He knew me too well—read me like a story etched on stone.I didn’t waste words.“I need your help,” I said, my voice low but urgent.“There’s a woman.She’s in peril.I need you to protect her.”
His brows arched in surprise, but a grin curled his lips, mischief sparking in his eyes.“A woman?”he teased.“Have you finally found love?None of us ever thought we’d see the day.”
I rolled my eyes, huffing a laugh that didn’t quite reach my chest.“Very funny,” I muttered, trying to brush off his jibe.
But he didn’t let it go.His grin faded as he studied me, the firelight catching the shift in his gaze—curiosity giving way to something deeper.“You care about her,” he said quietly, no longer teasing.“Don’t you?”
I swallowed hard.The words came slow, thick with a pain I couldn’t hide.“I love her,” I admitted, my voice cracking under the weight.“But Salvatore is hunting her.And I… I can’t protect her.My duty comes first—but my love for her consumes me.”My eyes locked onto his, desperate.“You have to promise me.Her name is Elizabeth Alexander, and she is traveling with her maid from England.Keep her safe.”
Dancing Fire didn’t hesitate.He laid a hand over his heart, solemn and resolute.“Amir,” he said, “I pledge to protect her.At all costs.”
The flames danced in his eyes, mirroring the gravity of his vow.He stood tall, ready to defend her with every breath.
I nodded slowly, words failing me.“Thank you, my friend.”
As I turned away, a hollow ache tore through my chest—the finality of entrusting Elizabeth’s fate to another felt like tearing my soul in two.I could not bear to look back, not at the man who now bore the weight of my heart, not at the fire that seared behind me, tethering me to all I had been forced to let go.
I slipped into the forest’s shadows, each footstep a silent echo of the future I could never claim.The trees closed around me, solemn witnesses to a love sacrificed on the altar of duty.In leaving her under Dancing Fire’s protection, I clung to a single truth—that I had freed her from the chains of misery her father had forged.
But fate, as I well knew, was rarely so kind.And its plans were never mine to command.
ChapterTwenty-Three
ELIZABETH
Fortune had smiled upon us at the docks—though whether it was fortune or fate, I could not say.
When Mary and I approached the towering ship, desperation clung to us like the mist rolling off the Thames.The weight of impossibility pressed against my chest, heavy as the fear we carried.We had no money, no connections—only the urgency to escape.
The captain’s eyes narrowed when he heard my name.
His gaze flicked between us as I explained—haltingly, voice trembling—that I was fleeing Lord Alexander’s wrath.He knew the rumors, the fall of my father’s society, and the destruction left in the wake of a nameless alchemist.Perhaps that was why he took pity.His voice, gruff and worn with the sea, held no emotion when he said, “The sins of fathers should not chain their daughters.”Then he turned away, shouting orders to ready the ship.
* * *
As the vessel rocked beneath me, I still heard his words echo in my mind.I couldn’t tell if they were a mercy or a warning, but they’d been enough to grant us passage—and carry us into the unknown.
The ship groaned and shuddered as if protesting every wave and gust of wind that battered its hull.I curled on the narrow cot, knees pressed to my chest, willing the nausea to pass.It didn’t.The stench of salt, sweat, and unwashed bodies clung to the air like fog, pushing against my lungs with every shallow breath—thick, sour, suffocating.
Each breath was a battle.Each hour, a reckoning.
And still—the sea carried us forward.
Mary had gone above deck to fetch water, leaving me alone in the cramped quarters we shared with two other women—a widow with a barbed tongue and a silent girl whose eyes darted like a frightened bird.The widow snored in the corner, her bulk blotting out most of the weak light that filtered through the porthole, casting the cabin in a dull, sickly gray.
The ship rolled hard.A wave slammed against the hull with a thunderous roar.My stomach twisted violently—not just from the pitch and yaw of the sea but from the persistent nausea of pregnancy.I gripped the cot’s edge, knuckles white, bracing myself against the lurch.This voyage was a torment.How long had it been now?Four weeks?Six?Time had blurred into an endless rhythm of cold, sleepless nights and days spent clinging to the fragile hope that we might one day see land again.
The door creaked open.
Mary stepped inside, her face pale and drawn, carrying a tin cup of water.She handed it to me, her fingers brushing mine.“It’s rough today,” she said softly, lowering herself beside me.
“Rough would be a kindness,” I muttered, taking a tentative sip.The water was tepid and metallic, but it soothed the desert in my throat.
Mary offered a faint smile, her eyes drifting to the porthole.“A sailor told me we’ve made good progress.If the winds hold, we could reach the colonies in another fortnight.”
Another fortnight.
I didn’t know if I could endure it.
