He would return this summer. That would give me time to spend with Keelynn and make sure she would be all right without me. I wouldn’t be able to tell her the truth, at least not yet. There was no sense worrying her until Caden sailed back into port. Once she met him, she would surely understand my burning desire to be with him forever.
“I promise.”
Joy sparked in his dark eyes. His boyish grin sent heat pumping through my veins. He let go of my hand to dance his fingertips down to where my skirt had ridden up my thighs. And when they slipped beneath the fabric, I wasn’t afraid.
* * *
Caden stumbled forward, stretching a hand toward me as if I were some specter when he was the one pale as a bloody ghost. “Your father told me you were dead.”
At the mention of the man who had essentially sold me to pay off his bad debts, my heart stopped beating. “You spoke to my father?” Lord Bannon hadn’t known about my history with the handsome captain. And if he had known, he never would’ve approved.
Caden nodded, his hand falling to his side. “Aye. I told you I would.”
He had said that. He’d also promised to come back for me by the end of summer.
“Four years ago.” I’d gone to the market every day, searching the port and the horizon for a ship with black sails. “I waited, but you never came back.” He’d told me he loved me, used my body for his own pleasure, and then left me as if I meant nothing.
He ran a hand down his neck, the bronzed tone slowly returning to his sun-kissed skin. “Because I’ve spent the last four years in a Vellanian prison. The only thing that kept me alive was knowing the moment I escaped, I would come running back to you.”
Questions filled my mind but never left my lips because the answers didn’t matter. What I had felt for him had been fleeting. I loved someone else now.
Caden caught my hand, bringing my knuckles to his full lips. No fire burned. No nerves tingled. He may as well have been a stranger.
“Gods, I’ve missed you.” His hoarse words feathered against my cheek. “Now that I’ve returned, you and I can marry. I’ll take you away from this place—to my home in Iodale, just as I promised.”
Hold on a moment. He thought he could sweep in here and we’d pick up right where we left off? Even if I’d still had feelings for the man, such expectations were insane. We barely knew one another. The entire foundation of our relationship—if one could even call it that—was built on one night of shared passion.
“Stop.” Tears flooded my eyes. Not for myself but for how he must have suffered in that prison. And I was about to inflict even more pain on his heart. I closed my eyes, unable to look at his features when they crumpled. “Please stop. I can’t—”
A loud crack rang through the air. Caden’s body slumped to the ground, his head at a wrong angle as he stared at the wall through unblinking eyes.
Rían stood over him, his blue eyes glowing like hellfire.
“What did you do?” I breathed.
Rían’s brow furrowed. “Killed the bastard attacking you.”
“He wasn’t attacking me!” My knees cracked off the floorboards as I knelt to check Caden’s pulse.Please don’t be dead. Please, please, please don’t be dead.
His chest no longer rose and fell. His heart no longer beat.
“You actually killed him…” Caden hadn’t deserved to die. He had done nothing wrong.
“He had you pinned against the wall. You were begging him to stop,” Rían ground out, his hands flexing and eyes bleeding to black.
My head dropped into my trembling hands. How could hekillhim?
What was I saying? This was Rían. Had I expected a rational reaction? For him to ask questions first and snap necks later?
Tears trailed warmth down my cold cheeks. I might not have loved Caden, but I didn’t wish the man dead. And after suffering in prison all this time…
Rían’s palms cupped my face, his thumbs smoothing away my tears. “Where did he hurt you?”
I shook my head, trying and failing to stop these bloody tears from spilling free. “He didn’t hurt me.”
“Then why were you crying and telling him to stop?”
I turned away, scrubbing my cheeks with my sleeves. “Because he and I have a history.” At least he’d been given a painless death. If Rían had found out who Caden wasbeforehe’d killed him, there was no doubt in my mind that Rían would’ve ensured the captain’s demise was anything but quick.