Chapter 21 #2
Grisselle kept low behind the stacked timber and empty barrels, her breath hitching in her throat as Alpin and four of his men hauled the largest boat into the foaming surf.
While the men wrestled with the heavy oars at the bow, Grisselle darted across the wet kelp, scrambling over the stern and crawling beneath the broad canvas sail folded in the dark recess beneath the rear seats.
She pulled the damp canvas over her head, curling into a tight, shivering ball as the heavy oak hull lurched into the surf. The wood groaned under the pounding of the tide, the icy spray soaking through the canvas within minutes.
For nearly an hour, the boat fought the rising swell, the steady, brutal thud of Alpin’s oars driving them farther and farther from the shore.
The cold bit into her bones, but she did not move.
She would not wake to his death. She would not sit in that cold stone keep, waiting for an empty boat to drift back to the sand.
When the rhythmic dip of the oars slowed, Grisselle pushed the heavy, wet canvas off her shoulders and stood up.
The four oarsmen froze, their broad hands locking onto the timber, their eyes widening in shock.
They were miles out now—the high gray cliffs of Herston Castle reduced to a faint, dark line against the horizon.
The water beneath them was no longer gray, but a deep, suffocating black, the swells rising like rolling hills around the wooden hull.
Alpin turned slowly from his seat at the mid-bench. The spear lay across his knees. His face was gray, carved from the same cold stone as the cliffs, his black eyes hollow and fixed on the dark water ahead.
When his gaze landed on her, something flickered behind his eyes—a brief, wild flash of horror—before the cold mask snapped back into place.
"Turn the boat," Alpin rasped, his voice raw, stripped of all life. "Take her back to the slipway."
"Nay," Grisselle said.
Her voice was steady, carried across the churning water by the biting wind. She stepped over the cross-beams, ignoring the spray that drenched the hem of her gown, until she stood directly in front of him.
Alpin did not look up at her. He gripped the wooden handle of his spear until his knuckles turned yellow. "Ye have no business on this water, lass. Get back to the stern."
"Look at me, Alpin," she demanded, her hands coming down to cover his white knuckles on the ash wood shaft. Her fingers were freezing, but his skin was like ice. "Look at me!"
He shifted his head, his black eyes meeting hers. They were dead, filled with the dark, heavy weight of the water below.
"Break the circle," she pleaded softly, her thumb pressing into his cold flesh.
She did not raise her voice; she let the raw, bleeding truth of her words fill the narrow space between them.
"Your grandfather gave you his breath so you could live. Not so you could row out into the dark twenty years later and throw it back in the sea’s face. "
Alpin’s jaw flexed, the thick scar along his neck pulling tight. "The debt has to be paid, Grisselle. I carry his mark. I carry his blood."
"You carry a family!" she cried out, her fingers tightening on his hand, her chin trembling despite her fierce glare.
"You have a keep full of people who look to you!
You have a sister who adores you, a bairn sleeping in the nursery who needs a father, and...
" Her breath caught, her throat tightening until she could barely speak.
"And you have me. I am standing right here in the wind, Alpin.
Choose us. Choose the life we built last night over a dead man's ghost! "
Alpin looked at her face, at the bright red curls plastered to her forehead by the salt spray, at the fierce green eyes burning into his. For a fraction of a second, the iron in his posture gave way, a quiet, agonized heave rattling through his broad chest.
Then he pulled his hand out from beneath hers and gripped the oar once more.
"I cannae," he whispered, turning his face back toward the black, endless water. "He is still under the foam, Grisselle. I have to answer it."
"Alpin."
Before she could reach for him again, the water beneath the longboat gave a terrifying, sickening lurch.
A massive, ink-black wall of water rose out of the deep, blotting out the gray morning sky. The wind shrieked, whipping the foam into a blinding white fury as the swell lifted the wooden boat sideways onto its crest.
"Hold fast!" Dougal shouted from the bow, his voice swallowed instantly by the roaring Atlantic.
The boat tilted at an impossible angle. The heavy iron spear slid across the wet floorboards, clattering into the dark water below.
Alpin lunged forward, his broad arm reaching out to grab Grisselle’s waist, his dark eyes wide with a sudden, violent terror that had nothing to do with his grandfather's debt.
"Grisselle!" he roared.
A massive crest of freezing water slammed into the side of the hull like a battering ram. The wood splintered with a sound like thunder, and the longboat flipped violently into the surging abyss.
Grisselle was torn from the air. The icy ocean hit her like a wall of iron, driving the breath straight from her lungs in a single, painful gasp.
Darkness swallowed her whole. The freezing water pressed against her ears, her heavy, waterlogged wool gown dragging her down into the black depths, away from the light, away from the air.
She kicked wildly, her hands clawing at the churning foam, but the current dragged her under, spinning her in the freezing dark.
Above her, through the murky, green-black water, the shadow of the overturned boat drifted away in the surge.
Alpin broke the surface ten yards away, coughing up brine, his dark hair plastered to his face. He spat a mouthful of salt water and turned wildly in the roaring sea, his arms beating against the surging crests.
"Grisselle!" he screamed, his voice cracking against the roar of the wind.
There was no answer. Only the white, churning foam of the broken waves and the dark, empty timber floating in the distance.
The cold debt that had consumed him for twenty years—the guilt that had eaten his soul, the whisper of his grandfather’s memory, the desire to surrender to the sea—vanished in a single, terrifying heartbeat.
The dark water was no longer a place of sacrifice; it was a thief trying to steal the only thing that gave his life meaning.
He saw a flash of dark green cloth swirling beneath the surface six feet away.
Without a second thought, Alpin drew a ragged breath into his lungs and dived beneath the waves.
The freezing darkness closed over him, biting into his eyes and throat, but he kicked with all the fierce, desperate strength in his body, diving deeper into the black.
His hands cut through the icy water, his heart hammering against his ribs like a war drum, until his fingers brushed against wet wool.
He reached out, his thick hand locking onto her forearm, and pulled her toward his chest.
Grisselle was limp, her head falling back against his shoulder, her dark green eyes closed.
Alpin wrapped his broad arm securely around her waist, locking her flush against his heat, and kicked frantically for the surface, his boots tearing through the dark water as if fighting the sea itself for her life.
They burst through the surface into the stinging wind.
Alpin hauled her up against his chest, his left hand cupping the back of her head to keep her mouth clear of the crashing waves. He kicked violently against the current, dragging her toward the overturned hull of the longboat where Dougal and the men were clinging to the timber.
Please. Please Christ.
"I have ye, lass!" he shouted into the wind, his breath coming in ragged, terrified gasps as he pressed his cheek against her cold, wet temple. "I have ye! I'm nae letting ye go!"
With a final, desperate heave, Alpin reached the wooden keel, hooking his elbow over the slick timber and hauling Grisselle’s upper body up out of the freezing water, holding her tightly against his chest as the ocean roared around them.