Fool's Errand (41 page)

He stopped talking abruptly as something powerful appeared to catch hold of him.

Shark!
thought Persephone with a jolt of primal terror.

But it wasn't a shark.

“I'm caught in some sort of current,” called Azriel, sounding almost surprised.

“Well, get out of it!” shouted Persephone, who was almost as terrified by the speed with which the strange current was sweeping him back out to sea as she would have been by the sight of a dorsal fin cutting through the water.

“I don't know ifI can!” shouted Azriel, whose powerful arms were pulling hard through the water to no apparent avail.

“Well, try!”

“I
am
trying!”

Persephone didn't waste her breath shouting for him to try harder because she didn't want him to waste his breath replying. Moreover, she knew from her intermittent glimpses of his swiftly receding form that he was trying as hard as he possibly could.

Forgetting her own exhaustion and refusing to acknowledge the fact that if Azriel could not free himself from the current, there was not even the
slightest
chance she'd be able to free them
both
, Persephone took a deep breath and kicked to bring herself around that she might start swimming toward him. As she kicked, however, her left shin scraped against something hard and sharp as a razor. Gasping in pain and surprise, she accidentally inhaled some briny spray and began to cough.

Before she could fully clear her lungs, the water in front of her was sucked backward in a rush, revealing the beautiful and deadly reef. Then the shadow of a huge, cresting wave reared up behind her, and she was violently tumbled into oblivion.

Persephone opened her stinging eyes slowly and with great difficulty to find that she was lying on her stomach with her face turned toward the sun of a dying day. Water lapped gently at her legs; her mouth tasted of salt and sand.

Gingerly, she pushed herself onto her hands and knees. She coughed and spit several times. When a cursory examination revealed several scrapes and bruises but no real injuries beyond a slightly shredded left shin, she staggered to her feet. Shielding her eyes, she carefully scanned the black sand beach for Azriel. When she saw no sign of him, she cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted his name. When he didn't answer, she shouted louder—bellowed that if this was his idea of a joke, it wasn't funny in the least.

The distant sound of waves crashing against the reef was the only reply.

Clasping her suddenly trembling hands together, Persephone forced herself to look seaward—past the lagoon, past the reef, to the place beyond where she'd last seen Azriel fighting to free himself from the current that had been dragging him ever farther from shore.

It'll be a real blow to his manly pride if I have to swim out there and save his life
, she told herself edgily as her eyes swept back and forth across the distant water looking for the speck that could be him—still fighting, still floating, still breathing.

But there was no speck.

She searched the beach again.

For nearly an hour she searched, only this time she didn't just scan, she
ran
—all the way to one end of the beach and then all the way to the other. Then all the way back again—this time bellowing into the nooks and crannies formed by the jagged black rocks that ringed the long beach and rose up into the mists that hovered above it. Her thought was that after reaching shore, Azriel had to have crawled into some sheltered spot before falling unconscious. For Persephone knew that he
must
be unconscious, otherwise he'd have answered her by now. Indeed, his handsome face would have been the first thing she'd have seen upon opening her eyes.

But yours are the onlyfootprints in the sand
, whispered a voice in her head.

“So?” said Persephone aloud as she fought to keep from shaking.

So Azriel did not reach shore
, whispered the voice.

“You are wrong,” said Persephone, louder than before.
Azriel never fought his way free of the current
, whispered the voice, full of sorrow.
Exhaustion overtook him. He drowned.

Persephone's knees buckled without warning at the sudden vision of her husband's blue eyes fixed in death, his body floating in eerie silence just beneath the rippling sunlit surface before slowly sinking toward the cold, black depths.

Though she knew in her heart that it had probably happened this way, she also knew that it couldn't have. It just
couldn't
have! Azriel had made a solemn vow to protect her with his
life!
Indeed, he was more alive than anyone Persephone had ever met in
her
life! Feeling as though she could hardly breathe, Persephone tried to imagine a world without Azriel's slow smile, fast hands and eyes like blue flames; without his ready wit and dauntless courage; without his tendency to huff when things didn't go his way. She tried to believe that she would never again lay her cheek against his warm, broad chest, would never again feel his strong arms around her, would never again feel him lying so close to her in the darkness.

So close, but not touching.

Hugging her knees tightly to her suddenly aching chest, Persephone remembered the conversation she'd had with Rachel about never having cause to regret the things she had not done. And she knew for a bitter certainty that if she lived for a thousand years she'd never cease to regret not having reached for Azriel when she'd had the chance to do so. Saying no to him
had
become a habit—just as wishing for a destiny that belonged to none but her had become a habit.

At the terrible thought that she was going to end up getting exactly what she'd always wished for, Persephone choked back a sob and pressed her forehead hard against her knees. She'd lost those close to her before, but it had never felt quite like this—like a piece of her had been torn away, leaving a wound that would never heal.

Like she would never be whole again.

