” she said.
“Is that really what you want? Still?”
He watched confusion and hesitation darken her eyes. “I…yes. It’s what I’ve always wanted. It’s freedom.”
“Even at the cost of…us?”
His heartbeat hastened when she didn’t answer him immediately. He felt every thump fill his chest, echoing in his ears, the mark an electric hum that he knew would kill him slowly if she left him, if she refused to change for him as he had changed for her.
“I can’t,” she said softly, shaking her head a little. “I can’t…make this decision now, Reza. And I can’t make it alone. The three of us will have to sit down and…figure it out.”
He released her hands and took a step back from her, trying to quelch the disappointment he felt brimming into his eyes as he nodded.
“Of course, Cressida.”
“I don’t want to lose you,” she said quickly. “Reza, I never want to lose you. I couldn’t live with it.”
“Well,” he muttered. “We know what you don’t want and what you can’t live with. But I still don’t know what you do want, and what you can live with.”
She said nothing to that. He felt like maybe that had been a cruel thing to say to her, but she was his mate and he wouldn’t soften those blows for her. They’d chosen each other and everything that came with that. Including this horrible, horrible moment, and the other horrible ones to follow. When she fell silent, he let it stretch another moment and then turned to go back into the barracks and help Prija and Kamala pack up what they had to move to the captain’s quarters.
Chapter 7
Cressida felt adrift when Reza walked away from her. Everything had gone so quickly from passionate and happy at last to completely upheaved. It felt like the mark actually throbbed against her throat as he went back into the barracks and she was left standing alone in the corridor. The Jewel of So Sur around her neck suddenly weighed a hundred pounds. She went to the cargo hold to take inventory and also just to give herself some space. She supposed it was true that they’d all been so focused on getting the jewel that they hadn’t stopped to think of what would happen after they had it.
They’d all been operating on the assumption that there was only one path to what they each wanted. Kelly wanted the jewel to sell it and buy his den a real home. Reza had wanted to go home until he got there. And all Cressida had wanted was to get her ship back. It was the physical representation of her freedom, of the fact that she made her own way and lived the life she wanted. She hadn’t ever thought that perhaps the representation of her freedom was beginning to take a new shape, that it even could. But who would she be without her ship?
When she met Reza and Kelly for dinner in the captain’s quarters that evening, she still had no answers. The tension in the room was as thick as an early-morning fog. Kamala and Prija were eating on the deck with the rest of the crew, and Cressida could tell that Reza was uncomfortable with leaving them alone, even if he knew that no harm would befall them. The bears respected them even if they couldn’t understand them, mostly because they respected Kelly.
They sat at the end of the long table in Kelly’s quarters, Cressida at the head and either of her mates catty-corner, but she didn’t eat much of the fish that Prija had helped prepare. She moved it around on her plate a little, and when she perceived that neither Reza nor Kelly seemed particularly interested in eating either, she simply set down her fork and looked between them.
“How do we fix this?” she asked.
They looked at each other, each shifting uncomfortably in his seat. No one had answers, it seemed. No one had a solution. But Cressida was determined to find one.
“Well, first,” Kelly finally said, “we go back home.”
“Whose home?” Reza asked.
“I…we leave this part of the world, and go back to the one Cressida and I hail from.”
“And then what?”
Kelly looked down. “I told my den I would find them a home.”
“Are we not now a part of your den?” Reza pressed.
Kelly sighed. “Well, what do you want to do, then, tiger?”
“I want a home too, and not on a ship. You don’t want to live on a ship forever.”
There was a pause, then, before Kelly looked at Cressida. “But she does.”
“I don’t know,” she admitted, shaking her head. When she couldn’t think of what to say other than what she’d already told Reza, she sat back in her chair and took a breath. And told them the truth. “I don’t know that I want that anymore, James. All I do know, for absolutely certain, is that I want you both with me. Wherever I am.”
Some of the tension softened then. Perhaps both Kelly and Reza had been unsure of that. She was glad to have told them, but sad to think that they had doubted her. They were the two people in the world that she never wanted to disappoint, never wanted to be betray, and never wanted to be free of. She felt the mark warm between them, and lifted a hand to touch the Jewel of So Sur where it pulsed against her skin.
“We are three strange creatures with no home,” Kelly murmured. “And people depending on us to create one.”
“Where in the world could we go to create such a thing?” Reza wondered sadly.
Cressida looked between them, at their defeated, weary expressions, and had the most preposterous idea she’d ever had in her life.
“Right here,” she said, sitting up.
Reza and Kelly looked at her, neither one understanding.
“The island,” Cressida went on, clutching the jewel. “This island. Reza, you said it, when we were leaving the Keeper’s sanctuary. I am the Keeper of the Jewel now. So that sanctuary is mine as well. And your chieftain said that the jewel is sacred, and so is the one who keeps it.”
“Cressida,” Reza said, shaking his head. “No. You hate it here.”
“No, I don’t,” she insisted. “I hated it here when it was hurting me, when it was keeping me from you, but it’s brought us together. Kelly, you could bring your den here. We could all live here, the tigers and the bears, and me, together. The tribe will get to keep its sacred artifact on its island, and Kelly’s den will have a home at last, together.”
