Clawing, grasping at the damp black sand, Adrienne gazed back at the graveyard of ships, charred masts sinking into the tropical seas. No victory without cost. She moaned in horror. Overhead the sun sank to the west in a hazy sky, obscured by smoke and damp with heat. Other ships limped away from the battle. None fared well this day. The calm waters of the Verdant Sea lapped at the shores, heedless of the bodies floating upon them.
Standing unsteadily, she searched them out, one by one. Not a thrash nor flutter greeted her desperate gaze. Adrienne stared until her eyes burned. The hollow ache in her chest would produce no tears; the salt water that carried her to shore was to blame for the drops rolling down her cheeks.
So many dead. Yet still she would rather gaze on the watery graves than face her own troubles.
When the Gallant was lost, Adrienne peeled free of her armor and dove overboard, swimming through as much as carted by the tide to the shore. Now she stood on a deserted black sand beach of what she knew to be Isla Tremene. Her linen shift and form-fitted breeches waterlogged and boots stiff around her ankles as they dried beneath the sun. The waves pushed debris to her feet.
She forced herself to turn away. Beyond the beach stretched a lush jungle, rich with treasures and dangers both. Her enemy had no settlements on Isla Tremene to her knowledge; neither did her people. A few independents, perhaps, their positions etched somewhere in her sluggish mind. It hurt to think. She coughed, feeling the wetness in her lungs.
Adrienne looked back to the waters. She might wait here for rescue. Guardian ships had been engaged -- if they could make it here. And what if rescue ships were not hers but theirs...
The splash startled her. Somber reverie broken, Adrienne's sharp gaze snapped to the source, squinting against the sunlight glinting on the water. Just at the point she thought she had dreamt it, some fish playing in the devastation perhaps, she heard it a second time. A survivor fought to stay above water.
To do nothing was not in her nature. Faced with so many feelings and problems dire, she took control in what way she could: she helped. Adrienne waded into the waters, body screaming in protest, until she reached the man, half-drowned, coughing for his last bit of life.
He was taller than her, and Adrienne struggled to slip within the arc of his long arms to get a hold on him. She saw that he had a handsome face, the shadow of a beard a little dangerous, and dark hair slick with the sea. He wore no shirt, affording her a glimpse of a tanned and muscular chest, broad shoulders, and a bloody gash on his right arm that cut to the bone. Her eyes, however, did not linger there. Above the gash was the tattoo of the silver tower, the Altai sigil, allies of those waging war on her people. Her delicate mouth twisted with grief.
For a still moment he looked at her. Captivating eyes the brown of molten copper fixed on Adrienne's face. Then the sea pulled him under once more. His pants and boots, waterlogged, repelled her attempts to keep him afloat. She hooked her hands under his armpits and dragged him with her toward the shore. It hurt. Exhaustion and frustration nearly had her letting go.
Adrienne refused to listen to her heart or to her body and she pulled with what strength she had left until they both collapsed onto the dark sands of Isla Tremene.
***
Dimitri howled in pain. His arm burned. He lashed out wildly, blindly and hit only the air. Sitting up, he gazed into the face of a woman so lovely as to make him lose sight of everything except her -- fair skin, eyes of a pale green that shined like dew on the fields of Sofestra. Her hair was pinned in crowning braids, golden as dawn around her head, soaked with the sea like a mermaid of legend.
"You pulled me from the water," he said, wonderingly, doubting how this creature with her delicate jaw and soft curves had saved him.
She knelt beside him. Her gaze was sharp on his face, still like a doe in the wood, and slowly, helplessly she shook her head. She didn't understand him. In one hand she held a half-empty bottle of liquor. The other hand she raised in a peaceful gesture to show she was no threat to him.
She murmured something he didn't understand in a voice that belonged -- he didn't know where. In a shrine, perhaps. Not on a battlefield. He dragged in ragged breaths, chest heaving. When he didn't answer, she tried again, this time in a language he recognized but knew only a few words of: Endalian.
