Kingdom of Salt and Sirens Read online

  “I’m Joe, Your Highness, the second in command of the Erica Rose,” he said, giving me a quick bow. “The captain has asked me to escort you to his cabin.”

  Joe was barely older than me, with short, dirty blond hair and a winning smile. I was surprised to see someone so young be the second in command of such a ship.

  “It’s getting a little choppy,” Joe cautioned, his cheeks red as he took my hand. “They are going to struggle to get the ship back to shore. The forecast mentioned a little bit of turbulent water, but it looks to be shaping up to be a proper storm out there.”

  I followed Joe to a big wooden doorway, which he opened for me and beckoned me inside. As I thanked him, a boom filled the darkening sky.

  “Thunder,” Joe remarked, taking my hand and leading me down a corridor. I held on tightly to him as the ship listed violently to one side from the sharp turn of the wheel. He showed me to a large room with a writing desk on one side and a bed on the other.

  “There will be some clothes in the wardrobe there,” he said, pointing to a small door. “I don’t expect the captain has any dresses, but I’m sure you’ll find something dry to wear.”

  I watched the storm unfold through a small porthole as Joe left me to help the captain. It seemed no one was expecting the weather to be this bad and how could they? Only ten minutes earlier, there hadn’t been a cloud in the sky, and now there was barely any blue left, only the darkness of the sea and the sky. It was strange how quickly the storm had taken hold. I certainly had never seen anything like it before. Outside, the rain began to lash down, pitter-pattering on the round window. Thunder crashed as the waves became more intense with the roaring wind that whipped all around us. The storm had sneaked up on us quickly, and as far as I could see, we were getting further and further away from the coastline. Whatever Captain Jackson’s men were doing to turn the ship around, it wasn’t helping.

  I hated admitting it to myself after dreaming of the day I could finally sail on the sea for so long, but I was beginning to get scared. My mother’s screams echoed in my head, although we had drifted too far to really hear her. The boat creaked with the strain, and from out of the window, I could see we were being pulled closer and closer toward the storm. A crash from behind me made me jump. I turned to find that some previously neatly stacked dishes had been flung from the cupboard and were now in hundreds of pieces on the floor. Holding on was almost impossible, the ship was lurching so much. I tried walking over to the wardrobe that Joe had pointed out, but the floor beneath me was rocking so much under the motion of the waves that I could barely stand at all. With a shock, I saw a stream of water pushing the remnants of the dishes across the floor. It was coming from the doorway. We were taking on water. I held on to the writing desk to keep myself upright, but the motion of the ship knocked me to the floor. Something sharp pierced my side, and when I looked down, I saw a sliver of broken plate had cut through my dress and into my flesh creating a bloom of fresh blood on the wet fabric.

  I looked up to grab hold of the desk to pull myself back up and was shocked to see that the window was now partly submerged. We were sinking, and we were sinking fast. Pulling myself up, I ran to the door quickly. I had to get out, or I would drown. I yanked the door as hard as I could, and as it opened, a deluge of water rushed in knocking me over once again. The lights flickered out leaving me in complete darkness as the water engulfed me, sending me flying into something hard. Water filled my lungs as the blackness folded in around me, my mother’s warnings of the fierceness of the ocean echoing in my head.

  2

  Saved

  Soft lips touched mine and softly blew into my mouth.

  What was happening? Was I being kissed? Why?

  I coughed roughly, and salt water flooded into my mouth, except it was coming up rather than going in. Someone rolled me forcefully onto my side, and the salty water trickled out.

  I coughed again and opened my eyes. One minute I was being kissed, the next my lungs were screaming in agony, and I was coughing up half the ocean. Sunlight flooded my retinas as I opened my eyes, causing me to blink a few times. Sunlight? Hadn’t it been dark just a moment ago? I closed my eyes again, not ready for the brightness.

  “Are you ok?” a voice asked. It was a man’s voice. Probably the same man who had pushed me onto my side, the same man who had kissed me. His accent was very strange, and I couldn’t place it, but his deep voice was warm and comforting. I’d not traveled much, but I’d met many visitors from other lands, and he sounded like none of them. He certainly wasn’t from any of the nine kingdoms.

