Princess of Death

by Cortney Pearson

  “You have some nerve,” she said. “Where is Soraya?”

  “She’s safe above on deck,” he said. “Have they hurt you?”

  Cali swallowed, remembering his father’s hand on her throat. It was still tender to the touch. “Only my pride.”

  Bae’s hand closed over hers on the bars. “The less you fight this, the better off you’ll be.”

  Cali jerked free from his touch. “How can you say that? You of all people, pretending to be so charming, working to earn my affections and my trust all while waiting to sink your teeth in. Do you know what that is? That’s the definition of a snake. You don’t deserve my affection, or my trust. You don’t deserve Soraya’s help or protection. Or her kingdom.”

  Something flashed in Bae’s eyes. It almost looked like pain, but that wasn’t possible. She couldn’t have hurt his feelings. Bae scrutinized her beneath his lashes, keeping his voice low. “Quiet, Princess, or you might say something you’ll regret.”

  “And what of your regrets?” She made her tone match his. “Don’t you have any at all?” Like allowing his father to capture and keep her as though she were no more than a common criminal?

  His brow creased. “I have many, but you aren’t one of them.”

  “Am I supposed to be relieved? Would you like to know of my regrets?”

  “At the moment?” He stared at the cell door before returning his penetrating gaze to hers. “No.”

  “I’ll never make the mistake of trusting you again,” Cali promised.

  “Caliana.”

  He’d done it again. It wasn’t just any name. It wasn’t princess, or Soraya. It was Cali’s own name, said in such a way it swam in her skin and tightened in her stomach like a vice.

  “You won’t succeed. Even if your father manages to get the boundary down, I’ll make sure my father never entertains any kind of alliance between us. And I will do all I can to help Soraya get her kingdom back. You and your father have no decency, no concern for others—”

  “I’ve been nothing but concerned for you since my father had you led away.”

  Cali’s mouth gaped open. “Then why haven’t you done anything about it?”

  “Why do you think I’m on this ship, risking my life? You know how I feel about risks.”

  “You can’t mean that.”

  “What reason do you have to doubt me?”

  Cali laughed, the sound tinged with bewilderment and anger. “I don’t know, maybe your father? I’m out of time, Bae. I’m stuck here, I have none of the plants I need, and my people are dying. Thanks to your father, I will have nothing to return home to. I will be the princess of death.”

  “You are the princess of Zara,” he said, “and it’s time you went home.”

  “Of course. You’re probably so relieved to be with the real Soraya—to get your precious kingdom. Her kingdom. You’re such a coward.”

  “I’ve never been anything but honest with you.” He delved for something within his pocket, removed it, and jangled it into the lock.

  Cali’s brow furrowed. “What are you doing?”

  “I told you…I’m helping you. So stop acting offended by all of this.”

  “How else should I be acting right now?”

  The door to her cage creaked open. Fortunately, enough noise was racketing above their heads no one seemed to take much notice.

  Cali couldn’t believe it. All his talk about risk. He did care. But…

  “What about Soraya?”

  “I can’t let you both go. It’s enough for me to defy my father for you. Your escape has to look like an accident, and—” Bae kicked the boot of the man on the floor beside the cell. “This mongrel can serve as your scapegoat.”

  He removed the pack slung over his chest and handed it to her. Cali regarded it with uncertainty coursing like eels inside of her, but he didn’t withdraw it.

  “It’s for you,” he said.

  Moving slowly forward, Cali took it. Though it wasn’t heavy, it was cumbersome. Whatever it was inside was fragile and strangely shaped. When she lifted the flap, she gasped.

  Brambles of pulled weeds, long-stemmed plants with blue blossoms, and a smaller bunched flower she didn’t recognize jutted out in haphazard ways.

  “Glitz foil,” she breathed. And firethorn. And dett wort.

  “And take this.” He retrieved something from within his vest. It was a thin phial, swimming inside with clear liquid. The same one she’d seen in the captain’s quarters. “It was all I could get without my father knowing what I’d done. Take some for yourself and get some to your friend.”

