JAMES
We’d lured Malik out of his fort and now I’m storming the halls looking for Caspian.
Harrison, Van, Flynt and four other crew members are with me.
I’d already found Firth—he’d begged and simpered for his pitiful life.
I wish I could have taken more time with him but I relished every moment of the knife across his throat.
I hear hoarse screaming coming from a bedroom and shove open the door. The sight that greets me tears a hole in my chest. Caspian is curled in a ball, shaking and in the throes of a nightmare. I rush over to him—he lashes out but I wrap a hand around the back of his neck.
“Caspian,” I murmur. “Hey, hey—I got you—” He grips my shirt in a death grip, his eyes open but entirely unseeing.
“Charlotte—Charlotte—oh God—no, please—” He keeps saying her name until he dissolves into sobs.
“We need to get him back to the ship,” Van says.
He helps me get Caspian into a shirt.
“Too far,” I say. “I have a place.”
I look up at Harrison who looks a little pale but nods without a word. We’ll take him to my contacts here in Ironhold—what we should have done from the beginning. Van shoves pants onto Caspian while I hold him to me. His sobs have subsided but he’s still shaking, and not lucid.
“Caspian,” Van holds his face between his hands. “Caspian—you have to walk out of here—can you stand?”
Caspian is burning up—he must have a fever from the lashes on his back.
Van coaxes him out of the fog for a moment and he nods.
Van takes one arm and I’m on the other, holding Caspian up between us and Harrison and Flynt lead the way out the door.
The walk to the house is chaotic and tense.
Caspian is in and out of consciousness and by the time we’re on the right street, I’m terrified he’s on the edge of death.
He’s sweating through his shirt and is deathly pale.
We stop on the stoop of a large Victorian mansion deep in the inner city and Harrison pounds on the door. It opens to reveal a housekeeper who takes one look at the group of us and slams the door shut, but not before Harrison shoves a foot in the jam, stopping her from locking it.
“Go fetch John,” Harrison demands of her.
Perhaps a bit too harshly because the housekeeper screams and flees deeper into the house—probably thinking we’re a bunch of pirates coming to storm the place. I don’t really blame her.
“Damnit,” Harrison curses.
He rings the bell again and bangs on the door frame a few times, only stopping when we hear shouting and footsteps. The door is ripped open and relief courses through me, even though there is now a pistol aimed at my face.
“John—” I greet him breathlessly. “I need to call in a favor.”
Caspian stirs and jolts awake. His blue eyes turn to me, this time clear and sharp. The last three days have been touch and go with him. His fever raged to a point where he would lucid dream—still trapped in whatever nightmare he was reliving. It would take me and Van to calm him down.
Needless to say, I’m exhausted.
Caspian sits up with a wince. I jolt, my hands flexing on my thighs as I stop myself from putting my hands on him. He sits on the edge of the bed with a groan and rakes a hand through his hair.
“You look like you’ve been sitting there awhile,” he says.
Hearing his usual humor bleed into his voice makes all the tension fall away. I try a tentative grin that I’m afraid isn’t more than a twitch of my lips. He’s still pale but I don’t think it’s anything a little food and drink won’t cure.
I nod once. “Three days actually.”
He balks, his eyes widening. “ Fuck , really? Wait—” He looks around. “We’re not on the ship.” He goes white. “Are we still in Ironhold?”
Before I can answer, Van appears in the doorway. Seeing Caspian awake, a look of relief sweeps over his face.
“Good to see you back with us,” he says.
I begrudgingly have to admit, Van has been a saint the last few days.
The way he went about caring for Caspian with ruthless dedication made me think that he’d done this all before.
When I asked him about it, he’d simply looked over at Caspian with sorrow in his eyes and his shoulders dropped.
He nodded briefly and shut down, once again leaving me without answers.
Caspian barely glances at Van before he’s on his feet, buckling his sword around his waist, but he has to grip the back of a chair as a wave of dizziness hits him. Van and I are looking on incredulously as he gets over the spell and shoves a pistol in his belt.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“We’re still in Ironhold?” He looks at me with fire in his eyes. “I’m going to fucking kill him.”
That’s the last straw for Van apparently, because he grabs the back of a nearby chair and viciously shoves it across the room. Caspian freezes at the crash and his eyes float to his quartermaster who is bright red, seething with rage.
