One of the lifeboats began moving toward them. It was skirting the wreckage, trying to get at the debris from another direction. They didn’t expect to find anyone out here, this far from the ship, but their maneuver brought them unknowingly closer to Andrin and Howan Fai. She gritted her teeth and kept swimming. If they could just get a little closer, so the men in the lifeboat could hear them shout above the noise of the burning yacht…
Something bumped Andrin’s leg.
Something large. Something rough as sandpaper. Something alive. Then a fin broke water, a big fin. And a tail fin appeared, as well, nearly fifteen feet away from her. Andrin froze in place, water rising around her.
“S-shark!” she gasped. “Oh, Merciful Triads-Howan-sharks! I wasn’t supposed to drown here! They wanted me eaten alive!”
The fins sped up and knifed past her. A chunk of debris-human debris-floating ten feet away vanished into the black water. Howan Fai watched in wide-eyed horror. Then he shouted with all his strength.
“HELP!” The bellow raced across the black water.
Andrin shrieked as more fins appeared in the water. “Help! Sharks!”
Someone shouted. A man stood up in the lifeboat. A light caught them full in the eyes. The man standing in the boat was lifting something. Throwing something. Right at them. A life ring smacked down beside them. They lunged for it, grabbed hold as still more fins cut through the water. Some of those fins were far larger than others, and she sensed a mad swirl of violence all about her.
The instant they gripped the life ring, the men in the lifeboat hauled on the rope, and Andrin and Howan Fai shot forward through the water. Something big grazed her kicking legs again. Scraped it raw. Something else brushed against her and rolled pushing her hard. She screamed-
— and then something was under her, heaving, sending her hurtling up like an elevator. Whatever it was literally threw her over the lifeboat’s side, into the startled arms of one of the sailors. The man’s arms closed instinctively as her hurtling weight knocked him flat. She landed on top of him, and an instant later, Howan Fai was beside her, coughing and shaking.
Andrin sprawled across the bottom of the boat, across bits and pieces of several men, shuddering violently with cold and terror. Her leg bled where the shark had hit her the second time, but she shoved herself up on an elbow, staring back out at the water. The searchlights picked out more and more sharks teaming the strait, yet something else was out there too. Massive fins were ripped down under the waves not to emerge.
Andrin clung tight to the gunwale watching the sea battle. Something towed a corpse in Imperial Guard uniform and lifted it with surprising gentleness-once, twice, and three times until the searchers overcame their shock enough to pull it onboard.
A black and white orca’s face with a rough scar over the left eyespot examined her for a long solemn moment before twisting back towards the maddened swarm of shark fins. Whatever the Order of Bergahl’s Talent had done, the cetaceans were aware and fighting.
She heard a blur of voices as the boat rocked violently under her.
Then someone had a blanket wrapped around her. She allowed herself to be lifted again, turned and propped against a shoulder. Someone pressed a metal rim to her lips, exhorting her to sip, to swallow whatever was in the flask he held, and she gulped down fiery liquid. The whiskey tore down her throat and left her coughing and wheezing, but it warmed her up and steadied her down.
The blur of voices resolved into the sound of men weeping in wild relief. Someone was saying, over and over, “Oh, thank the Triads, Shalana’s mercy, oh, thank the Triads…” and someone else was cursing in rough tones that she slowly realized were an expression of shock and a release of stress too deep to endure. Someone else was shouting through a megaphone. “We’ve got her! We’ve found the Crown Princess! She’s alive, we’ve got her safe, she’s all right and the Crown Prince Consort is with her…”
Andrin found herself looking up into the face of the sailor she leaned against. He was just a common seaman, a rough-faced, ordinary sailor in his early forties, from the look of him, but there were tears in his eyes and on his weathered cheeks, and he held a whiskey flask.
“Need another swallow?” he asked gently.
She nodded.
He had to hold the flask to her lips, again, and she swallowed another deep gulp, shuddering as it ripped down her throat and tore into her belly. But it helped ease the painful shudders The cold of the water, the cold of physical exhaustion, the cold of deep and desperate terror had left her shaking so violently, she couldn’t even control her own arms and legs.
The sailor brushed wet hair off her face with a gesture so tender it brought tears to her own eyes. He pulled the blanket more closely around her shoulders and urged her to sip the whiskey again.
“Thank you,” she croaked out, voice little more than a hoarse rasp. “Oh, Triads, thank you so much…” She was dissolving into tears again, sobbing and shaking as the terror caught her in its teeth. Howan Fai leaned against her, wrapped in his own blanket. He held her awkwardly, made gentle hushing sounds, rocked her slightly while she clung to him and cried helplessly.
When the hysteria had finally run its course, she knew a long moment of stinging shame for having broken down in front of all these people, still working to clear the wreckage and find whoever else might have survived. But a gentle touch and the tears streaking down Howan Fai’s own face told her she was more than entitled to a little bawling. She sighed softly; then lifted her face.
The expression of the sailor still holding the bottle had twisted with anguish as he watched his crown princess and consort weep, and she gave him a tremulous smile.
“Thanks,” she whispered. “Ever so much.”
For some reason, those words and that shaky little smile caused a fresh rush of tears to well up in his eyes. “You’re welcome, Your Grand Highness,” he choked out.
She turned her head and looked around to find every man in the lifeboat watching her. She managed another smile, then turned again to Howan Fai. His blanket was slipping, his cold-numbed fingers having difficulty holding it one-handed. His jacket was gone. He must have wrenched it off on the way down, when he’d jumped overboard with her. He was still wearing the sheath he’d worn since the day of their wedding, but the knife was missing.
He must have used it to cut away her gown, she realized slowly. No wonder he’d managed to rip it off her back so quickly. Then he’d lost the knife, somewhere in the wild confusion when the ship had blown up. He cradled another whiskey flask in his hands, and his shoulders drooped in exhaustion, but his eyes shone fiercely, fixed on her. They might be huddled in the bottom of the lifeboat, shaken out of their wits, but they were still alive and still together.
The rush of love she felt for the quiet, courageous man she’d married filled her heart to bursting, and then, suddenly, there in that crowded lifeboat, a wall went down. That turbulent tide of love lifted her, reached out, opened what she realized must be the marriage bond Darcel and Alazon had described to her. But how? Howan Fai wasn’t Talented! They couldn’t forge a marriage bond, yet they had. They had! And as her emotion swept across him, through the bond they now shared, the look in his eyes shifted, gentled…and somehow blazed more fiercely than ever.
Until now, she realized, she’d only tried to love Howan Fai. She’d liked him immensely, enjoyed his company, been enthralled by his touch in the night. But not until this moment, crouched nearly naked in the bottom of a lifeboat, wrapped in a blanket and leaning against him…not until now had she truly realized how much she’d come to love the man she’d married.