  “The cure.” She eyed the phial, a tempest of emotion raging through her. “Bae. I don’t know what to say.”

  “I knew you weren’t Soraya from the start,” he said. “But that wasn’t the only reason you intrigued me from the minute we met. I found myself thinking of you for yourself, not as an obligation the way I thought it would be. We had only days together, but it felt like more, Princess. I took you on the sea that day because I wanted to share part of myself with you, Soraya or not.”

  The feelings Cali had been fighting for him since the moment they met resurfaced. They frolicked and frothed and danced inside of her.

  “I wanted to know who you really were. I thought tempting the curse might be enough to get you to tell me. I wanted to know everything about you.”

  He stroked her arm. She shivered under the touch.

  “I have to go,” she said.

  He cradled her cheek in his hand. “Aye. You have to save your people.”

  She couldn’t help the way her hand moved, the way it found his. “And you have to break your curse,” she said. “Soraya could help you. You could help her. There has to be some other solution rather than stealing her home.”

  A noise shuffled behind him. Bae urged her into the shadows, away from the lantern light, until they were left with only darkness and heartbeats. Cali felt more than saw him move closer to her, shielding her body with his as a pair of sailors passed. She smelled the salt in his skin, took in the open patch of his chest through his shirt, felt his hot breath on her neck.

  “My father’s plans have changed. I’m no longer to marry Soraya.”

  Hope flickered inside Cali. Kelsey had said as much, back in the throne room. “If not Soraya, then who?”

  Bae’s hand found her waist. She couldn’t believe she longed for his lips to speak her name. The heat of him muddled her senses.

  “I’d been picturing a life with you,” he said. “Not anyone else.”

  Her heart raced. A life with her? In that moment, desire overrode reason. She could stay. She was healed here. She would have Bae here—see magic here.

  But the dream didn’t spin long.

  “My father heard of the marriage tournaments. He insists magic should be in our bloodline, and to marry a princess through a tournament would ensure that.”

  Magic in their bloodline. “So not Soraya, but some other princess,” she breathed. Not me. The rejection stung clear into her sternum.

  Bae took a few regressive steps. “You’re the princess of Zara. You don’t have the magic these other princesses do. You’d never stand a chance against them in the tournament.”

  “Doesn’t your father care about what you want?” The pain of this realization, the awareness of her feelings for him, and his for her, and that nothing could come of it, was too stark to ignore. He did care for her. He wanted to be with her.

  Footsteps tread above, stopping at the opening of the stairs. Urgency toiled in her veins.

  “No,” Bae said. “He doesn’t. And he doesn’t care about you either, so the sooner you get out of here, the better.”

  “What about you?”

  “Take the cure,” he said. “Take the plants. Do what you have to do.”

  Cali gripped the phial, amazed at its glow in the darkness. “If I take this home, I’ll never see you again.”

  Sadness cloaked his expression. It was a dejected helplessne
ss, and it expressed all he was giving. “But you’ll be where you belong. And what’s more, your people will live.”

  Her heart ached. It squeezed and spun and ricocheted against her ribs. This was no pirate standing before her. This was a boy, risking everything he had to help a girl.

  But that wasn’t true, either. This was a pirate—like no pirate she’d ever heard of before. She’d been wrong about him, dangerously, heart-shatteringly wrong. And now it was too late to do anything about it.

  The sun had set. Darren had one day left. There was no more time.

  Bae pressed his lips into a smile filled with unspoken words and withheld desires, then turned away from her.

  Cali’s heart pounded. This couldn’t be it. She couldn’t let him walk away from her. “Wait.”

  Bae paused, twisting to raise a brow at her.

  She crept to his side. Every movement of her body felt prodded, urged on by essential, overwhelming need. She placed a hand on his elbow. “I—I owe you a prize.”

