Chapter 25 #2
Moll’s voice broke me out of the thought. “You good? I was looking all over for you, but the ship started spinning out and I had to stop and hold onto something.”
I turned, letting out a breath. “Barely. We almost didn’t make it out of a whirlpool.”
I expected her to be shocked, or even fearful, but her attention was elsewhere, those big, blue eyes fixed on something off to the side. She lifted her finger slowly, pointing toward whatever it was, her jaw hanging open.
I turned, joining her in stunned silence as I stared up at the stars. An orange flame wove through the sky in a serpentine pattern. It took a moment to see that its path wasn't random. Jerky, halting letters had begun to form in the sky.
S
U
R
R
E
N
D
E
R
H
A
R
M
O
N
Y
Surrender Harmony.
Then, a cackle echoed from what seemed like the heavens, so wicked, so unhinged, and loud enough that it filled my ears and my skin broke out in goosebumps.
I could feel the stares of my crew mates and knew I had to say something...explain...but my vocal cords were locked tight. Instead, we all just watched in silence as the embers flickered and died, leaving behind barely visible remnants of the words.
“Terrifying,” Molly hissed.
"I've seen plenty o' magic in my day. I ain't never seen nothing like that, though. Tink’s grown stronger," Tom added in a hoarse whisper.
“No way. Even Tink can’t fly that high. And that was no whirlpool like I've ever witnessed," Xander muttered, swiping a shaky hand over his sweat-slick brow. "If Harmony and Hook hadn't managed to navigate around it, I fear we'd have fallen straight to the bowels of hell."
If only that was the worst thing.
At least hell was a place. If we could get there, there might be a way to get back.
Everything in me knew that if we fell through one of the wormholes, or in this case, the whirlpool, we'd cease to exist on any plane.
But how to explain that to these people I'd come to think of as something like friends?
I couldn’t, because talking about the worms and Almira and where I was really from would only open up a whole other can of the critters, and I hadn’t even explained the whole truth to Hook yet.
I could feel all eyes on me, though, so I couldn’t just stay silent. “It wasn’t Tink and Pan,” I admitted, wrapping my arms around my waist as a chill rolled through me. “It was someone else. A very bad w—” I paused, hesitant to say the word out loud, “Woman who wants me dead.”
“No comma.” We all turned to Trick-Eyed Tom, who shrugged. “Surrender Harmony. No comma. So is she asking for your surrender and bad at punctuation, or is she demanding that we hand you over to her?”
It was a fair question that I didn’t know the answer to, but it broke some of the tension as Molly blurted out a laugh.
“Imagine? Makes her seem much less scary if you think about her back in her lair that wreaks of sulfur and evil and she’s wringing her hands in fury. ‘All that and I forgot the comma? Stupid!’”
That got a wide grin out of Xander, and he stared at the woman like she’d just invented cheese or something equally miraculous. “You’re so funny. How did you get to be so funny?”
Molly blushed as she dropped into a curtsy, but before she could reply, Tom was talking again.
“Doesn’t matter neither way. Harmony and Molly are part of the crew, and we’d never surrender either of them, right Cap?”
Hook’s gaze was still locked on the sky as he started to walk back toward the helm. “Get the bird in the sky to scout for more… whirlpools in our path,” Hook called, voice devoid of emotion as he eyed me, hard.
Just when I thought the frost between us had begun to melt a little…
It was hard to blame him, though. From his perspective, my presence had put his entire crew at risk. “Look, I didn’t know that she could?—”
He cut me off with a wave of the hand, his lips curling downward in a mixture of disappointment and borderline disgust.
“Enough.” He turned back toward Xander. “We’ll have to take it slower than I’d hoped, so no time for a detour.
Garth will stay on board and then we’ll leave him behind when we reach base camp at the entrance to The Fen.
Next person who defies me or questions a single command walks the plank straight into the drink, and that includes the old man and both women. Test me if you dare.”
He was gone an instant later, leaving all of us staring after him in dead silence.
Alright, so maybe I was wrong. Maybe ‘Hook’ was more fitting than ‘James’ after all.
But I couldn’t stop thinking about the man in my dreams. The one with the wicked smile, who was tough as nails…
until he touched me. The one I’d thought was finally going to show himself after our magics had worked together so well, just like Gayelette had told us to.
I shoved the thought away with a grimace.
If James was in there somewhere, he was buried deep and did not want to be found.
I’d be gone from this place within days—assuming we lived, of course.
The best thing to do in the meantime would be to keep my head down, get the job done, and leave well enough alone.
Because trust was a fickle thing, especially when it came to men.
Duncan had earned it back in Little Alabaster when he’d helped us hide in plain sight, and again when he’d risked his life to help us flee.
I needed to stop being a drama queen. Hook might not be Prince Charming like Duncan, but he would never surrender me to Almira.
But as much as I wanted to believe that with all my heart, there was a little voice inside my head that wouldn’t stop whispering…
Are you sure?