Princess at Sea

  My heart beat again—a spasm of slow motion—and my thoughts were swallowed. Now his emotion flooded me, mixing in a slurry to make the clearest mind doubt its sanity. Anger, pure and honest, roared through me. Faint in the far reaches of my mind, farther back than even a race memory might even exist, I felt my own emotions of fear of the future, determination to survive, and a growing need to escape. But my desires weren’t mine alone anymore. The cat was feeling them, too.

  Again, my heart beat. My body sagged in shock. I saw myself, leaning against the wall. I seemed taller than I really was, a source of noise and fear, something I was unable to understand. All I wanted was to be free of it. If I could bring myself to get closer . . . if I could sink my teeth into it, it would stop moving. Why? I thought. Why wouldn’t it go away?

  A fourth beat of my heart, and I gasped, finding myself back within myself. The punta was in a crouch, shaking its head and biting at the air, screaming in his inability to comprehend.

  Above us the roar of the men, thinking he was going to attack, beat down like a wave. I could see his confusion now as clearly as if I had raised him from a cub. I cowered at the noise, as did the cat. Wonder and fear joined my confusion when I realized what had happened. We had shared too deeply, becoming each other for an instant.

  My heart raced for what we had done. The cat howled in pain, and with that, I realized we were still connected. I understood what had happened and had been able to find and reclaim my thoughts and emotions. The cat was still floundering, still existing in that insane, maddening mix of selves. The fervor in his eyes told me he was ready to break. His natural fear, multiplied by my own, had pushed him to where he would brave his instincts to attack me.

  Immediately I forced my panic down. I had a chance. There was something here I could use. And when the cat calmed in response, I almost lost the thin link we had from excitement.

  They are nothing, I thought, focusing on the idea that the men screaming down at us were beneath notice—and the cat panted, his fear receding. I listened for the sound of the wind in the trees, hearing it in my memory, if not for real—and the cat’s ears came away from the sides of his head, and his eyes grew less intense. I recalled the feeling of clean water, the taste of it, the cool silky sensation across me—and his claws eased in and stayed retracted.

  I slipped myself deeper into his mind, the way easier for having done this so many times with Jy. I knew the paths to take so I wouldn’t be noticed and could nudge inattentive thoughts: the memory of tall grass, of sun on one’s back, of a full belly and soft sounds of stable mates. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, I was seeing through the punta’s.

  The jolt of confusion was muted. My pulse was slow, my breathing sedate. I took three breaths and held them, breathing as the punta did and finding it natural and comfortable. I could see myself, still standing with one hand against the wall. I willed myself to drop my hand, and because the idea was echoed in the cat’s mind, he thought he had willed me to move and didn’t mind. Thanks to the overdose of venom, it was the deepest connection I had ever achieved.

  From above, I heard Duncan whispering. His voice was audible through the punta’s ears, but his words were a confusing slur of uncomfortable sound. I willed the punta to look up, and my control bobbled when I saw Duncan through the punta’s more sensitive eyes. I gave the punta an emotion of fear-for-another to label the look upon his long face.

  The punta’s thoughts went confused, not understanding how one could be afraid for someone other than oneself. Uncertainty rumbled through him, and I washed the feeling of caring for young and one’s mate into it, and he relaxed. A faint rumble rose. His claws were again moving in and out, but he was purring in the memory of a sunlit den and the smell of young fur. The stagnant air of the pit seemed warm from the sun and heated rock.

  Seeing myself through the punta’s eyes, I willed myself to take a step forward. If I could prove that the punta wouldn’t harm me, they’d let me out. Wouldn’t they?

  It was an odd sensation—a feeling of disconnection, of unbalance, a taste of confusion on the back of my throat. I was so deep into the punta’s thoughts that I couldn’t feel the earth under my feet. Struggling for balance, I felt my claws dig into the sand as I took another, then another step.

  A soft murmur of men’s voices broke over us. Slowly the awestruck sound rose higher until it died away to leave only frightened whispers. The punta didn’t like this any better than the shouts, and I nudged the memory of waves on the sand into their place, calming him.