  Only this wasn’t a prize. It wasn’t a fleeting, meaningless trinket. It was a token of something else, something she wasn’t quite sure she understood. She tucked the phial into the satchel and roped it on her shoulder, slinging it across her chest.

  A sacrifice was required for her return. The residue of Lyric’s potion tingled in her veins, blinking sleep out of its eyes, sensing it was time. She’d gotten all she’d come for.

  Almost all.

  It had been hard to leave her home, to journey to this place without knowing where it was or how she would accomplish what she needed to. She had known if her attempt didn’t work, she would lose her kingdom. Darren and the others would lose their lives, too.

  But this was almost worse. This was possibility, and it felt so much more personal, to know feelings were brewing, things she didn’t know she could feel, and she could never see where they led. She was leaving Bae so he could marry another. This was all she could have of him.

  Bae faced her, vulnerability and disbelief in his eyes. It lasted only seconds before he gave her a brutal smile and raked a lock of hair from his forehead.

  “Are you sure? You told me I had to earn your affections.”

  She gripped the strap on her chest, the finality of the situation bearing down hard on her. Lyric’s spell tingled harder, pulling at her skin, threatening to tear her away. She pushed against its pull, sliding her hand to Bae’s rough cheek and weaving her fingers behind his neck into his hair.

  “I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life,” she said. And she guided his mouth to hers.

  His lips lit a fire inside of her, blossoming with glowing warmth. The kiss was more than birds in flight or prisms of color. It was passion and promise and filled with everything they could never share. It was a goodbye and a greeting; it was the garden and the sea. It was everything she knew she wanted, everything she realized she was losing.

  His hands made their way around her back, pulling her closer. The heat of his body swarmed through her, making her crave him more than she ever had anything else. Images played across her mind—staying with him, becoming his queen, sailing the seas and sharing a life where every day they discovered a new adventure, a new fear, a new joy that could only be theirs.

  His lips caressed hers, while the stroke of stubble on his chin prickled and sent tingles away from where it scraped. And then the magic ignited in her veins. It laced through, slicing each and every one of her thoughts, whisking her away from him, and ensuring they could never be.

  Chapter 21

  Dirt struck Cali’s palms. The ground was no longer moving beneath her, but solid once more. The stench of fish and wood was replaced by the open, clean scent of grass and sand. Moonlight winked down on her as though it had witnessed what she’d just done.

  She could still feel Bae’s lips on hers, his hands tight around her, his intoxicating breath mingling with her own. And his heartbeat, his words, the admission of how he’d really felt about her—it all clawed at her like a wild thing brimming with taunts and torments. A portion of her heart felt ripped away, as though she hadn’t returned home completely whole.

  She clutched the strap of the pack over her chest and knelt, working to control her breathing. Bae had helped her. He’d given her the plants she’d lost. He’d gone against his father’s wishes to free her.

  And he’d kissed her as though his soul depended on it. As though he’d wanted it more than life itself.

  The thought stung the corners of her eyes. She blinked away the tears, coughing through the tightness in her throat. Her skin itched. Her head grew hot, as though the air itself was contaminated. Cali glanced down at the freckles collecting on her hands, then frantically ripped her sleeve higher up her arm.

  They weren’t freckles. The spots were returning, and much more rapidly than when she’d left.

  Cali fell to the ground, coughing. Her body spasmed and trembled. Something cut off her airway as surely as Captain Kelsey’s hand on her throat. She gasped for breath, scraping at the dirt. Lyric had said the disease would return once Cali did, but she hadn’t thought it would happen quite this swiftly.

  Cali rolled, heat pouring over her, her joints aching with agony that descended far too quickly. She managed to wrench the pack from her back, but struggled to open the latch.

  The plants pricked her fingers. Wiping sweat from her forehead, she forced herself to remain upright though the trembling was overtaking her. She couldn’t die, not now that she was back in Zara with a cure.

