Chapter 26 Thessia #2
scream, certain the gruesome toe injury had in fact not waylaid the fearsome man with the curved knife who’d come to finish them off. Yet she could not scream, not when hands clamped
down over her mouth.
She struggled, fighting to glimpse her captors—
Relief’s wonderful wave hit her instantly. Not only did she recognize everyone surrounding her. No, what was more, they were
perhaps the people whom she most wanted to see.
Beatrice and Clare, Elowen and Vandra of the newly minted Five faced her, looking utterly delighted. When Hugh and Ario followed
her on board, Vandra removed the plank joining the doorway to the dock and closed the ship, sealing them within the gently
rocking vessel.
Celine had promised them safe contacts who would shelter them while she went in search of a lead on their poison. Thessia
hadn’t known Celine meant her fondest friends in the realms.
With everything she’d faced in recent days, Thessia could not help herself. Tears leapt into her eyes, and she rushed into
Beatrice’s arms. Beatrice laughed with wet joy. Even Elowen joined their group hug.
“Sorry for grabbing you,” Clare said sheepishly when Thessia withdrew. “We’ve been trying to wave for a while, but this fine
young man’s retching was distracting you. Clare Grandhart,” he said to Ario, extending his hand to the prince.
“Ario Vestras,” the prince returned, clasping Clare’s hand readily. “And this—”
He whisked off his cloak. Gasps went up from the heroes of Mythria.
“Oh my,” Elowen uttered.
“—is Benjamin,” Ario finished grandly, displaying the chartreuse snail, whose eye stalks extended in vigorous introduction.
Clare lowered himself very earnestly to the snail’s eye level. He missed his eagle, Thessia suspected. Like the crown prince
of Vestriya, the elder Grandhart was very fond of his pet. “Hello, Benjamin,” Clare greeted the creature. “You have a very
magnificent shell.”
Ario puffed his chest with pride. “Yes. Yes, he does,” he concurred.
Clare moved past Ario, pulling Hugh into a hug of deep affection. “How . . . are you here?” Hugh wondered out loud.
“Your colleague Celine hired me for a rescue mission,” Vandra answered. “Of course this lot wasn’t going to let me sail to
Vestriya alone. They all came along. Couldn’t stop them, really.”
Thessia found herself smiling—until something occurred to her. “Wait,” she uttered. “If you’re here . . . who is running Mythria?”
Beatrice and Clare, whom she’d left as her erstwhile rulers, exchanged guilty glances.
“Do you know our friend Cris?” Clare finally asked.
The bashfulness in his voice did not inspire confidence. Thessia’s royal eyes rounded.
“Who,” she demanded, “in the Ghost’s Gate is Cris?”
“He’s a Clare impersonator,” Beatrice replied, mustering more nonchalant confidence than her partner.
The light of recognition flitted into Hugh’s eyes. “Indeed!” He nudged Thessia, who was opening her mouth to speak but could
not decide which of her questions would proceed first. “You know Cris! He formalized our not-wedding!”
Thessia rounded on him. While she did now remember the man, she did not understand Hugh’s warm reception to the news that
this eager impersonator was now de facto ruling the realm.
The objections died on her lips. Hugh was, of course, soaking wet. He’d shed his cloak, leaving him in only his very see-through ruffled white shirt. His black trousers were plastered to his thighs, leaving nothing to the imagination.
“About that,” Clare interjected, audibly eager to change the subject from his and Beatrice’s questionable governmental decisions.
“We read it in the scribesheets. Your marriage isn’t real? But you seemed so . . . in love.”
Thessia pulled her gaze from her not-husband’s drenched physique.
“Hugh is a very skillful performer,” she managed.
“I wouldn’t say it required much skill on my part.”
His words drew Thessia’s eyes back to his. She found his stare hot on her.
Which was when she remembered she was as wet as he. Her own garb hung semi-opaque with seawater. Exactly how much of her curves
did the water reveal? Suddenly self-conscious, she slicked her hair back with nervous hands.
Hugh emitted a strange sound within his throat.
Clare watched everything. “Riiiight,” he responded, grinning.
“Excuse me,” Elowen interjected, “but have you heard from Galwell?”
Thessia grasped onto the distraction. “He’s safe with Mona,” she rushed to reply.
Clare grunted. “That’s the first time anyone’s ever said that sentence.”
