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“Sarah is below deck.” The way she said it clogged my heart with dread. No. Not dread. But dreadful knowledge. The question was on my tongue but when she said nothing more I knew her omega nature held back out of natural kindness. Sarah would not be walking off this ship on her own. Trance-like, she turned from me and headed below deck.
While the deck looked everything like a fashionable schooner, below it was another story. Stank of wet rope and fish. To top if off, a body lay sprawled and bleeding on the floor. Stimpson. Goddess it was a mess, his eyes staring up at me lifeless and just as stupid in life as he was in death. The way Beatrice shied away from the body. She might have killed him but she wasn’t comfortable with a corpse. I stooped and closed his eyes. None of us needed to see that. “Sarah stole a gun. I shot him.”
When I looked up at her, I saw she was a near quivering mess staring at the door.
I wrenched the bolt free and barged in, coming to an abrupt halt. It was hard to ignore the difference in the occupants. Eliza Brown was tied up and slumped in one corner
My Sarah, though, lay there quietly in the other. Gathering her in his arms, I brought her face close to mine, hoping to feel her breath against my cheek. But she’d breathed her last before I’d arrived.
“Wake up, sweet girl. Pol will have my balls if I don’t bring you back smiling and bursting with tales of bravery. You are the only thing that woman and I can agree on. Don’t take that away from me now. I need you.” I caressed her cheek, the lingering warmth there lied for she was stiff in my arms. “Open those pretty eyes for me—”
Out of the corner of my eyes I saw Beatrice move closer. “I—”
“Don’t. She’ll be fine,” I growled furious that she felt the needed to tell me what I knew. I’d lie to myself for as long as possible. I knew a man could be hit on the head and not wake for hours or days. Not impossible for a miracle to happen. Not impossible. “Go up. Find your alphas. Shout for them if needs be. I’ll bring her up. Must be careful not to wake her while she looks so peaceful.”
“I’ll leave you,” she whispered.
“Go, Lady Paxton.” I let a bark out that directed her out away from this ugly scene. When the sound of her footsteps had faded, I finally looked at the other alpha. Her eyes shot daggers, but they missed their mark. She renewed her struggles as if she could break free. As if thought she’d be able to take me in a fight. I was out of the Hell. I had a wickedly sharp knife in my pocket and was prepared to skin the other alpha… alive if given the chance. For that was how I felt sitting there with the increasingly heavy burden in my arms. My fingers brushed against Sarah’s full mouth that I’d seen spread wide in laughter, teasingly pink from kisses, and now stiff, even while the slight openness made her look like she slept. I was a stranger, I realised, to the death of women. Men, I’d shot them down without remorse. But never a woman, nor seen one wrapped in the unnatural stillness that filled her limbs. At last, anger—justly focused on the alpha—replaced the desperate denial. “You might not have struck the final blow,” I told her. “Frankly, I don’t give a damn. But unlike the mates of that pretty omega, I’m no gentleman. You’ll find yourself at the bottom of the Thames tonight.”
I stood with Sarah in my arms and walked out, past the still body of Stimpson, and up the stairs onto the deck. The constant motion paired with the barely perceptible rock of the boat focused my mind away from the woman in my arms.
On the deck, Beatrice stood with Jack and Paxton. Bitterness built within me. Bitter at the goddess for controlling our fates.
“What to do now?” Jack asked.
“Take the carriage.” I barely managed to make sense of my own words. “I will wait and get one of the boys to call me hackney. If not…” I’d walk to the temple with her in my arms if I had to. I didn’t want my time with her to end. “I can’t share the carriage with you. And I have a different destination.”
A small gasping cry from Beatrice heralded tears. Ones I’d not begrudge for Sarah deserved every moment of grief. My pretty girl was a good woman, I thought. Too good, too playful, and too full of love for this world, was my Sarah. And how wrong that her story should end on the eve Polly had come into the Hell.
One of our people appeared next to me as I stepped of the gangway. “Taking her home?”
“The temple.”
“Goddess bless her.” He made the sign of the martyr on his chest. “I’ll come with so as to stand second witness.”
“No. See this boat is at the bottom of the river. Let whatever goods are aboard go with it.”
He tugged his cap and disappeared into the dark.
I did not count myself lucky when a hackney appeared as if by magic. Too soon I’d be at the Temple and yet I’d not delay bringing Sarah to her final resting place.
“Wake up, sweet girl,” I said into her unhearing ear as we drove through the dark, silent streets to St Martins in Charing Cross because Sarah had liked to pray there. Repeating the words, holding her stiff body in my arms those were the things that kept me focused. “Even if it is for a moment to tell me some message for Polly?”
But no matter the cajoling, the promises, the threats she did not stir. Didn’t complain or murmur when her skirt caught on the door and ripped, which was unlike her for she cared for her appearance and was a terrible seamstress. “Silly chit,” I chided. “Causing me to worry about your dress at a time like this…”
My cheeks felt wet but I’d not cry—and there was no shame in tears—until I was home. Time enough, but in these last, precious moments with her, I didn’t want Sarah to worry. Worse than anything she hated tears. Would sob like a baby if she saw someone she loved hurt, as if the wound or sorrow was her own. Didn’t want her entering the temple feeling anything peaceful. Wanted to return to Polly and tell her our girl was strong and brave right until the end.
The priest on duty moved efficiently through the rites that would let her lie in the temple for the three days of mourning before she was buried.
“My sweet girl,” I whispered into Sarah’s hair for the final time.
I didn’t count the time passed as I walked home. Or the noise of the Hell or the alphas who called to me as I mounted the stairs. It was only when I reached Oberon’s office and caught Polly’s scent that the world came back into focus.
“Is she up?” I asked. He sat at his desk, a single guttering candle at his elbow. The only proof that time had moved was he was stripped to the waist, exposing the strange collection of tattoos on his chest and shoulders. I knew each one was listed and sketched by the authorities as we’d waited to be shipped out as criminals all because some aristocrats didn’t like being fleeced by a black man and a German of dubious origins. Out of sight were the scars covering his back—but there was another reason for that lace-worked pattern.
“No.” He refused to meet my eye. Something must have gone very wrong if he wasn’t giving me his eyes and a smirk. “You’ve been gone nearly four hours. What is your news?”
“The sister is alive and home with her mates.”
