*
Exhaustion played with Eliza’s senses as she crooned and whispered and smoothed the children’s hair. Ethan and Grace had fallen asleep. Daniella had paced until the smoke had become too thick to stand without coughing like an elderly dog. Eliza had watched the other woman try to free Captain MacBride from his bonds with the handle of her pistol. It hadn’t worked. Nothing worked. In the quiet between explosions, Eliza murmured sweet nothings to her siblings. Silly words designed to calm.
Never in her darkest nightmares could she have imagined what one might say in the final hours of their life.
“James is going to kill me,” Daniella said with a soft laugh. “I never was one to listen to orders.”
Eliza smiled over at her. “It must be a pirate thing.”
“Perhaps it is.” Daniella laughed again but then she sobered, her hands going to her stomach as she looked down. “Perhaps I should have listened this once.”
“There’s still a chance they’ll come for us,” Eliza heard herself say. She hadn’t noticed the other woman’s state until that moment, her belly barely rounded but still showing signs of a pregnancy. Another casualty of all of their stupid decisions.
The crackle of the fire could now be heard in the silence that followed her words but nothing else. No explosions. No calls of men or groans from the ship as she burned.
They had given up.
*
“Do we use the powder?” Marcus asked as all three men crouched before tar and timbers.
Darius shook his head. “It’s too risky. We might injure whoever still lives on the other side.”
Trelissick stood and roared, “Bring the axes.”
Marcus groaned. “It will take too long. We should set the powder and hope for the best.”
Darius held his hand out, clicking his fingers when it took too long. Eventually he was handed a heavy axe, its blade chipped but wicked and sharp. Just like his wife’s saw the day he’d met her in the snow. Just like the lady herself. Sharp as a tack, wicked behind closed doors, and with the heavy weight of responsibility set on her slim shoulders.
Heedless of the confined space and the choking smoke, Darius swung the axe as hard as he could at the wall before him. A sliver of tar caught the lantern light before falling to the floor. Swinging back again, Trelissick’s axe came forth and made a further dent.
It seemed like a full day passed with little to show for their efforts. Until. Until a long piece of board tore free and bent inwards with a snap. Denser smoke poured from the small hole back onto their side of the wall. With renewed purpose, Darius and James swung the axes again and again until the hole was big enough for a man to fit his shoulders through.
With hurried movements, with arms burning from exertion, Darius pushed the shards of timber through, knocking free anything that could cut through his clothes but then he was halted. Cold, clammy fingers gripped his hand. For a moment he thought James was trying to hold him back but then he realised the loose grip came from the other side of the broken wall.
He tugged gently, crouching down to try to peer through the smoke. A cough. A sniffle. A sob.
He dropped to his knees, reached another hand into the space and pulled harder, his heart in his throat, the breath stalled in his lungs.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Darius thought of the moment the world had truly darkened for him.
He’d always thought it would never get worse than the day his father and Harold had beaten him half to death. Certainly nothing could be worse than waking up in a stinking hold, surrounded by rats and filth, in the middle of an ocean on a strange ship, your eyes so swollen you almost couldn’t see and then wishing you had been blinded. Or better yet, killed.
He’d been wrong that time.
Feeling the catch and tear of cat-o’-nines being pulled across the skin of your sixteen-year-old back had been worse. But not the worst.
Even bobbing about in freezing waters hanging precariously onto the world’s smallest wine barrel—empty of all the rotten luck—while sharks circled curiously hadn’t opened the yawning chasm of despair inside the chest of a then hardened pirate. He’d betrayed even himself that day, the day of the failed mutiny. He’d wished for death but hadn’t the courage to let go.
The very darkest minutes of his life had been this day. He found once again that he hadn’t the courage to let go.
To his left, the old harbourmaster stood, all red in the face and sputtering as Trelissick told the man to shut up for a second so he could kiss his wife. To his right, Gabriella, Nathanial, Grace and Ethan were being tended to by Marcus and half a dozen more sailors, washing their hands and faces with clean water and inspecting them for injuries. Captain John MacBride, Deklin’s cousin and friend, sat on the timbers, the shackles still attached to the chains only an axe could shake loose, deep in thought or perhaps turmoil. Benny had run off to find a key or saw or blacksmith. Months of captivity haunted the man’s face and frame and would take many months more to leave behind.
At his back, the warmth of the flames as the Persephone burned, scores of men working to save the dock she leaned against, the ship beyond any hope of salvage.
But it was right in front of him, as it had been all along, the thing that consumed his attention, his senses, his very soul. His arms tightened a fraction more as he refused to let go, as he refused to find the courage he needed to ever let go again.
“I’m so sorry I lied to you,” he whispered for the tenth time.
“You’re crushing me,” Eliza complained softly but her words meant