  The punta’s purr became louder and the men’s voices more intent. He didn’t mind when the tall, noisy animal coming toward him raised her arm and reached for him since he thought it had been his idea she should. It would feel good if she touched him, her soft, dull claws raking through his fur. Not as good as a mate’s tongue across the underside of his jaw, but good.

  His thoughts and mine mixed freely, me consciously nudging his and losing myself further the deeper I sank. I couldn’t feel my shoulders ease, but I saw them through his eyes. I never felt my eyes slip shut, but the confusing mix eased into one vision of grays and yellows.

  Carefully, almost having forgotten what I was trying to do, I suggested that the punta would like the animal that smelled of smoke to touch his head. I waited, forcing my arm to remain still. Again, I sent the thought, and a hint of annoyance went through him. Why hasn’t she sent her nails against my skin?

  Watching through his eyes, I sent my hand out. It was shaking, and it surprised me how brown it was. My fingers were long and weak-looking, useless in their bendability. The men above me were utterly silent. It was as if the world were holding its breath.

  My fingers touched him, and a collective breath rose from the top of the pit. His fur was softer than water, warmer than sunlight. I dug my fingers through it, making him flick his ear. He willed me to scratch his chin, and my other arm rose to take his massive jaw between my hands.

  He had willed it, not me. It had been his thought, not mine.

  A frightened sound settled over us from the top of the pit, indecipherable to me now as we were connected so closely.

  He had willed it, rose the thought in me again. He had willed it. That wasn’t right. It had been him leading me, not the other way around. That wasn’t . . . right.

  He had willed it, came my thought once more, even as I sent my nails to rake the underside of his chin, my fingers brushing huge canines longer than my hand. My eyes opened, and in the confusing double sight, I could see the grooves where venom would run, etching his teeth.

  The punta stopped purring. His ears flicked back, hearing the rising tide of men’s voices, swelling in their fear. My hand kept moving, though I willed it to stop. Fear slid through me; I couldn’t move away. I wasn’t in control any longer. I was the bound. I was the charmed.

  Panic bubbled through me, washing away the contentment I had been basking in. I felt the ribbon of connection start to fray, shredded by fear.

  “She’s bewitched it!” came a voice, and the punta’s terror of having understood the spoken words reverberated between us.

  My muscles spasmed, and I fell, as control over my body returned. Pain, like molten metal, ran through me. I cried out and the cat screamed with me. Then he attacked.

  His canines sank into my shoulder. Fire itself could hurt no more. Venom poured into me. I stiffened, my mouth opening in a silent scream. My eyes bulged, and my throat closed lest I cry my last breath out in the agony of existence. The cat screamed with me. We no longer saw through each other’s eyes, but he felt my pain, and I reeled under his confusion. The link wasn’t broken, it had only been knocked into a state of confusion.

  “Tess!” Duncan exclaimed, and the punta screamed again, understanding everything.

  The punta wanted out. He wanted the peace I had given him, now frenzied by the memory I had returned to him that he had all but forgotten. A memory of clean air, wide spaces, and silence but for the wind.

&
nbsp; His need to be free of the pit hammered at me, joining my own desire and rebounding into him threefold. I reeled, though I was curled up on the sand, seizing at the venom in me. It was ice and fire. It set my skin to tingle. I could feel every grain of sand abrading my cheek. I could smell the salt from my tears as my body convulsed. My heart raced into a steady thrum, and my blood was a current of power to burn my brain. I was going to die.

  The punta, who had never considered what death was, screamed to the uncaring moon. The thought that the sun would never rise for him again had never occurred to him. The realization of death is a terrible thing for an animal to learn. Delving into my mind to try to understand, the punta learned from me the way of his coming death—alone and miserable at the bottom of the pit to be skinned and shown off.

  His despair raged through me, so thick and choking that I couldn’t breathe even if I had been able to stop convulsing enough to make my lungs work. He hadn’t known of death. From me, he saw the end of his existence and understood.

  I couldn’t bear the thought that we both die. Perhaps, I thought, as my mind started to slow and my thoughts became disconnected. Perhaps I could find some grace in my death if I could save him. To pass from the earth knowing I had freed him might put my soul to rest.