“No, you’re not! We just fucking pulled you out of there!” He exclaims. “You’re going to get back in that fucking bed—or so help me, I’ll chain you there.”
Van’s chest is heaving as he points to the bed. Caspian’s lips twitch like he’s trying not to smile, which isn’t helping things.
“He caught me off guard, Van. He won’t get that advantage again.”
“I don’t care!” Van shouts. “I really don’t give a fuck what you think will be different—I told you this would happen, Caspian! I fucking told you!”
“Caspian—”
I say his name and he turns his attention to me.
“I need to end this,” he growls. His hand trembles where it’s gripping the second pistol on the table. He grinds his jaw as he composes himself. “That man has haunted me for years and I’m done. What he’s done to me—to my family—” His voice fails him. “I need to end this.”
I stare at him for a long moment.
“Okay.”
“Okay?” He echoes at the same time as Van says, “Fuck me.”
I nod. “But, you promised me the whole story.”
Caspian looks like he’s going to protest, in fact he opens his mouth but thinks better about what he’s about to say and instead, turns to Van.
Van holds up his hands. “No—no, whatever you’re going to ask me to do, I don’t want any part of it. Unless it involves another few days in bed— the n , and only then, maybe I can be persuaded.”
Caspian chews on his bottom lip. “ Fine —fine, give us a minute?”
Van glares at Caspian like he doesn’t believe him but eventually he storms out, nearly slamming the door behind him. Once he’s gone, Caspian sits on the edge of the desk and meets my eyes.
“He cares a lot for you,” I say.
Caspian runs a hand over his face. “I know. He was around—the first time.”
“I gathered as much.”
The silence stretches as we stare at each other. I wait him out, attempting to have some semblance of patience.
“Why didn’t you leave?” he asks bluntly.
“What?”
Caspian folds his arms loosely across his chest and shrugs. “You could have left me with Malik.”
“Why would I have done that?” I ask in irritation.
He smiles a smile that’s borderline condescending. “Did you forget? You have the coordinates now, Captain. You could have had someone else do your dirty work and been rid of me.”
I scowl, irrationally angry at his words. I stand up and a single step brings me into his personal space.
“If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead and as I’ve told you before, I’ll get blood on my own hands doing it,” I growl. “Although, I think I’ve gotten enough of your blood on my hands these last three days to earn the truth from you. Stop avoiding the topic.”
Caspian has the grace to look sheepish, a ridiculous expression on him, but also slightly endearing.
He’s gripping the edge of the desk and I watch his eyes drop to my lips.
I’m conscious of how close we are and quickly step to the side, grabbing the bottle of rum and clearing my throat.
I pour him a glass and shove it at him. My fingers brush his as he takes it and our eyes lock. I refuse to get distracted.
“Start talking, Caspian.”
“Fuck—” he mutters.
His eyes are filled with a volatile combination of pain and bitterness.
“I was on a return voyage with my mother and younger sister. We’d been visiting my mother’s family in Talmage.
Our ship was taken by Malik. At the time we had a feud going on with Ralta.
We were held for ransom and while my father was quick to come to a resolution, it wasn’t fast enough to save my sister.
Malik—” He looks down, his voice breaking.
“Malik and his men did terrible things to her. I had to watch while they did it—”
His hand is shaking as he pauses to bring the glass up to his lips. My own knuckles are white around mine.
“I watched them murder her,” he continues, his voice hoarse with emotion.
“My mother was returned home—but she didn’t survive the journey—a fact I didn’t find out until much later.
” He looks up from his glass and meets my gaze.
There’s a hesitation there, as though what he’s going to tell me will somehow impact my opinion of him.
Shame, fear, anger—I watch it all cross his face.
“Malik kept me as collateral against retaliation. I spent a year there— here , in that fort—” He looks back down at the rum.
“It was hell. Abuse, obsession…he broke me—over and over again.” His voice falters and he pauses.
“My memory of that time only really comes with clarity in my nightmares and I don’t remember escaping.
The next really clear memory I have, I’m on a ship, about to dock in De’Vero.
” There’s a deep pain in his eyes when he meets mine again.
“I returned home to find my mother dead a year—my family was never the same after that. My father lost himself in his grief that eventually manifested into illness, and my brother embraced his anger and channeled it into cruelty because he blamed me for all of it.” He downs the rest of his rum and turns, setting the glass on the wood.