Resigned, he reached for the bottle in her hand. He moved slowly, not wanting to scare her again nor to dispel this too welcome mirage. She relinquished the bottle. He drank deeply from it -- rum -- then resumed his inspection of this woman.
She held out her hand to take back the bottle. Instead he gripped her. He had to touch her. He had to know she was real. The wound on his arm had been earned. The man or woman who gave it to him, dead. As was their ship. And his. War was not kind. And yet, this woman couldn't be real. Because war wasn't kind. It wouldn't have given him such a rescuer. Unthinking, he lifted his uninjured arm and lashed a sea-hardened hand around her wrist.
The angel's head jerked, pale eyes snapping to first his hand then to him. She pried free his hand -- hers was smaller yet insistent and he was still half-drowned. Dmitri granted her that. But not her hand. He gripped, the callus of his thumb finding her wrist. Real. Flesh and blood and warmth, a few grains of sand rough between them.
His eyes never left her.
He saw her confusion, then her incredulity. He saw too her intention seconds before she dug her free hand into the wound on his arm. Sick with pain, Dmitri relinquished her. His angel had steel.
She resumed her work, but again and again her eyes sought out his. She said something else.
"I don't speak Endalian," he answered huskily in his native tongue. Despite serving with them, he had never learned. His people the Altai had been convincingly bought by the Endalians to join their war against the Avi. Dmitri sat up, the last bandage tied around his arm. The world tilted, but he would live and live well on Isla Tremene if his memory was correct. Unknowingly, his assessment of their predicament was no less than Adrienne's had been minutes earlier.
He studied his companion and between them exchanged a helpless look. They could not understand one another.
Some of the haze cleared from his vision. She bore no sigil to identify her, but surely he would have known if she were on his ship, on any ship within a thousand leagues. He guessed her to have been armored before this. Dmitri's eyes travelled lower, past the line of her collarbone to where her linen shift clung transparently to her breasts, curves outlined in their fullness, the subtle peak of pink nipples.
He stared like a sailor who had never seen a woman. She folded her arms across her chest. The view was gone. The memory was not.
Sighing, Dmitri again met her eyes, caught by their directness, the level confidence in the way she looked at him. A feeling stirred in his gut that he ignored. He pointed at his chest. "Dmitri."
They would start at the beginning it seemed. She answered him in that same voice from before, the one that belonged with the Great Lord and Great Lady, They Who Created All.
"Adrienne." She pointed to a small, damp leather bag, or rather to the circle, half white, half red, stitched upon it. The guardians' sigil, a sign of neutrality -- or meant to be, although the observance of that neutrality was somewhat in question. Perhaps she wanted him to know that she was no threat. She did not seem to fear him, with her saintly voice and steady scrutiny. His arm ached where she had stitched him.
His Adrienne rose, sand cascading in gray streams from her, and with one arm still protecting her modesty, she offered the other to him. She asked him a question, hand held expectantly. Help, maybe. Or stand.
Dimitri took his time. He had nearly died today. He saw no reason to hurry now. Adrienne's breeches clung to her legs like a second skin, the curve of her hips beckoned a handhold far more interesting than her lovely hand. But the hand he took, gripping to rise -- unsteadily, to his irritation. He loomed over her. Tugging on her hand, he pressed it to his mouth, smiling at her resistance.
He recognized the voice of command in her tone, the obstinate lift of her chin that expected obedience.
He traced the skin of her palm with is lips, then teeth. "I'm afraid I don't understand you, water lily."
He smiled at her. Her pale eyes narrowed in answer. Her cheeks glowed pink.
He was going to enjoy making her eyes glassy with pleasure.
***
If this Altai pirate, if this Dmitri knew who she was, who it was that he ogled and manhandled so Adrienne would have problems greater than his audacity. She could almost admire his affable cham. But there was a devil in those dark eyes. Eyes that knew what he was doing. Again she tugged on her hand and again was stymied by the grip of his fingers. She was tired, yes, but this was more. Strength, casually applied.
