Chapter 36
Chapter Thirty-Six
The Stella Mortis was not a thing. It was me. His dying star.
I came back to myself on my knees at the edge of the cliff.
Rain hammered the back of my neck and ran into my eyes.
My hands burrowed into the wet grass and mud, fingers locked so tight my knuckles ached.
For a long moment I could not tell which lifetime I was in.
I watched our fates bind together more times than I could count.
All different circumstances, all the same ending: his choice to sail away, and my inevitable death.
That asshole had promised me forever. Yet, every time he chose himself over and over again, abandoning me to face the ocean alone.
“You bastard,” I yelled. “You bloody bastard!”
“Now, that’s no way to speak to your betrothed,” came a voice from behind me.
I whirled, my stomach sick with dread as recognition hit me.
August Quincy.
He wore that damned smug smile I wanted to slap off his face, hazel eyes shining with maleficent intent, Even though rain poured around us, his coat remained pristine.
At his feet kneeled a prisoner in a torn dress.
Her wrists were bound, mouth gagged, but her eyes were clear and fixed on me with warning.
“August,” I breathed, the sound swallowed by the tempest raging above.
“I must admit,” he said, stepping forward with his hands clasped behind his back.
“You’ve really outdone yourself this time.
I’ve chased you all around the continent before, but I’ve never had to cross the sea.
” He kept walking until he was a few paces from where I sat.
“Still looking for your little trinket, are you?”
“It’s none of your business,” I scowled.
“On the contrary, everything about you has always been my business, Corynne.” His gaze moved over me, lingering on the sea glass belt and my soaked dress. August took another step forward. “You’re mine. I own you. Everything you do, every word you say or any discovery you make, they’re all mine.”
I stood, my feet slipping in the mud with my haste. My hand rose, hate and anger blinding me as I lashed out, but August caught my hand before I could strike.
“So feisty,” he said with an excited gleam shining in his eyes, that smile turning sadistic and spreading across his face. “I’ve always loved that about you. I hoped you would give me a fraction of it after we got married. I was looking forward to tying you down when I fucked you.”
I lashed out with my other hand and this time it landed a blow across his cheek. Three lines of blood bloomed there from where my nails scraped across his skin.
Faster than I could react, August shoved me to the side, sending me flying off my feet. I landed with a bone-shaking thud, my head smashing against a rock hard enough to make colors sparkle along the edge of my vision.
“Ah,” I hissed, my fingers coming away from the spot bloody.
“See what you made me do?” August tsked as he knelt beside me.
He glanced toward his prisoner still kneeling in the mud, the gag cutting into her mouth.
“It’s amazing what paying a witch her weight in gold will get you.
She told me all about the cursed captain of the Mourning Star.
How the map he seeks was never going to lead to a relic, but rather a woman.
She dies over and over again on this very cliff.
A living star that falls so that he can remain at sea, plundering and gaining wealth for eternity.
” He looked me up and down with a scowl.
“Imagine my surprise when you showed up here. I knew there was something more to you the first time you read the sky for me. Clouds parting to reveal the stars, long-lost treasure popping up on every shore… I told myself it was your exceptional scholarship. Looking at you now, pathetic and begging in the mud as he sails away, it all makes sense.”
My head pounded in time with the claps of thunder, vision blurring as blood stung my eyes from my wound. August smiled as I tried and failed to wipe it away.
“What do you want, August?”
“I want what any reasonable man wants.” His fist clenched in my hair and hauled me upright again.
Pain flared across my scalp as he forced my face toward his until we were nose to nose.
The smell of days-old scotch and dried meats turned my stomach as it rolled off his breath.
“Power that does not fade when titles change hands or kingdoms fall. A life that does not end when you fall onto a blade or catch a cough that never goes away. I want to be that captain.”
The words hung between us, heated in the icy rain, and for a moment I could only stare in horror.
“You want the curse,” I whispered.
He leaned in and grinned triumphantly. “I want the immortality.”
He dragged me a step toward the edge. Stones shifted under my bare feet, the drop an imminent threat at my back. Cold dread seeped into my bones, far deeper than the chill rolling off the sea.
“You’re wrong,” I said hurriedly, shaking my head. “Killing me would only restart the cycle, and Silas isn’t here. He left.”
“Oh my dear, Corynne. You don’t think he’d leave you for long, do you? I left my ships where he’d find them, and any minute now I suspect he will bless us with his presence to save his precious star.”
Tears sprang to my eyes as my knees trembled. “It’s a curse, August, not some title to hand off.”
“Amalya believes it can be done,” he added, almost gently.
“She has the knowledge. I have the will. All that remains is the living star herself.” His fist tightened in my hair until my neck arched.
“Silas will come. According to her, he always does in the end. He will find you lying impaled on a rock or your brains sliding like pudding down the cliff face. This time, he will find you already in my hands. He will give me the ship, the curse, everything, because the alternative will be watching you fall the same way you have fallen a hundred times before.”
The chains on Amalya’s wrists clinked as she tried to rise and was forced back down.
She shouted through the fabric, a warning perhaps, but I couldn’t hear it over the thundering of my own heart.
One of August’s men reached out and hit her with the butt of his pistol hard enough to send her to the ground.
The stench of fear was thick in the air, mingling with the metallic tang of spilled blood as August walked me closer to the cliff’s edge.
My eyes scanned the rocky ground, searching for any flicker of hope, any chance to break free.
But all I found was the calculating gaze of the man who had spent years trying to own me.
He had decided my death was worth more to him than my life and he was going to lay claim to that too.
I’d died on this cliff more times than I could count. I was done being used by men who thought my life was theirs to spend.
I drove my knee up as hard as I could into August’s groin. He cursed and staggered, his grip loosening just enough that I could tear free and scramble backward along the cliff’s edge. Mud was slick under my feet, the drop waiting for one wrong step to claim me yet again.
His men started forward, but stopped when he held up a hand.
“Very well,” he said through a cough. “I’ve tried to do this amicably, Corynne, but it seems you’d prefer force. Good. I’m ready to see you scream.”