Chapter One
“Help us! Help him! Please!”
Jayd Cimarron had waited too damn long to shriek the words. Every moment of the flight between Paris and her home island of Arcadia had been a torturous eternity. Only after they put down on the thin tarmac outside of Sancti and then taxied to the far end of the runway, where medical and military personnel waited, did she realize that the plane ride was just the beginning of this ordeal.
The beginning?
Perhaps it was just easier to think of it all that way now. Jayd’s brain had no extra bandwidth to keep processing all the events that had led to her premature homecoming to the kingdom in which she had once been a well-loved princess. Now, she was just a woman arriving in the island’s capital, hoping King Evrest would extend his mercy to her.
More importantly, to the man in her arms.
The force of nature she had not yet known for twenty-four hours.
The human who had been her rescuer, protector, teacher, and lover—and, just before this plane had left the ground at Bourget Field, her self-sacrificing savior. The three bullet wounds in his massive body proved that with horrifying clarity.
The body that had direly needed medical attention long ago.
That was clinging to life—by a thinner thread than she wanted to admit.
No. You will not die today, Maximillian Brickham!
She repeated it in a desperate rasp, pressing her jaw against his thick stubble while ramming her lips against his ear. “Do you hear me? Do you? You shall not dare, damn it—unless you want to be the cuffed and helpless one.”
She was rewarded for that by a weak grunt from the man, which hit her like the chorus of a grand symphony. She watched as her tears spilled off her cheeks and onto his.
His cheek…still too pale. Still too taut.
Still hanging on by that terrible thread…
“Creator on high,” she muttered to herself as a pair of medics in red shirts and khakis approached.
They were flanked by two members of the palais guard force—soldiers she had known since childhood but who now acted as if she were barely there. She cared not. They could believe what they wanted to, courtesy of the alerts that had likely been sent from the City of Paris prefecture. In the eyes of the foreign police force, Brickham was naught but the treacherous soldier who had accompanied her on a quest to meet her biological father, only to kill the man as she watched.
They knew nothing. None of them. Subsequently, neither did the Arcadian warriors who glared down at him now.
Jayd tuned them totally out.
She redirected every ounce of her concentration onto the medics who now knelt in front of Brickham and her.
“He…he was trying to get me onto the plane,” she stammered. “On the tarmac…back at Bourget. But then…they came from everywhere…and they were shooting, and—”
“Highness.” The responder closest to her, a tall girl with huge brown eyes and mocha skin, enforced her interruption by gently patting Jayd’s forearm. “We see how important he is to you. We will not let any more damage come to him. You have my word.”
Jayd merely nodded, her throat too tight for speech now. Worse, her royal title also felt so wrong, even less than a week after the proof that it had never been hers to begin with. But she did not want to ruin the rightness of everything else in the woman’s assurance.
“Merderim,” she finally forced herself to whisper, letting the gratitude stand on its own so the pair could focus on Brickham. She held on to him as long as she could, but they were soon asking her to scoot back so they could fully assess the ugly gash across his broad forehead.
Anxiously, Jayd pushed back. Ozias Demos, Brickham’s friend and leader of the mission to retrieve her from Paris, had been certain it was just a graze—but Jayd knew better than to breathe easy about that. A bullet wound was a bullet wound. Brickham could end up just fine or as a barely functioning vegetable. She prayed for the former but told herself to brace for the latter—especially as Brickham stirred and moaned again.
“Mr. Brickham?” said the male medic, who leaned over and flicked a penlight beam into Brick’s eyes. “Are you with us? Can you hear me?”
His response was a string of nonsensical mumbles. Jayd could only discern every third or fourth phrase, which happened to be “got me,” “keep her safe,” and “Duck, Pixie, duck.”
The clog in her throat grew heavy and tumbled to the breadth of her chest. She clamped her fist over the slicing pain in her heart, though it did little to help the agony of her every breath.
“Will he be all right? Tell me. Please. Please. Brickham? Can you hear me?”
The woman, who turned enough to let her see a name badge reading Lyza, secured her with a steady gaze this time. “Desonnum, Highness—but when you speak, his pulse rate jumps. We need to keep him as calm as possible for transport to the palais.”
“Surgeon Sevyal is already standing by at the infirmary,” stated the man opposite her, with a tag reading Alyx. Not that Jayd noticed it after his assertion.
“Sevyal?” she exclaimed. “Surgery? Why?” Damn it, she would command the information out of them if she had to, though Lyza already seemed to perceive that and cut her off with a raised hand. It did not escape Jayd’s attention that the woman’s white latex glove was stained with a lot of bright-red blood.
“The bullet in his shoulder is in the joint,” she said. “And that could lead to lethal migration, as well as a lot of pain.”
“Shit.” The virulent sound gushed from the pit of her throat. No. From the bile that lurked even deeper. “Shit, shit, shit!”
“Highness.” It was Requiemme this time, crouching protectively next to her. “He is going to be all right. Lyza and Alyx know what they are doing. But the more you remain here and fret, the less their ability to do their jobs.”
“She’s right.”
Once more, neither of the medics spoke it. Jayd gasped, consumed by joy, when recognizing the beautiful baritone emanating from Brickham’s chest. A torso for which she was now feeling peevishly protective, since the medics had to slice open the front of his Henley and one leg of his jeans for access to his wounds.
“L-L-Listen to them, Pixie,” he said with shocking pronunciation. “They know th-th-this fire d-d-drill.”
Jayd swooped her face back over his in an earnest rush. Just a few seconds. She begged it of the Creator, despite grasping the selfishness of her action. But after this, they were taking him away from her. Into surgery. If the everlasting decided it wanted him now, then his last memory of her would be the smile she forced across her lips.
And then the tender kiss she pressed across his.
She ignored Emme’s reacting gasp. She also cared not about the startled hums exchanged by the medics.
What she could not toss off so easily, especially as Alyx and Lyza transferred Brick to a stretcher and carried him to the waiting gurney on the tarmac, was the man they passed on their way out. A male who pivoted back into place and then damn near filled the aperture of the plane’s door.
A warrior who looked not a speck pleased about what he’d just witnessed.
“Bon sabah, brother.”
At least she thought it was morning, with the sky behind Samsyn’s head glowing with soft peach light. The breeze smelled right too, aromatic with brisk sea wind and morning glories. But the scents soured in her stomach once Syn fully boarded the plane, having to duck down to get all the way in.