For what seemed like an eternity, Persephone sat unmoving on the sand, too drained by shock and grief to think. Then she wearily lifted her head …

And nearly dropped dead of a heart attack at the sight of Azriel casually walking down the beach toward her.

Broad shouldered and barefoot, with his auburn hair dripping wet and the red-gold rays of the setting sun at his bare back, he looked more beautiful than Persephone had thought it was possible for a human being to look.

Upon seeing that she'd finally noticed him, Azriel raised his hand in casual greeting and gave her one of his little lopsided smiles.

Persephone did not stop to think but was on her feet in one instant and running toward him in the next. No, not running—
flying.
She closed the distance between them in a trice and hurled herself into his arms with such force that Azriel—that unmoveable monolith, that all-powerful Gypsy—fell backward onto the sand with a grunt.

“Why, hello, Percy—” he began.

Persephone shut him up with a kiss that would have taken away the breath of the north wind itself. Twining her fingers in his short, auburn curls, she kissed him deeper and deeper until, without warning, he grabbed her wrists, wrenched himself away from her kiss and growled,
“Stop!”
Persephone froze.

Azriel gazed at her warily, searchingly. She tingled at the feel of his hungry blue eyes upon her—and at the feel of her small wrists trapped in his powerful grip, and at the feel of him lying so strong and lean and shirtless beneath her.

“You, uh, seem to be feeling a heightened physical awareness on account of
my
most recent near-death experience, wife,” he observed at length.

Though his tone was determinedly light, Persephone could feel his chest heaving beneath hers. Feeling that familiar dizziness that his nearness so often provoked, she nodded impatiently and leaned in for another kiss.

Releasing her wrists, Azriel slid his hands up to her shoulders. Roughly, he halted her progress the instant before their lips met.

“Are you sure?” he asked huskily. “I need you to be very sure, for I would not have you do something you'll regret.”

Persephone nodded again—even more impatiently. All she wanted was for him to stop talking and—

Swiftly, Azriel slid his arms around her and rolled them both over so that she was lying on her back and he was propped on one elbow leaning over her.

“Do you truly wish to be a wife to me in every way?” he demanded, his voice ragged with pent-up desire.

Persephone's heart was hammering so hard she could barely hear him. But that was a good thing because she didn't want to hear him, didn't want to answer him, didn't want to think. All she wanted was to say the one word that would ensure she'd never have cause to regret the things she had not done.

And so she said it:

“Yes
.”

FORTY-TWO

Eighty-two white beans left in the jar

B
Y THE TIME AZRIEL
and Persephone were finally spent and the world around them had begun to exist again, the air had grown chilly and a bank of dark clouds had begun rolling across the dusky sky toward them, blotting out the early evening starlight as it came.

As she lay on her back feeling Azriel's bare thigh pressed against hers and listening to him struggle to slow his breathing even as she struggled to slow hers, Persephone was intensely grateful for the encroaching darkness. Having followed through on her “yes” with an abandon that had driven them both to ever-more dizzying heights of passion, she suddenly felt more than a little embarrassed by her display of unbridled enthusiasm … and by the fact that she was wearing nothing but the scabbard strapped to her thigh. and by the fact that this was considerably more than Azriel was wearing.

What Persephone needed at that moment was for Azriel to roll onto his side and pull her closer than close. To intoxicate her all over again; to whisper and tease and do whatever else he could think of to get her good and comfortable with the idea of being his wife in every way.

Unfortunately, before he could do any of those things—indeed, before either of them had fully caught their breath—Azriel grabbed his breeches, rolled to his feet and hissed, “
Someone is coming!
”

Knowing that under the circumstances she ought not to feel stung by the lack of warmth in his voice (but feeling stung nonetheless), Persephone scrambled to cover her nakedness—a task that somehow seemed infinitely more pressing than drawing her dagger. She'd just managed to pull on her own damp breeches and yank her shirt down over her head when three men with white-blond hair filed out from between two large rocks at the edge of the beach. The first man carried a torch, the second carried three spears, and the last had a stringer of fat fish slung over one shoulder.

As Persephone would have expected, knowing something of the meekness of the Marinese, the three men approached diffidently and without any aggressive posturing. Even so, she inhaled sharply when they drew close enough to see clearly. Not because they'd done anything at all threatening but because the acutely discomfited expressions on their faces told Persephone that they'd … seen …
everything
. And as mortifying as this would have been under normal circumstances, it was a thousand times worse under the present circumstances.

For Persephone knew from long ago conversations with Dane at the manor house that the Marinese were a painfully modest people who lived in strict accordance with a rigid moral code. And she was fairly certain that this code did
not
include tearing off one's clothes and making wild, passionate love on a beach in plain view of anyone who might happen to saunter by.

“I am Roark,” said the man carrying the torch.

He was looking at Azriel when he said this, but a furiously blushing Persephone forced herself to speak first.

“I am Persephone, and this is my
husband
, Azriel,” she said, emphasizing the word “husband” in the hope that it would make her seem more like a dutiful wife and less like a complete strumpet.