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“And your family can’t go with you?”
“The crown won’t allow it,” he explained, his loneliness seeping through. “Says it’s too costly.”
Sympathy filled my veins. Families shouldn’t have to be separated just because a parent had to work, merely so they could put food on the table and a roof over their heads. Something should be done for them. At home, Brentley had always taken the hard work of his people into consideration. He found a way to ease struggling where it was due. That should be the case here, too.
“You can’t save everyone, princess,” Farrow said in my ear.
I looked up at him curiously.
He lifted his eyebrows. “I know exactly what you’re thinking. You want to help him, don’t you? I swear, you want to help everyone you meet.”
With a scowl, I said, “Well, what’s so wrong with that?”
Adoration lit his eyes. “Absolutely nothing.” With an appreciative smile, he tucked a piece of hair behind my ear. “I find it admirable. Maybe not possible, but quite admirable, regardless.”
A gust went by, catching the hood of my cloak and ripping it from my head. Farrow’s stare wandered around my face as if he couldn’t stop studying me until his lips loosened with pleasure, appreciating what he saw.
He didn’t say the words, but I felt them anyway. He cherished me. Maybe even loved me.
Wanting the emotion flowing wild in the air around us as thick and full as the river breeze, I said, “I love you,” so he wouldn’t have to.
His eyes swirled with need, and he lifted his hand toward me just as a shout went up, hollering, “Look out!”
We both turned, checking the water for a threat—maybe a tree was lodge
d in the river and we were about to crash into it.
But it was too late to brace for danger. Something came heaving up from the rushing waves as if the god of the undersea had rejected it and was throwing it back onto dry land. Tail flailing and long, pointed snout aiming, it writhed in a rainbow arch before starting down toward me.
I managed a single gasp, realizing that when my hood had come down, my necklace and hairpin were left exposed on full display, glimmering in the sunlight.
The pain that followed seared through the base of my throat, stabbing with hot, liquid, unending agony.
I tried to scream. Couldn’t.
Oxygen lost contact with my lungs. I reached out, grabbing desperately but only latched my fingers around pure air as the slippery, wriggling weight of the river monster plowing into me tore me from Farrow’s grasp and caused me to lose my balance until I was crashing into the railing with such force that I tipped right over the side of it. Feet going airborne, I fell off the ferry and plunged straight into the depths of the river below.
I heard my name bellowed from a distance as freezing water stabbed into me, grabbed me tight, and pulled me under.
And then, there was no more.
23
Farrow
“Nicolette!” I screamed in horror as she landed in the Cull on her back and sank into the dark, flowing waters.
Her eyes were open wide, full of terror and pain, blood gushing from her throat.
“NOO! Stop the ferry,” I ordered, already searching the deck around me for rope or anything to toss out to her. “Stop! She’s gone overboard.”
Oh, Jesus. I’d never seen a fish do that before.
And I’d been the idiot who’d told her to keep her damned jewelry on.
“Stop the fucking ferry!” I roared, just as the two guards who were supposed to have accompanied me on my kidnapping skidded up next to me and gaped out at the princess, who was washing downstream in the water alongside us.
“You killed her!” one blurted in surprise, just as the ferry master yelled, “The ferry stops for no one.”
