Page 163 of Sword & Sacrifice

Who were they? He’d given her no details about them. Were they Alistair’s victims, like Silas? People he’d crossed in his quest for power? What was their relationship to Alistair, and how did they know anything about her mother?

“You don’t have to worry,” Everett said in a low, soothing whisper. “I’ll handle all the negotiations. I’ll be more at ease knowing you’re safe on the ship.”

Emmaline couldn’t think of any argument to convince him to bring her along. She didn’t need to participate in the negotiations, but she was tired of feeling powerless. Always the protected and never the protecter. Even her mother was only in danger now because she’d wanted to buy Emmaline time to escape.

Taking her silence as acceptance, Everett squeezed her shoulder and said, “You won’t be alone on the ship. Rafe and a few others are staying behind as well. You can play cards with them again—take them for all their worth.”

So, Rafe was right—he’s leaving guards behind to make sure I don’t follow him. She forced her lips into an accepting smile and nodded once.

The crew bustled around them as they prepared to dock. It was easy to tell which ones were going ashore for fun and which would accompany her father. The first group laughed and joked with each other as they worked, while the latter quietly strapped on weapons, preparing for a fight.

Once the ship docked, the crew scurried off like cockroaches running from the light. In under five minutes, the deck cleared out, and only Emmaline, Rafe, and two other guards remained.

“Care to demonstrate your cheating skills again, princess?” Rafe asked, pulling a deck of cards out from his breast pocket.

The other two crew members set up a table in the middle of the deck where they could keep watch for anyone trying to come aboard, friend or foe.

“No, thank you,” Emmaline murmured, watching the people on shore instead.

“Aw, come on, we need four people to play it properly.” Rafe vigorously shuffled the deck while one of the other men poured four generous glasses of ale.

They can’t be too concerned about the ship’s safety if they’re drinking while they’re on guard duty. Emmaline eyed the mugs, lips pursed in thought. It would be so easy to drug their ale, to put them all into a deep sleep. Unfortunately, what Rafe had said earlier was true—she didn’t know the island at all, or where her father was meeting his contact. She would be taking a dangerous risk without much hope of success.

At least playing cards would help pass the time. Sighing, she sat in the chair next to Rafe and accepted the hand he dealt her. To her surprise, black letters appeared across the cards.

D O N O T D R I N K A L E

Instinctively, she craned her neck to see if anyone else had writing on theirs. The man closest to her scowled and pressed his cards against his chest. “That’s not what we mean by cheating!”

Rafe snickered. “You’ll need to be more subtle than that, Em.”

The first round passed with no one exclaiming “Cheat!” Rafe and the others drank generously from their mugs while Emmaline avoided hers.

During the second round, one of the men accidentally put his cards face up, proving his own lie. He and the other crew member laughed uproariously at his mistake. The second man wrapped his arm around his friend and pressed their cheeks together as he slurred, “Dumbass, y’know better ‘an ‘at.” A sloppy grin remained on his face as his eyes drifted shut.

“S’my mistake, my mistake,” the cheater repeated, his words becoming less intelligible as he spoke. After the last syllable, his jaw hung open and drool leaked from his lips.

Emmaline’s eyes widened as she witnessed them falling asleep right at the table. “What did you do?”

Rafe set his mug down with a thump and from this angle she could see that it was still full. Every time he’d raised it to his lips, he’d never taken a single sip. “It’s just a little Liquid Sleep, nothing that’ll hurt them.”

“Why would you drug them?” Although she’d considered the same plan herself, she wasn’t sure how she felt about Rafe drugging the men without speaking to her first. It reminded her of Niall poisoning the people at Causley Estate and her heart chilled with apprehension.

“Do you want to follow the captain or not?” He ran a thumb thoughtfully over the scar under his eye. “If you don’t want to, we can remain on the ship. They’ll wake up in a few hours, a little hungover but that’s no worse than they would be if they’d spent the night on shore. We can spend the time playing cards, just like the captain suggested, and no one will ever know.”

She looked at the men, slumped over in deep slumber.

“Or you can follow me to the meeting and learn what this ‘informant’ knows firsthand. The choice is yours. Really, I suppose it depends on how much you trust the captain to tell you the unvarnished truth.”

Emmaline had been called ‘too trusting’ on more than one occasion—usually by Griselda, who preferred to view the world with suspicion. Part of her felt that she should trust Everett. If she couldn’t trust her father, who could she trust? But she didn’t know him. During the days she’d spent on the ship, he’d told her little about himself or his relationship with her mother. What if the information he learned could save Mama, but he decided it wasn’t worth the risk? Would he still allow Emmaline to make her own choice, or would he hide the information under the guise of keeping her ‘safe’?

“If you’re having trouble deciding, let’s do it this way.” Rafe gathered up the deck and shuffled the cards again. “I’ll pick a card, and you can guess the suit. If you guess correctly, we’ll follow the captain. If you guess wrong, we’ll stay on the ship and play cards all damn night until the rest of the crew return. You only have a one in four chance of getting it right, less than if you flip a coin, so that means it’s fate.”

Emmaline pursed her lips. It seemed like a silly way to make an important decision, and yet …

Rafe stopped, plucked a single card from the deck, and held it up with the back facing her.

“Hearts.”