  As I shook and suffocated, unable to breathe, I wedged into his pain-racked, disjointed thoughts the image of him using my curled up, shifting body as a springboard. It was only a foot higher off the ground, but it might be enough. I showed him a vision of him springing from me at the men he hated, his big paws digging into the top of the hole, his haunches raking the side of the pit until he pulled himself up. I saw him in my thoughts scattering the men like mice, of him running from the torches and noise. And I saw him swimming, with his wonderfully webbed toes, to the setting sun, never stopping until he found the coast and the solitude of the mountains.

  And the punta believed. It had been fear of what lay outside the pit that had kept him from trying before. Now, with my vision and understanding, he was willing to brave it.

  A groan of pain slipped past my clenched teeth as the weight of him landed upon me and forced the air from my lungs. Then his weight was gone and my lungs rebounded, filling my chest with life-giving air though my muscles were clenched with an immovable strength. My mind cleared in the influx of new air long enough to hear the screaming of men and recognize the sudden absence of the punta’s thoughts in my own. Distance had severed what I hadn’t been able to. Then the blackness overwhelmed even that, and I slipped into a painless nothing.

  My last thought was that I hoped I managed to leave a memory of me within the punta so he wouldn’t be alone when he thought of death again.

  Nine

  It was emotion that returned to me first. Loss and heartache, a fury born of helplessness and lack of choice. The chaotic slurry was confusing. It didn’t fit with what I remembered last. I knew the feelings were mine, and I would have tried to figure the incongruity out but that a new sensation was edging into comprehensibility.

  The sound of wind and water became clear, and the choppy movement of a small boat in rough water. It was then I realized it was a dream, but like no dream I’d had before. I was conscious, my mind weighing the sensations and visions against logic and understanding rather than me simply accepting the more nebulous dream-state.

  With that, it was as if a fog lifted from me, and the chaotic sensations swirled into something recognizable. I was a mere foot above angry waves on a raft made from barrels and torn sailcloth, and what looked like a door? My feelings of anger and stymied desires rose high, and I tasted the emotions as though they were someone else’s. The wind streamed my hair out before me to make it hard to see, but I wasn’t cold.

  My hands were bound with black silk, and Jeck, the captain of the Misdev guards, was sitting cross-legged before me, tired and uncaring while the sun went down in the windy, cloudless evening of purple and gold. His pant legs were rolled to his knees, and his bare feet had fallen through a crack to rest in the water below. He watched me with dark, serious eyes as we bobbed. My angry emotions stemmed from him, which wasn’t surprising since I seemed to be his prisoner.

  Stingrays rose and sank about us, seeming to fly just under the surface. One flipped out of the water entirely, making an ungainly splash. I reached to wipe the salt water away with my shoulder, and the wind died.

  The dream changed.

  The rocking of the raft turned to the swaying of a horse. I was sitting before Jeck, my palms red and swollen. His black-uniformed arm was wrapped about me, imprisoning me, keeping me from running away. The salt water on my face had become tears leaking out in a steady stream. Feelings of heartache, betrayal, and bitterness had replaced my anger. Again I was Jeck’s captive, but this time my anger had sunk to self-recrimination. I hated the pity coursing through me. Jeck was silent, but I could sense the tension of unhappiness and words unsaid in him. The horse under us stumbled. I clutched at his arm to keep from falling off, and the cold forest we rode through vanished.

  Again the motion of a boat challenged my balance, but this time it was the long, slow swells of a ship at sea. For the first time, I felt comfortable with the motion, standing with my feet spread wide and holding on to nothing as I held a hand above my eyes and squinted at the horizon, painfully bright with sunrise. The wind pushed me, and impatience was a goad. It was my fault. I should have known better. Kavenlow would rightly think I was an incompetent fool.

  I smelled burned wood and resin over the stink of men and strong tea. A cup was in my free hand, and my face went cold as I stared at it. It wasn’t my hand. The fingers were too muscular, and the knuckles were too big, with a fine tracing of dark hair. The deck was farther away than it ought to be; I was too tall. Unfamiliar boots, terribly large, were on my feet. I was dressed in expensive black leather and linen: a Misdev uniform.

