She sucked in a scream.
Nye didn’t attempt to silence his.
“Quiet!” A male voice hissed the command. Emma didn’t recognize it.
He reached her even as he spoke. His hands skated upward to her neck and she felt him grasp it, felt his fingers curl around the collar, thick enough she thought for a handful of seconds that he was going to choke her to death. Instead, thankfully, he broke the collar loose and dropped it.
Then he encircled both her and Nye with his arms.
“Now!”
Now what, Emma wondered blankly?
She wasn’t certain, later, if she even completed the thought.
She was distracted by a stinging sensation that rapidly accelerated to fire and then stopped before her brain had even finished processing the pain. She felt a sensation of falling and then an abrupt stop, like the falling sensation when she was asleep that inevitably jerked her awake.
It did this time, too, and she opened her eyes to blinding light and Nye’s screams of fright.
When her eyes adjusted, she discovered they were surrounded by a veritable army of Hirachi warriors, all in full ‘war paint’ and bristling with knives and clubs and spears and even guns.
Almost in sync, they dropped to one knee, executed some sort of salute that was a fist slammed against their chests and uttered some sort of chant.
Strangely, Nye’s wails of distress cut off abruptly as the warriors dropped to one knee.
When Emma glanced at him fearfully she discovered, to her stunned amazement, that he was looking around at the warriors almost with an expression of … pride, a half smile curling his lips.
This was not a scene he was unfamiliar with, she thought.
The man who’d ‘traveled’ with her, urged her off of what she discovered was a platform of some sort. “I will take you to your cabin,” he said brusquely.
Emma glanced up in surprise at Kadin. She’d recognized his voice, but there was a coolness in his manner and his voice that confused her.
He hustled her and Nye from the room and down a hallway so briskly she had to rush to keep up and was so breathless by the time he stopped she felt downright faint.
Opening a door, he all but shoved her and Nye inside and closed the door behind them.
Emma stood gaping at the door for several moments after he’d vanished and finally turned to look at the cabin he’d escorted them to.
It was so stunning it completely distracted her from Kadin’s behavior.
It was massive, for one thing, by her standards and by the standards of the cabins she’d seen pretty much everywhere—on ships and trains and the space ship she’d been in before for that matter.
It looked like four cabins had been spliced together and she wondered if they’d knocked out the extra walls.
And why.
Nye was High King, she reminded herself, but …good god! … a baby. He didn’t need this much room. He couldn’t even walk yet!
Noticing finally that Nye was studying her worriedly, Emma smiled at him. “This is really nice, huh? Look at that fancy crib they have for you! And it’s huge! I think I’d like my bed to be closer to yours, though. What do you think?”
To her surprise, he turned his head and looked at her bed. When he met her gaze again, he smiled.
Emma had the weirdest feeling that he’d actually understood.
Dismissing it, she crossed the room and sat him down in his crib and then moved to the wide bed that had been installed for her—she supposed—as his nursemaid? Struggling not to feel depressed at that thought, she got down and examined the underside of the bed. Without surprise, she discovered it was bolted to the floor.
“Well! That sucks! I can’t move it. Maybe they’ll move it for me … later,” she ended as it abruptly occurred to her that she and Nye had been removed from the slave ship and there had been a group of warriors gathered there.
To be transported to the slave ship, she realized with a sense of horror.
They’d been moved to safety and everyone else was fighting on the ship that had taken them.
Including Kadin.
And Gaelen.
And Hauk.
She felt a lump form in her throat. Maybe that was why he’d seemed so cold? He was focused on getting them out and getting back to the fight?
Before she could get too caught up in imagining all sorts of horror, someone tapped on the door. Surprised, she got up and moved to it, studying the panel beside it for a moment and then pressing what looked like it might be an open/close button. The panel slid wide, revealing a yellow skinned Hirachi warrior woman.
The woman looked down at her with a touch of surprise and obvious contempt. “I learn Engish to help serving woman attend High King Nye.”
Emma gaped at her with a mixture of outrage and fright. It wasn’t as if it hadn’t crossed her mind that, if Nye really was royal, she might be kicked to the curb, but she’d convinced herself that she would be allowed to mother him until he was grown. His mother had died. He had the needs of any baby, regardless of his heritage or status.
The comments set her back up right off, put her on the defensive. The contempt was bad enough but to add to that the female had claimedherbaby! Her lips tightened. “I can take care of Nye myself,” she responded tightly. “He can be a handful, granted, but I’ve managed just fine up until now.”
The female produced a bottle and held it up. Before Emma could snatch it, she smirked and walked past her to the crib.
Nye gaped up at her, but it was hard to say what his reaction was.
Until the female tried to pick him up.
He instantly began wailing and reaching for Emma.
Which brought Emma’s motherly instincts to the forefront. She hurried after the woman and held her hands out for the baby.
The female looked reluctant to hand him over, but apparently thought better of
