The Kraken King by Meljean Brook

Author:Meljean Brook
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Romance, Fantasy, Adult
ISBN: 9781101626658
Publisher: Berkley
Published: 2014-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

XVII

I am coming for you.

Hugging a blanket around her shoulders, Zenobia stood at the ironship’s portside rail and looked into the dark water below. The heavy vessel left a foaming trail in its wake that disappeared like footsteps in melting snow. Behind her, the smoke from the stacks dissipated into the night sky, leaving no trace to follow.

Admiral Tatsukawa’s airship—with Ariq on it—had barely been out of sight when the ironship’s engines had fired. For four days, they’d plowed through the ocean on a western course, and Zenobia’s heart clenched tighter with every league they sailed.

Would Ariq guess that she wouldn’t be where he’d left her? He’d anticipated the rest: that he would be taken to locate the Skybreaker while she was held on the rebellion’s ironship, and that she would be returned to him after the war machine had been delivered into the rebellion’s hands. But had he guessed the general and admiral would trade her new location for the machine?

They must have suspected Ariq might not give them the Skybreaker—that he might attempt to escape and return for her.

I am coming for you.

But not tonight. Or the night before. And if he couldn’t find her, maybe not any night of the tomorrows to come.

Still, she hoped. If he came, it would probably be under cover of darkness. Zenobia hadn’t slept the past four nights so that she would be prepared to leave when he arrived. Lifting her face to the drizzling rain, she searched the dark clouds. Two hours remained before dawn. Ariq had promised to return before the new moon rose, but a waxing half moon had shone overhead the previous evening. The new moon was almost three weeks away.

She desperately hoped his vow had been more poetic than literal.

Three more weeks wasn’t so long to wait. She’d waited longer than that for a ransom before, and in worse conditions than this. There was nowhere to go but into the shark-infested waters, so she’d been given freedom to walk the upper deck instead of being locked in a cabin. But in the past, kidnapping had always been a business transaction. Someone abducted her, Archimedes paid them, Zenobia was freed. It wasn’t so simple this time. It was war. It was life and death. The question wasn’t when she would be released or how much gold they would want, but how many people would die as a result of the ransom being paid . . . or not.

And she’d never been held so far from home. She’d never been so tired, or felt so very small.

I am coming for you.

She was clinging to that promise as tightly as she’d clung to his hand. Clinging to the memory of the gravel in his voice as he’d spoken it, clinging to the image of his eyes, dark and intense, clinging to the pleasure of his sweet, urgent kiss. But with every passing mile, it all seemed to be slipping out of her grasp.

Hoping so much was exhausting, like exercising an unused muscle.

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