happens. But when I was out on that water . . . feeling what I was feeling . . .” He glanced out to sea, shuddered, and quickly shifted his unseeing gaze to the cliffs. “I despaired of my life.”
Nelle nodded slowly. Better not let him dwell on those thoughts. Turning to study the cliffs, she searched for a spot they could carry the boat where it wouldn’t be obvious. Silveri wouldn’t go walking on this beach in the next few days; he’d be too busy tending the ward stones when he dared venture out at all. Still, she didn’t want to risk his spying the boat by chance.
Her gaze settled on a low sea cave from which water streamed as the tide rolled out. “Maybe we could hide it there,” she said, pointing.
Sam, his reverie broken, looked where she indicated and nodded slowly. “Maybe.”
“I don’t see a better place.” Nelle grasped her side of the boat and met Sam’s eye. “Let’s get it over there.”
He heaved up his end, and the two of them staggered several yards across the uneven ground before they were obliged to stop and breathe again. Nelle’s hands smarted with cold, and painful blisters were already developing. But they were nearly halfway to the cave. They could do this.
“Come on,” she said, bracing her legs. “Sam?”
His head was up. Long strands of dark hair blew across his face, whipped by the ocean breeze as he stared out to sea. Fearing he had sunk into enervating memories of his recent ordeal, she snapped, “Sam!” trying to shock him back to the present.
He blinked but didn’t look at her. “Danger,” he breathed. Then more loudly, “Look!”
She turned in the direction he stared. Her eyes rounded.
Three longboats approached across the channel between Roseward and the darkened shore. Their billowing sails were black save for a huge skull-like insignia. Nelle didn’t need fae blessing to sense imminent peril.
“Come on!” she said and heaved the boat. Every instinct told her to drop it and run, but that would do no good. They had to hide it if they were to have any chance of hiding Sam’s presence on Roseward. The dark sails were still far enough away that they might not have been spotted by lookouts, and the cave was close.
Galvanized into action by the sharpness of her voice, Sam picked up his side of the boat, and they half staggered, half ran with the weight suspended between them. Several times Nelle’s grip slipped, and she winced as the keel crunched against the stony ground. It would take a miracle for the boat to be seaworthy after this treatment.
The cave, when they reached it, was smaller than she’d thought, too low for Sam to enter without stooping almost double. Now that she stood looking into the dark hole, she couldn’t help wondering what else might have taken shelter inside. Some creature of Noxaur washed up on the shore in the night . . .
No! She wouldn’t give way to imagination. “Hurry!” she growled and ducked inside. Sam followed, and together they hauled the boat into the cave. It was most of the way in before they ran out of space, so it should be mostly out of sight.
“We’ll pile up rocks around the entrance,” Nelle said as she crawled into the boat and over the rowing bench to get back to the cave opening. “Hurry, Sam . . .”
Her voice died away as she peered out.
“Bullspit,” she hissed.
The boats were already drawing in toward the shore. There must have been magic in that wind blowing them across the channel. They would land at any moment. She and Sam could not make it to the cliff path without being seen.
“Bullspit!” she said again, louder this time.
“What is it? What do you see?” Sam’s voice was thin at her back, wrung through with terror. That, more than anything, turned her blood to ice.
“We’ll have to stay here,” she said. “There’s nowhere else to hide. We’ll have to wait for them to go again and hope they didn’t see us.”
“Who is it? Who’s out there?”
Since she had no idea how to answer, Nelle said nothing. She crouched low at the stern of the boat just beneath the shelter of the cave entrance, her hair pulled into a knot over one shoulder so the wind wouldn’t make it fly like a signal flag, and she watched.
The prow of the first boat crunched on the gravel, and dark figures leaped into the shallows. With ropes