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No one listened, but at least this time I’d tried.
Just before I jumped, I met eyes with Keane.
As I looked, he shot through his chain with a pistol, freeing himself from the men he’d been attached to, though his wrists were still cuffed.
I crossed the deck and grabbed the back of his shirt, yanking him to his feet. “I said jump, you idiot!”
He stumbled, but I pulled him forward. Before he could fight back, I tugged him to starboard and jumped, forcing him overboard with me.
As I plummeted into the water, everything above me exploded in a deafening blast and I lost my hold on Keane.
Chapter
Thirty
My head went deepunder the surface, but the water hardly muffled the ear-splitting blast.
When I came up, I gasped for breath, taking in the fiery scene.
Keane rose from the water several feet away with a desperate cry for help. He slipped under the waves again, unable to stay afloat with his handcuffs on.
I swam over and reached an arm around his chest, pulling his head above water as I tried to make sense of the disaster in front of me.
Only the bottom half of the hull remained, and even that didn’t look like it would last long, not with the roaring flames engulfing it, sending thick, black smoke into the sky.
I had no idea what could have split an entire boat into pieces, but whatever it was had clearly come from the white boat that was now nowhere to be seen. I wondered if the boat itself had smashed into us and exploded, but it didn’t seem likely considering that there was no sign of it in the rubble. Just wood and iron and sails—the material I’d been standing on only moments ago.
Burning wreckage drifted in the waves around me. A body floated face down several yards away.
“Vaughn!” Keane shouted, but there was nothing we could do.
His lifeless body was soon washed under the next wave.
My body grew weak and numb. I didn’t feel able to swim all the way to shore in this state, especially supporting Keane. As I surveyed the wreckage, I glimpsed the intact rowboat beside the burning hull. I leaned onto my back, pulling Keane with me.
“Kick!” I told him, using my free arm to direct us.
The two of us kicked with all our strength through the debris and toward the rowboat. With his help, we moved faster, though the smoke filled my airways and I couldn’t breathe.
A burning piece of the hull cracked and broke off with a groan, the flaming wood toppling right into the rowboat, setting it aflame.
Keane swore and I would have too if I’d had the breath to spare.
Another shard of wood dropped into the ocean beside us, the fire sizzling in a burst of steam as it landed, so close that I felt the heat both above and below the water.
I didn’t know where to swim. There was nowhere to go. Only scraps remained on the surface, too small to support us, the rest either burning or sinking. What remained of the boat listed to the side and the last of the deck collapsed into the burning cabin below. A man fell with it into the fire, a shackle still on his ankle.
Keane let out a grief-stricken cry.
I felt entirely at fault and completely helpless.
How could I have been the cause of so much carnage? I didn’t know if I deserved to live after this. Half of me wanted to disappear into the fire and water so I wouldn’t have to face this tragedy I’d found myself in. But there was one thing that kept mefrom entirely blaming myself, one thing that kept me wanting to live so I could stop this from ever happening again.
And that was the certainty that however this disaster had happened, it had been Cael who was truly and intentionally responsible.
I frantically searched for something to hold on to, something to keep us from drowning, but there was nothing substantial to be found. Keane and I kicked away from the boat, swimming in what I thought was the direction of the shore, though we could barely where to go with the smoke surrounding us.
As we swam, a rumble met my ears.