“Thessia, how can we help?” Beatrice spoke gently. “Celine said you’d undertaken a rescue quest.”
Her friend’s query was what Thessia needed. She straightened, remembering herself. She was queen, yes. But here, in Vestriya,
she’d started becoming something more—the more she’d promised herself when she set out. She was the leader of her own questing party, despite her difficulty finding the
proper nomenclature for said group.
“Yes, Prince Ario here is in danger of assassination from his parents,” she informed her friends. “They fear he will reveal
incriminating information about them. We must get him out of the realm.”
“No.”
Thessia startled when the prince spoke up. She turned to Ario, finding him squaring his shoulders. Looking a little like his
slain brother. Or trying.
“You’re right that I should be a cook,” he declared, then corrected himself. “I mean king! Celine said she would find proof of my parents’ crimes. When she has it, I need to expose them to my people, and then I . . .”
He hesitated.
“I need to be a better ruler than they were,” he said.
Elowen narrowed her eyes.
“This sounds suspiciously like a quest,” she observed.
“Indeed,” Beatrice concurred. “We did make it clear we’re retired, right?”
Thessia met the prince’s eyes. She smiled. “It’s our quest,” she reassured Beatrice. “We’ll help you get word out to your people,” she told Ario. “You four”—she spoke to the heroes
of Mythria—“we just need you to keep Ario safe until we figure out how.”
Clare nodded, intrigued. “A mini-quest, then!” He elbowed Beatrice encouragingly. “Surely we can handle that.”
When Beatrice smiled, relenting, Thessia remembered the other versions of them she’d seen in her throne room. The Clare fighting
for composure, encouraging his shattered friends to mend the pieces of themselves in the interest of helping her and saving
Hugh. How far they’d come. How far every one of them had come.
Vandra smirked. “If only camping were involved,” she said, seemingly to Elowen.
“Thank you. The friendship of Mythria and Vestriya depends on you keeping him safe,” Thessia told her friends sincerely. “It
perhaps also depends on you having some dry clothes we could change into. I fear Hugh and I will stand out on our journey
back to the palace like this.”
“Of course.” Clare pulled fresh garments from their luggage.
“How pleasant for you,” he remarked with Grandhart sarcasm, “that you no longer have to pretend that the sight of each other in soaking clothes is enticing! What relief you must feel!” When he looked to Beatrice, she giggled into her hand.
“What a slimy feeling that would be,” Elowen concurred, causing Beatrice’s laughter to grow louder. Clare and Vandra joined in—the four
of them obviously enjoying some secret joke.
Glowering, Hugh grabbed the dry clothing from Clare and stormed into the boat’s narrow hallway.
“You’re lucky I’m not the type of queen to declare jokes at my expense a crime,” Thessia remarked. “I could have your eyebrows for that.”
She issued this threat specifically to Clare, who reached in horror for his perfectly sculpted flaxen eyebrows. Thessia laughed,
victorious, while she snatched the clothes he’d produced.
Following Hugh’s exit, she continued into the hallway of the small vessel—where she stilled as the door shut behind her.
Hugh was there. He leaned against the wall, waiting.
For her.
His racked, desperate expression permitted no doubt of his intentions. He watched her like a starved man, and she was a feast.
Thessia knew then exactly how much of herself was visible in her wet clothing. Enough to drown him on dry land. Enough to
consume him whole.
He pushed himself away from the wall. Deliberately, without hesitation, he closed the distance between them. Her face was
in his hands before she could even suck in a breath.
Their mouths met in silent explosion, their hands fisting drenched fabric. Now Thessia felt herself go under, plunged beneath
waves of pure longing.
What were they doing? Who were they to each other? Ex this. Fake that.
What did it matter, when he made her feel like this?
Hugh kissed her deeply, frenzied with feeling yet utterly determined, lips caressing hers in urgent chaos.
His scent was . . . everywhere, unmistakable past the salted musk of seawater.
They were closer than Thessia thought possible while still wearing their wet clothing, wrapped in each other like ocean currents swirling in uncharted depths.
Only when they heard voices nearing the door to the hallway did they suddenly split. Thessia darted into the nearest doorway
with her change of clothing, her mouth stinging.
Surely quest leaders stole clandestine kisses in hallways from time to time. Didn’t they?