  I nodded my head and promptly threw up. An acidic taste filled my mouth as the contents of my stomach, mostly salt water and a bit of breakfast, emptied out of me.

  I wasn’t alright, but I’d been schooled long enough not to show my feelings.

  “You don’t look it,” the voice replied. The man attached to it gently moved my hair from my face, leaving me exposed to the sun. It beat down on my cheek warming it. I opened my eyes again, this time readying myself for the brightness. In front of me, was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen in my life. I couldn’t call him handsome. The word handsome reminded me of men in suits. This man was striking with piercing green eyes and black hair so long, it was almost down to his waist. I’d never seen a man with long hair before. Everyone in my life had been presented to me perfectly turned out, wearing only the finest of clothing. This guy wasn’t even wearing a shirt. His bare chest glistened with water dripping from his wet hair. As I gazed up at him, a flash of purple came over his eyes. A second later, they were green again. I blinked, mesmerized by what I’d seen or what I thought I’d seen.

  “Princess!” I heard a voice shouting from far away. The man heard it too. He cocked his head up and to the side. Following his gaze, I saw some men at the top of the cliffs. I blinked a couple of more times and glanced at my surroundings. We were on a tiny beach inaccessible except by the water. I had been laid out on a flat rock by the water’s edge, and my savior was half in and half out of the water. Perhaps, he’d come across me when he’d been out swimming? Beyond him, the sea had returned to a shimmering blue and the sky was once again cloudless. It was like the storm hadn’t happened at all.

  “They are looking for you,” said the man, pulling me away from my thoughts. “I think you’ll be ok now.”

  I looked back at him again, shocking myself at how deeply irresistible I found him. My head pounded, and my throat felt as though someone had used sandpaper roughly on it, and yet, all I could think of was the way his lips had felt upon mine.

  “Kiss me again.” Just saying it shocked me to my core. I didn’t know where I was or how I got there, and here I was asking a perfect stranger to kiss me. I wondered if I’d suffered a concussion at some point. My head certainly hurt enough. And yet...I meant it. I wanted to feel the taste of his lips again. The last time, I’d been half asleep.

  He gave me a confused grin. “Again?”

  “Your Highness!” It was that voice again from the cliff above. I wished it would go away. The very edges of my consciousness were hazy, and my memory was blurred. It was like everything in my past was just out of reach. I knew I was the royal princess, heir to the throne of Trifork. I also knew I was at the base of one of Trifork’s famous white cliffs. Beyond that, everything, including how I ended up on a beach with a half-naked man, was floating just beyond my grasp.

  “I’ve got to go,” said the man. “You’ll be ok.” He disappeared out of my line of sight. I tried sitting up to see where he went, but the effort made me feel dizzy again. I scanned the shoreline, but there was nobody there. Out in the distance, I thought I saw a ripple on the surface of the ocean, but darkness was closing in again. I closed my eyes and once again succumbed to unconsciousness.

  I woke to find myself in the palace infirmary.

  With over three hundred staff working and living in the palace, not to mention my accident-prone brother, my father had had the small hospital bu
ilt in one of the palace wings a few years ago after a bad strain of flu had left half of the staff ill.

  The infirmary was quite cheerful for a hospital. A rainbow of color decorated the painted white walls thanks to the light coming through a large circular stained-glass window depicting the founder of Trifork. A strong, floral scent invaded my senses, and a brief glance around showed me it was coming from a vase of lilies in the corner of the room.

  Beside my bed, I found my mother. Without her usual perfect makeup she appeared pale, almost a ghost of her usual self. Dark circles had taken up residence under her eyes, eyes which were bloodshot from lack of sleep. Her hand held mine. It felt warm and reassuring, although her grip was a little too tight. I tried to sit up, but the effort made me feel sick.

  “What happened?” I croaked. My throat burned with the effort of speaking. Goodness only knew just how much sea water I’d swallowed.