  “Which tack do you think the bastards took, Captain?” a familiar voice asked, and my pulse raced. It was Captain Borlett, his gravelly voice tight in anger. I didn’t look at him, afraid of what I’d see. I pointed to where the pirate’s island lay, and panic slid through me as I recognized Jeck’s more elaborate uniform upon my arm that wasn’t mine. Am I dead? Am I a ghost sent to guide Jeck to find us so my soul could rest?

  By all that is holy! I felt in my thoughts, the scent of Jeck’s leather jerkin cascading through me. Tess? You’re alive?

  I jerked upon hearing my name in my thoughts said by someone else. I was in Jeck. Heaven help me, I was in Jeck’s mind!

  Jeck spasmed, spilling his drink. He pressed it into Captain Borlett’s hands and staggered to the aft hatch. I felt the smooth wood against Jeck’s hand, and the blackness under the deck blinded my sun-struck eyes.

  A sudden, real pain shocked me from my dream. I clenched, hearing a thin groan of agony. My heart raced, and my muscles cramped with a mind-numbing agony.

  “No, Tess,” Duncan’s voice intruded, real and insistent, full of a sympathetic regret. “You’re alive,” he whispered. “I’m sorry. I know it hurts, but I have to loosen your bandage again—just for a moment—or you might lose your arm.”

  It had been the overwhelming pain that pulled me from my dream. I reached for the nothing of unconsciousness, finding it taken from me. Hearing my breath rasping and ugly, I opened my eyes to find Duncan kneeling beside me.

  I was in a hut, the light dim and the air stale. His hands were pressed against a bandage atop my shoulder where the cat had bitten me. I tried, but I couldn’t speak. The pain from my shoulder took everything from me. His eyes pinched in apology, Duncan loosened his grip. My blood became fire. I managed a gasping moan, my eyes closing in misery, and I shook.

  “I’m sorry, Tess . . .” he whispered, as my body started to jerk. I couldn’t feel my arm or fingers. I instinctively fell into the breathing pattern Kavenlow taught me when I had been building up my resistance to the venom so many years ago. It made no difference. The agony was too much and lasted too long for my
mind to endure. I was going to pass out.

  I fixed my blurring gaze to Duncan, wanting to tell him I was sorry for not trusting him. I wanted my last sight—should I not wake up—to be of him. It was with an overwhelming feeling of relief and a tinge of guilt that the blackness overtook me, and the pain vanished.

  Between one struggling breath and the next, I was back in a dream, my mind seizing the release from pain though I knew it lurked nearby, waiting to claim me. I was on a horse again, back in the same woods, the icy cold bite of melted snow replacing the stink of my sweat and fear of dying. The slow thuds of hoofbeats were soothing, like the pace my heart should be. The track was soft and damp, giving easily under the animal’s pace. It came as no surprise that it was Jy I rode.

  This time my cheeks were dry and my hands unburned. But Jeck was still behind me, giving me the impression of a wall with his heavy muscles hardened by long practice with a sword and the quiet demeanor that hid his intelligence.

  Anything was better than the agony of my reality, so I eased back into his warmth. It is only a dream, I told myself and, allowing myself a small fantasy, breathed deeply, taking in the delicious scent of horse and leather. I was hurt and in pain; I would take my comfort where I could. And there was little that could instill more security than a pair of masculine arms about oneself, even if it was a dream. The memory of his backhanded compliment over dinner intruded, setting my thoughts to a softer bent. Jeck’s front was warm, and I molded myself to him further, feeling his grip about me gentle.

  Shoulders easing, I paid more attention to the thick woods than Jeck’s arm wrapped comfortably about me. It was early, just past sunrise, cold and smelling of rain recently fallen. I was mildly curious to realize I was sitting far up upon Jy’s withers, my feet politely on one side of him—I usually rode like a man. There was no saddle, making everything unreasonably difficult. The scent and creak of well-oiled leather was comforting, even if it stemmed from Jeck and not Duncan.