“You would live here,” Kelly said, staring at her. “With us. You would give up your ship?”
“Well, we should have at least two ships to protect the island, shouldn’t we?” Cressida asked, smiling slyly.
Kelly breathed a laugh and sat back in his chair. “This is madness.”
“You’ve said that this whole time,” Cressida pointed out. “But you joined yourself to me all the same. This is the answer. For all of us.”
“We’ll have to make peace with the tribe,” Reza said.
“And go get the rest of my den. And convince my men to bring them here.”
“The crew wants their family as much as you do, James,” Cressida said. “They’ll go along with it if you tell them it’ll work. And it’ll work. We’ll make it work.”
“I…” Reza looked at her, and her heart leapt to see the ferocity suddenly glimmering in his gold-green eyes. “Will help you make it work, Cressida.”
She smiled, more in love with both of them suddenly than she’d ever been before. “First thing in the morning,” she said, “we’ll take Kamala and Prija back to the village and speak with the chieftain. They want freedom but they don’t want to leave home.”
“No, I don’t think they do,”
Reza agreed.
“And we’ll need people to help create a livable village of our own while we make the journey back to get the rest of the den,” Kelly said, nodding. He reached over and took Cressida’s hand, and she felt her smile deepen as he squeezed her fingers. “Love, you are brilliant.”
“I just know a thing or two about making my own way,” she reminded them.
That night, she stayed in Kelly’s quarters and shared the bed with Kamala and Prija. It wasn’t the most comfortable night’s sleep she’d ever had, but both women had been so relieved when she and Reza had told them that there was a plan, and that the plan did not involve sailing them to the other side of the world. Cressida suspected that Kamala’s feelings for Chaiya were more than just tolerating him, but that she loved her brother too much to tell him the truth. Prija was a different story, but Cressida did not know the tigress well enough to begin to guess why she might have been so quick to leave home, except to assume that Prija, like Cressida herself, had a wilder spirit than her father cared for. She was also stunning, and Cressida had already caught Fat Tom staring at her at least four times that day. She had a feeling that Prija would make her own way somehow, just fine.
Kelly called the whole thing madness another three times the next morning, as they got into the dinghy and rowed back to the island. Washed and dressed and once more with a sword at her hip, Cressida felt more confident about her idea, even as she stared up at the island’s peak upon approach. She had not expected ever to go back to this island, and it hadn’t even been two days since they’d left it. But there was a warmth to the jewel around her neck as they approached the beach that told her that this was the right course of action. Perhaps the jewel was never meant to leave the island anyway, and Cressida had been wrong to try to take it from its home, however good her intentions. It belonged here. What surprised them all was simply that perhaps they did as well.
“We should’ve brought more men,” Kelly was muttering, as they worked their way back through the jungle towards the village.
“We’re forging peace with them,” Reza reminded him. “Not invading them. And they won’t hurt Cressida. Her claim is already established. All Sajja can do is turn his back on us, in which case the Keeper’s sanctuary is still ours.”
“We don’t want to alienate our only neighbors,” Cressida said. “Any more than we already have.”
“He’ll want Prija to marry one of the bears,” Reza told Kelly.
Cressida blinked at that. “Well, that’s preposterous. There’s no arranging marriages, absolutely not.”
Kelly glanced at her, then at Reza, and shrugged. “I won’t force anyone, but if they want to, then I won’t stand in the way either.”
“That is Prija’s birthright, Cressida,” Reza told her, with a look behind them to where Prija and Kamala were walking a few feet back. “She deserves an important marriage. She wants that.”
“She wants to be married to a stranger?” Cressida scoffed. “That’s awful and I won’t support it. You confirm for me that it’s what she wants, fine. But none of this birthright business, Reza. No forced marriages.”
Reza put up his hands. “I give in.” He smirked at her. She batted at his shoulder and he ducked and drew back, falling into step with his sister instead, urging them closer as they neared the village. Cressida would enter first, the jewel on prominent display around her neck, to halt the advance of any of the warriors when they saw Reza and Kelly.
They were not far from the perimeter when the warriors emerged from the tangled green of the jungle, surrounding them. They each put up their hands and Cressida stepped forward, lifting the jewel in both hands.
“We beg words with the chieftain,” she said, and felt the stone translate her words so the warriors could understand her.
They looked at each other, plainly suspicious, as no doubt they had seen her transform into the giant serpent that had nearly killed the chieftain’s son. But after a moment’s delay of consternation, they waved them forward and led them to the well-trod path that curved to the village. Cressida was surprised to find that she was beginning to recognize the roots and trees and vines that surrounded her. She couldn’t tell whether it was the jewel guiding her, or just that she had started to learn the jungle on her own.
When they emerged into the village, the first thing that Cressida noticed was that the vine-made ring of battle had been removed from the village center, but blood still stained the grass. People began to gather when they saw their little party walking behind the warriors, towards the chieftain’s hut. Women in colorful saris, their bright skin and hair decorated with flowers, bellies and breasts exposed. And men bare-chested and bristling with weapons and symbols painted on their flesh, wearing ornate wreaths of leaf and vine and bone.
