Swashbuckling on the Edge

Chapter Twenty-Five

A/N: A short, but intense chapter. Warning, there is violence.

Waking on the damp, dirty floor of my cell, I tried to calm my racing heartbeat. Brushing my hair back from my face, I tried to sit up and lean against the bars. The metal against my back reminded me where I was.

I'd been dreaming of the night before Dark had left. We'd met in the garden, at our usual place, but he'd seemed different. He'd never told me of his plans. He'd simply been gone the following morning.

I thought then that I would never see him again. Curling my knees up against my chest, I forced the old memory and its accompanying feelings away. This time was not like that time. Dark would come back. I would see him again.

I wrapped my arms around my knees, letting my forehead rest on my limbs. Sleep was difficult to find in the brig, but it was harder when wounds I'd thought healed ripped me open again, taunting me with the threat of the same hurts repeating themselves.

The past few days I'd tried to keep myself from breaking down. I slept. I ate. I paced the confined space to keep my body from shutting down. I tended to Tallera, who worried me incessantly in her weakening condition. She couldn't stay down here much longer.

Looking after her kept me distracted from the thought of Dark and Sykes. I could do nothing for them but worry and perhaps pray, though the latter I wasn't sure would help more than the other. All I could do was keep myself, Tallera and her unborn child alive as long as possible.

Something hot traced down my cheek and I lifted my fingers to brush it away, surprised to find I was crying. Squeezing myself tighter, I pinched my eyes shut to cut them off, but it did little to help. Exhaustion and fear pressed on me, weighed me down. I didn't feel as strong as I knew I needed to be. My bones felt brittle, my skin like paper. My heart shook in my ribcage like a bird, feeling a cat's claws about to close in.

Tallera's hand touched my back, surprisingly firm. "It's alright," she soothed, scooting to sit next to me. Her arm wrapped around my shoulders.

She wanted to say more, I knew, but there was nothing. She was as powerless as I was. All we could do was sit on the floor. Sit and wait.

Her other hand slid across the slight bump of her belly. "I would know if he was dead," she whispered.

I leaned against her, trying to take comfort in the thought. In the darkness, we sat there together a long time, drifting in and of sleep. The next time I woke fully, the clanging out of the outside door had be bolting upright.

Pivens stood outside the cell, unlocking the door with a heavy key as he looked down at us.

"It's time," he announced.

******

The jungle was a changed beast at night.

During the day it was a paradox—a haven to a myriad of life forms, all waiting, watching, for the shadow of predatory humans to pass by before coming out of hiding. Standing still in amongst the trees, every colour could be spotted, every sound heard, but only distantly, as if you were removed from the secret world of the animals there.

At night, the brilliant blooms of green became black, pitch, ebony. And the sounds were much closer. The jungle became the predator in the shadows.

I walked with armed men at my back, clutching daggers and swords and pistols, but I feared the murmurs of the jungle more. Beside me, Kent's fair hair was a beacon, his face pale and stressed. Like me, he flinched at every silence, every brief pause in the humming of nighttime insects and creatures.