  Ramming her hand deeper into the satchel, her fingers finally found the phial Bae had given her. Shaking harder than leaves in a stiff breeze, she managed to uncork the container, spilling a few drops of the precious liquid to the ground.

  “Please let this work.” Cali tipped it to her lips, took a desperate gulp, and swallowed.

  The liquid parched her raw throat, but she managed to cork the phial once more before collapsing to the ground. She lay there, staring at the sky as it traded twinkling stars and the moon for shades of soft blue and cotton pink as the sun began to emerge from the east.

  Bae’s cure spread throughout her body. Soon, the aching in her joints dulled, her trembling ceasing. Her airways opened, and she inhaled a deep breath of fresh, early morning air.

  “Thank you, Bae,” she said, pushing to her knees and clutching the satchel. Though her body still quivered, she managed to stand, the spots on her arms already receding. She couldn’t stop to wonder how the captain had managed to get a hold of the cure. After she took in her surroundings, she began heading toward the old hut with the string of cockleshells along its crumbling fence.

  The stench in the air was unbearable. It seemed these outskirts had become the drop-off location for the dead. Bodies lay in a nearby heap, a mountain of vacant stares and lifeless hands.

  Cali covered her mouth with her own hand, swallowing the contents of her stomach when they threatened to come up. Urgency forced her feet. Several people along the roadside reached toward her, begging for help, but she couldn’t stop, much as she wished to. The remaining drops of this cure weren’t meant for them.

  Cali dodged past the familiar wagon she’d stolen a ride from just days before, then pounded on the door of the hut.

  “Lyric,” she called out. “Lyric!”

  The door swung open, too tired to do its job. Cali entered.

  “Please tell me you’re here,” she said, searching the barren space. “I have the plants you sent me to retrieve. Lyric!”

  Coughing emerged from a bed in the corner. Cali gasped when she found the young woman quaking on the mattress, tucking her hands beneath her chin like a child. Sweat matted her hair to her forehead, and all too familiar spots spackled up her throat and toward her cheeks and ears. Her lip bobbled, her eyes rolling until she managed to land them on Cali.

  “Not you, too,” Cali said.

  “I wasn’t—sure—you’d return,” Lyric said. “You got them?”

  Cali
lifted the satchel. “I got them. Hurry, you must brew your cure. So many are dying out there.” Too many.

  Lyric’s hand grasped hers. Her fingers were ice. “I—can’t—do it.”

  Despair choked Cali. “But you must! You’re the only one who can.” Tears stung Cali’s eyes. She’d keenly felt the pressure to return with the plants as quickly as she could. “I know I’m pushing time, but I returned as soon as I was able!”

  “I can’t stand.” Lyric’s breaths came in short spurts. “You—must do it. Crush the plants. There is a—pestle—on the counter.” She lifted a trembling, shriveled finger specked with spots.

  Cali panicked. She didn’t have time for this. She was going to drop the plants off and get the cure to Darren. It would take hours to return to her palace on foot. She stared at the phial still in her hand. There was about half its contents left.

  She removed the cork, placed the glass to Lyric’s lips, and tipped a few drops into her mouth. “I hope it’s enough,” Cali said. She wasn’t sure how long it had taken for the cure to work its way through her own system.

  “Thank—you,” Lyric said. “Now. There is no time.”

  Cali rushed to the counter and swiped an arm over it, knocking its contents to the floor to clear the space. A bowl with a pestle sat near several jars filled with contents Cali didn’t recognize.

  “Remove—the leaves. And crush them.”

  Cali rent the plants from the satchel, dropping several leaves to the ground where they glowed with golden dust as her feet crushed them. Tearing leaves from the stems, she dropped them into the bowl. She ground them with the pestle, releasing the sickly sweet smell of vanilla and rotted apricots while filling the air around her with glinting gold.

  “Crush all the plants?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  She dumped the contents of crushed firethorn into another bowl before ripping the leaves from the blue plant, tipping them in as well. They gave off no magical response, but she set them aside.