away the blur of a nightmare. Then I forced my gaze back up.
Broad shoulders. Wide mouth. Sun-bronzed skin. Gold earring. Red hair.
No. It wasn’t possible. Captain Edric Sharp was invincible.
“Father?” My arms reached for him, and I willed him to lift his chin, to open his eyes, to give me a smile. “Father, please!”
Sunlight cast his body in stripes of gold and shadow. The rope creaked, but the wind seemed not to stir.
Nothing stirred. Not his arms in the restraints. Not the lashes fanning his cheekbones. Not a twitch on his lips.
He floated above me, suspended, unreachable, unmoving.
Dead.
Gone.
He was gone.
My mouth hung open, but no sound came out. No scream. No breath.
He would never hug me again.
He died alone.
I gripped the back of my head and curled around the anguish in my chest, rocking, shaking, unable to stem the onslaught of pain. It gathered in my throat, throbbed along my teeth, and broke the air in a wailing, guttural howl.
I didn’t know how long I lay bent over the platform, sobbing in a pool of loss and heartbreak. I didn’t lift my head until voices sounded in the distance.
Cupping cold fingers over my mouth, I captured the cries that tumbled out.
My legs turned to water, and I collapsed beside the gallows, unable to mute the sounds behind my hand.
In the back of my mind, I knew I couldn’t stay here. Not without being questioned about my inappropriate attire, the stains on my undergarments, and the disappearance of the Marquess of Grisdale.
I thought of my mother. She’d ridden off in this direction and would’ve found him, same as me.
She needed me as I needed her.
I needed her strength, her wisdom, her arms folded tightly around me. I just…
I desperately needed my mother.
Moving through a fuzzy, grief-leaden trance, I peered over the platform and spotted a group of redcoats gathered on the road that led through town.
My only escape was back the way I’d come.
As I rose to my feet, something caught the men’s attention. They turned away to greet the approach of a loose horse.
The horse I’d stolen from the marquess.
My chest tightened. I’d lost my ride.
I lost my father.
With the soldiers distracted, I stared up into his face and choked, “I love you with everything I am, and I don’t want to leave you. But I think…” I stole a glance at the redcoats. “I think you would be angry if I didn’t run now.”
Drawing in a tear-soaked breath, I forced myself to turn away. Then I ran.
My feet pounded the warm sand, and my arms pumped with the motion. I didn’t look back, didn’t slow, no matter how shaky my legs became.
Seashells and rocks sliced the soles of my feet. Labored breaths scorched my dry and thirsty throat. The pain pushed me harder, faster, and when I reached a stretch of barren shore, I screamed.
Tears streaked my face, and I kept running. Crushing sorrow strangled my insides, and I quickened my pace. Muscles tore in protest, and I cried louder, sobbing brokenly from a bottomless well of pain.
Every kilometer was a just punishment, the abuse on my body a price for my failures. No one deserved a beating more than me, and I absorbed that pain until my bones buckled upon the beach.
The sun’s heat burned my back, and I lifted my pounding head, squinting through tangles of hair.
A towering cliff rose before me, and the shore curved inward, forming a crescent that spanned sixty paces.
The beach where my father was arrested.
I crawled to the shade of the nearby outcropping of trees, and my ears perked to the sound of buzzing.
Swarms of flies hovered over the brush, and as I drew closer, I saw the blood-soaked fur.
My father’s dead hounds.
With a nauseated cry, I pushed to my feet and staggered along the inlet in the direction of his cutlass and boots. I summoned just enough energy to gather his belongings before crashing to the sand.
My heart pulled toward my mother, and my desperation to find her seemed to conjure her out of the sky.
Lying on my back, I gazed up at the cliff, and there she was, floating on the edge of the precipice.
Golden hair whipped around her head, her arms stretched out to the sea. She was an apparition of unearthly beauty, screeching fiercely into the wind.
“Edddddric!” A loud shrill cry shattered her voice as she chanted his name over and over.
She didn’t look down at me, didn’t move her attention from the sea.