  “Just lay back, honey,” she replied, letting go of my hand and plumping my pillow. Honey? She never called me honey. She never called me anything but Erica. When she sat back down, I noticed she’d been crying.

  My memory of earlier was slipping, as if an invisible hand had reached into my brain and started pulling at the fibers, spilling all my memories from the last day. Her tears reminded me of something, but I couldn’t remember what. My mother never cried. I had a feeling that those tears were because of something I’d done, but I couldn’t remember what. A fog had descended into my brain distorting everything.

  My mother pressed her lips together and stared down at the bed as though she was weighing what to tell me. When she looked back up, I saw that the tears had returned. “You almost drowned. For a while, we thought you had drowned. The ship went down in a storm yesterday. We sent thousands of people out looking for you, but it was only this morning one of our volunteers found you. He brought you straight here.”

  This morning? I’d been out all night?

  “He had long hair?” I asked, remembering my strange encounter on the beach. I felt my cheeks begin to redden as I recalled what I’d said to him. I’d asked him to kiss me. Oh, I hoped he’d not told my parents that. I’d never live it down.

  “No honey. It was just one of the palace guards.” She looked confused. “What makes you think he had long hair?”

  “I saw him. He had long hair, and he disappeared.” I tried to get a clear picture of him in my head through the fog but failed. Just like the events of the previous twenty-four hours, he was slipping from my mind.

  My mother’s brows knitted together, and she pursed her lips. Without saying anything, she brought her hand up to my forehead to feel for a fever.

  “There was no one on that beach with you, sweetheart. You were completely alone when you were found, and there couldn’t have been anyone down there with you because the beach you washed up on was cut off from all sides. We had to get someone with a rope to scale the cliff to get down to you, and you were pulled up by the same rope on a stretcher.”

  I’d not dreamed it. He’d definitely been there. Surely, I couldn’t have made him up. Everything about him was drifting from my mind, and yet, I could remember his distinctive voice so clearly. “He swam out to sea then?” I ventured.

  She shook her head and took my hand again. “The sea is very dangerous at that part of the coast. I’m told that it was a fluke that you managed to swim to the beach without your body being bashed against the rocks.”

  I hadn’t swum to the beach though, had I? I’d either floated there or been brought there. The question was, if I’d been brought there, who was it that brought me and where did he go if he wasn’t on the beach when I was found?

  “What about Joe and the captain?” I asked realizing I wouldn’t get anywhere trying to solve that particular mystery.

  My mother’s eyes began brimming with tears once again. “I’m so sorry, honey. The Erica Rose went down in the storm. We’ve still got people out there looking for the crew, but it’s been over twenty hours since the storm, and you are the only person we’ve found.”

  My ship had gone down, and it looked like all her crew had gone down with her. I thought back to being onboard. A memory came to the surface. I snatched at it, thinking of all the details of the captain’s quarters before it went back into the fuzz. I’d been trapped inside there. If anyone should have died on that ship, it was me. All the others were on deck when the storm hit. If I had managed to survive while unconscious, then they should have survived too.

  “They are still out there,” I insisted. It didn’t make sense otherwise. “Don’t stop the search.”

  She gave me a sad smile. “We’ll keep the search going for a while, but it doesn’t look good.”

  Lucy, the head nurse came into the infirmary. When she saw I was awake, she hurried over. Without speaking, she popped a thermometer into my mouth and took my wrist presumably to check my pulse.

  I closed my eyes to block everything out.

  My heart felt heavy at the loss of the crew members. I’d only met them yesterday, but it hurt to think of them dying on the maiden voyage of my ship. And yet, a part of me still couldn’t accept that they were dead. We’d been pulled away from the shore by the storm, and yet, I’d ended up there. I’d somehow gotten to the beach without remembering it. Without even being conscious it seemed, and a mysterious stranger who looked like no one I’d ever seen before in my life kissed me before disappearing into thin air. None of it made sense. I wondered if my brain had made up the whole thing and if the man with the long hair had been a dream. My head pounded just thinking about it all.

