Three Dark Crowns (Three Dark Crowns #1) - Kendare Blake Page 0,54

boy’s shivering has eased. She wrestles him out of his jacket and shirt and spreads them out on the sand, as close to the fire as she can without risk of them catching. She lays Elizabeth’s cloak out as well. It will keep him plenty warm, if she can get it dry.

The boy moans. If only Luca were there. She would know what to do.

“Cold,” the boy mumbles.

Mirabella did not drag him up from the depths and across the sand only to watch him die now. She knows only one thing to do.

She unfastens her dress and slips out of it. She lies behind the boy and wraps her arms around him, sharing her heat. When her cloak is dry, she will use it to cover them both.

Mirabella jerks awake. After covering them with Elizabeth’s dry cloak, she had begun to doze, staring into the fire, and dreamed of Arsinoe and Katharine until the pieces of driftwood became their finger bones and the knots of wet, steaming seaweed became their hair. They burned and fell apart into charcoal as they tried to crawl out of the sand like crabs.

The boy lies in her arms. Beads of sweat dot his forehead, and he struggles, but she holds him tight. He must stay warm. In the morning, he will need fresh water. She can probably find some if she goes up the cliff trail back into the trees. Even after the rain, there will still be ice in the woods, frozen on branches or into logs.

Mirabella adjusts her position and the boy’s arm slides around her waist. His eyes open slightly.

“The boat,” he says.

“It is at the bottom of the sea.” Cracked and broken, most likely, given the force of those Shannon waves.

“My family,” he whispers. “They’ll have to replace it.”

“Do not worry about that now,” Mirabella says. “How do you feel? Do you hurt anywhere?”

“No.” He closes his eyes. “I’m cold. I’m so cold.”

His hand wanders tentatively across her back, beneath the cloak, and Mirabella’s pulse quickens. Even half-drowned, he is one of the most handsome boys she has ever seen.

“Am I dead?” he asks. “Did I die?”

His leg moves between hers.

“You did not die,” she says, her voice breathless. “But I must get you warm.”

“Make me warm, then.”

He draws her mouth to his. He tastes of salt. His hands move slowly over her skin.

“You are not real,” he says against her lips.

Whoever taught this boy to kiss has taught him well. He pulls her on top of him to kiss her neck. He tells her again that she is not real.

But perhaps he is the one who is not real. This boy with eyes like the storm.

Mirabella wraps her legs around him. When he moans this time, it is not from the cold.

“I saved you,” she says. “I will not let you die.”

She kisses him hungrily, her touch waking him up, pulling him out of the dark. He feels like he belongs in her arms. She will not let him die. She will make them both warm.

She will set them both on fire.

WOLF SPRING

Joseph’s mother had a dream. A dream of her son, pulled under by waves. It was more than a nightmare, she said, and Jules believes her. Joseph had a touch of the sight when he was a boy. Such a gift had to have come from somewhere. But others were skeptical until the birds returned from Trignor with word he had never arrived.

Luke pushes a cup of tea into Jules’s hand. He has brought a pot down to the pier with a stack of teacups tucked in his elbow.

“Sorry,” he says when hot tea splashes over the edge and burns her knuckles. “And I’m doubly sorry that I didn’t have enough hands to carry the cream. But here.” He reaches into his jacket pocket and drops in a handful of sugar cubes.

“Thank you, Luke,” Jules says, and Hank the rooster clucks on his shoulder as Luke moves through the gathering of worriers and rubberneckers, offering cups.

Jules is too anxious to drink. The birds brought with them word of a storm off the coast, a monstrous storm that swung into the island from the wide-open sea and devastated land from Linwood to the port at Miner’s Bay.

Billy steps up beside her and places firm fingers on her shoulder.

“Joseph is a strong sailor, Jules,” says Billy. “It’s most likely that he pulled in at a cove somewhere to ride it out and went on like nothing happened. We’ll hear