Sajja was waiting for them in the doorway to his hut, his face a grimace of anger and trepidation.
“Why do you come back here?” he demanded.
“Father, please!” Prija cried, ducking between the warriors to go to him. She hugged him, and Cressida saw part of that grimace give way as he returned the embrace. “I didn’t want to leave the island, not really. I only wanted to make my own choices and you were hurting people.”
Sajja’s shoulders sagged. He held his daughter and looked at Cressida. “Come inside, Keeper.” He turned and led them into the hut.
Chapter 8
Reza entered Sajja’s hut with Kamala, and thought of the last time he’d been here. When Sajja had forced his hand to Prija for safe passage for Cressida and Kelly. It had been a week, maybe just a little more, but still it felt like forever ago.
Sajja brought them to the same low table and sat them all down on straw mats as one of the warriors brought in food and drink to bind them together in peace. As Reza settled, he caught sight of movement in one of the other rooms’ doorways, and there was Chaiya. His face was a ruin of bruises and scrapes, his one arm in a sling, and a thick poultice covered the wound on his throat. Reza’s own wounds were still quite visible. He nodded to Chaiya and Chaiya nodded back, but to Reza’s surprise, Kamala got to her feet and went to her husband, pulling him into another room while whispering furtively to him.
Perhaps he had misunderstood his sister altogether. He struggled with that thought, but had only ever wanted her to happy. In this way, maybe Cressida’s idea truly was aligned with better fortune. Perhaps this island could yet be home to him, to them all.
“You want to share the island,” Sajja said, glaring at Cressida once she’d explained her plan. “With bears.”
“Are you struggling more with the fact they are bears, or that they are outsiders?” Cressida asked.
Reza saw the chieftain’s glare turn swiftly into a scowl. “You may have been deemed worthy by the island, but they have not.”
“They are my people now,” Cressida told him. “And their alpha is my mate.” She arched an eyebrow at him. “And so is yours.”
Sajja looked right at Reza, who held his gaze. He’d won the blood rite. If Sajja wanted to challenge them, that was his decision, but no one could argue that Reza was not every bit the alpha of this tribe that Sajja denied. Had Reza’s father lived, Saija would never have been chieftain, and it would have been Reza leading the tribe. They both knew it. It had fueled Saija’s treatment of him ever since his return to the island. After a momentary battle of wills, Sajja looked away and back to Cressida.
“You will stay on the mountain,” he told her. “And you will never enter this village uninvited. From here to the beach is ours. There is food and hunting enough if the borders are maintained.”
She nodded. “Fine. And you will stay off the mountain unless we say otherwise.”
“And,” Sajja said, looking at Kelly this time, “one of his seconds will wed Prija, as is only proper.”
Reza looked at Cressida as if to say told you, but the expression fell right off his face when he saw the look of fury that lit into her eyes.
“No
,” she told the chieftain, her voice firm and expression unyielding. “If you wish to introduce your daughter to any of Kelly’s men, that will be happily arranged. We will have bloody tea parties. But I refuse to agree to the marriage of any two people who haven’t met yet. That’s the last I’ll say on the matter.”
Sajja stared at Cressida, and Reza waited for the explosion, but none ever came. Instead, Sajja sat back a little from the table, and looked her over as if seeing her for the very first time.
“The previous Keeper would not accept this offer either,” he said finally, smiling a little.
“Another test.” Cressida shook her head.
“Not exactly. I wanted to know if your mind was like hers. I see that it is. I have never been to a tea party but perhaps you will eventually invite me to one, Keeper.”
It was Reza’s turn to look dumbfounded, as Cressida laughed. He wiped a hand over his face, trying to take it all in, and when Kelly shot him a curious expression because he didn’t understand the language, Reza just waved the question off. He had no idea how to explain it all anyway. It was too preposterous, even hilarious, and Reza had no words for what he was feeling. That Cressida had somehow just gained Sajja’s respect in a matter of moments, where for most it took a lifetime. Perhaps that too was the jewel’s power, in some way. Understanding, acceptance, the language of leadership. Reza could not have begun to say, but incredibly, this…seemed like it could work.
He leaned a little forward. “We would ask that Prija go to the sanctuary, though, chieftain. With a handful of Kelly’s men to help prepare the space for when we return with the den. We will be gone…many months.”
“Perhaps more,” Cressida agreed. “We’ve no way of knowing the wind, and it is a long journey.”
Sajja nodded. “This I will grant you, though I would have her brother there to protect her.” He nodded to Reza. “And your sister. If she means to stay with the tribe.”
“I believe she does,” Reza muttered, looking down. As she had not returned from the other room with Chaiya, he suspected Kamala had no intention of forsaking her people as Reza had. But they were different. He’d made his choices and she would make hers, and he would do his best not to resent her for that. He had, after all, been taken away from her and left her alone for a long time.
Alphas of Black Fortune (Complete Boxed Set) Page 21