  I heard my mother chatting away to Lucy, oblivious to the turmoil going on inside me. She was asking if I’d be alright enough to attend the ball tomorrow.

  Tomorrow! I’d somehow lost a day.

  “I don’t know,” replied Lucy. “She’s had a bump to the head and lost quite a bit of blood. I did my best to sew the wound in her side up, it was just a shallow flesh wound, but she is still very weak. It might be better to postpone it for a bit.”

  I opened my eyes and pulled out the thermometer with my free hand and gave it back to the nurse.

  “I’m fine,” I lied. Before Lucy had mentioned the cut in my side, I’d forgotten about it, but now I knew it was there. I could feel it. Lucy had tightly bandaged it, but below the bandage, I could feel the sharp pain of stitches. I wasn’t about to tell my mother that, though. She’d been through enough in the last couple of days thanks to me and my idiocy. “I want to go.”

  My mother had been planning this party for months. I’d seen how much effort and planning had gone into it. It wasn’t as simple as postponing it. Everything was ready. The grand hall had been decorated for the better part of a week. The caterers had already started preparing the food, and over a thousand dignitaries from the nine kingdoms had been invited. Postponing it would be a nightmare of epic proportions.

  My mother looked at me with nothing but concern in her eyes. “Are you sure? You don’t have to if you aren’t well enough. I can ask your father to put it back a couple of months.”

  Even as she said it, I could see that she didn’t want to put it off. The way she was being so sweet to me now wasn’t like her. The shock of nearly losing her daughter to the thing she feared most had changed her. It was then I remembered my mother’s screams after I fell into the water. Ear piercing screams of pure terror. I’d done that to her. I’d caused that fear. A lump came to my throat as I looked into her eyes, eyes the blue-green color of the ocean she hated so much.

  I took her hands in mine and smiled. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  She jumped up and clapped her hands together. “I’ll tell Alexander not to call anyone. He’ll be so pleased. I think I’ve been driving him mad with all the talk of this ball. He’ll be down to see you shortly.”

  I suppressed a smile. My mother had run the whole gamut of emotion in the last day or so. I’d never seen her like this before. She was usually so rigid and composed. Now she wa
s as giddy as a school girl.

  “If she’s going to the ball, she needs her rest,” Lucy asserted, ushering my mother away from my bed. “Her father will have to wait.”

  My mother’s eyes flashed with excitement. “I should go and let the dressmaker know that you will be needing your gown after all,” she trilled. I’d never seen her so excited. I waited until she left the room completely and closed my eyes pretending to be asleep. I didn’t want the nurse poking me or prodding me anymore. I just wanted to be left alone with my thoughts.

  As soon as I closed my eyes, there he was. I could see him again—the man with the long hair. I was sure I’d not made him up. How could I have? In my mind’s eye, I could see him so clearly. His chiseled chin and straight nose, his muscular chest and those eyes, those stunning green eyes that flashed purple.

  He was so unusual and yet so real; but at the same time, he was impossible. My mother had said it herself. No one could survive swimming through those rocks to get to the shore, and yet, I had. I’d survived and somehow done it while being unconscious. The whole thing was beyond belief. I hadn’t just washed up on that beach. Someone had to have brought me there.

  My mind was still whirling when Lucy came to me with some hot chocolate. The delicious smell of it had me opening my eyes.

  “I wasn’t sure if you were sleeping or just resting your eyes,” she remarked, placing the chocolate beside my bed along with a couple of pills. “These will really make you sleep and help with the pain. You want to be fresh for your big day tomorrow. Oh, and these are for you.”

  She handed me a hand-picked bunch of daisies.

  “Hayden’s been here?” I asked. As a princess, I was often given flowers. Huge expensive bouquets wrapped with ribbon. As a young child, I’d remarked how much I preferred wild daisies and the next day at school, he’d shown up with a bunch that he’d picked from a nearby field. Since then, on my birthday every year, he’d brought me daisies.