MARCUS STARTED AWAKE. Something had drawn him from the semiconscious state of thudding agony and the distant wash of waves. He had difficulty opening his eyes, which frightened him into full alertness. He straightened his head and understood. His temple was leaking blood, and it had matted with the sand and caked against his eyelid. He twisted his facial muscles and blinked hard and finally pried his right eyelid free.
“Stars.”
The word was so soft, Marcus had difficulty separating it from the pounding in his skull. He turned his head fully to the left. “Kirsten?”
“Marcus.” She did not turn her head to meet his gaze. Instead, her eyes stared straight up at the sky. “It is you, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“I see the stars, but where is the smoke?”
“Kirsten, try your bonds.”
“You didn’t need to do it this way.”
“Try and focus. Please. This is …” A wind too feeble to touch them pierced the clouds. Moonlight illuminated a face pale as the sand upon which she lay. She was blinking very fast. Each blink pressed out another tear. “Kirsten, we’re going to get out of this.”
“Where are the others?”
His hands were wet from where he had torn the skin off his wrists, trying to work free of his bonds before passing out. No matter how hard he pulled and struggled, there was no give to the stakes. He could feel the grit crusted to the fold of his eye and his mouth. “Kirsten, look at me.”
“There have to be others.” She blinked and spilled more rivulets. “Will they hurt me again?”
The voice was not hers. Nor the expression. Nor the eyes. “Kirsten, please, darling, wake up.”
Her face rolled toward him. Her eyes attacked him. Deep as pits and luminous with old pain. “You’re Marcus.”
“That’s right, darling. And I love you.”
“But you weren’t there.”
“No. I wasn’t.”
The tears slipped out to gather on her nose and drip like slow pain. “Why are you here now?”
He tried to keep his voice steady. “Kirsten, look at my hands. Lift your head. That’s right. No, up there. There, you see?”
She squinted hard. “You’re tied up.”
“Darling, listen to me. This is now. Do you understand? The men are not here.”
She rolled onto her back, offering herself to the night. “But I see the stars, Marcus. Look, and the smoke. Are they coming back now?”
“Kirsten. No, don’t go to sleep. Darling, you have to wake up!”
But she was gone from him. Marcus lifted himself as high as he could. And shouted to the dark. “Help! Anybody!”
He screamed again, on and on, until he felt something tear inside his head.
When he woke up, the pain was so intense he thought all the crashing came from his brain. Slowly Marcus sifted through the agony and realized the noise was mostly the ocean. He needed even longer to recognize that the ocean had moved.
Then he came fully awake as the next wave lapped over his left arm and leg.
He turned his head. The sky had cleared while he had been out. The moonlight was strong enough for him to see the next wave as silver-white. Kirsten’s face was drenched and her hair sodden. The retreating water swept entirely over her body. “Kirsten!”
Her face was utterly immobile. The moonlight turned her pale as a bound specter. He shouted her name again. A third time. He stopped as another wave rose and crashed. The sight frightened him more than his immobile fingers. More than how Kirsten’s chest did not seem to be moving.
The next wave looked huge. It rushed up toward him, covering his left limbs and sloshing over his chest. The water on his arm and leg felt lukewarm. But he could not feel anything in his hand or his foot. He twisted his neck so he could see his hand and tried to move his fingers. They remained locked into a half-curled position.
Marcus shut his eyes as the water rushed up and over him. This time the current was strong enough to fling the water across his chest and up the length of his right arm. He lifted his head from the stream and felt the froth flow back and away. The wet sand made a scrunching sound as he lowered his head and turned back to Kirsten.
A strand of seaweed was now wrapped across her cheek and one eye. The sight was obscene. And deathly still.
“WAKE UP!”
The effort of his scream clenched his entire body, pulling his limbs in tight. He dropped down, filled his lungs, clenched himself up tight, and screamed again.
Kirsten did not move.
But the stake holding his left arm did.
Marcus arched his entire body in an effort to swivel his head up so that he could see the stake. Then down, another panting breath, then back in the other direction. Yes. The left-hand stake was definitely canted more sharply than the right. He turned back, which was good, because he caught sight of an even bigger wave. One that crashed almost directly on top of Kirsten and broke over him so hard he choked. He gasped and fought for breath as the wave receded, blinking away the sting in his eyes.
Kirsten was still not moving.
He struggled against the stake, pressing himself far beyond the borders of pain. He did not care if he broke his arm, his shoulder, his back. He shouted out the pain that ripped through his shoulder and elbow. Down for a few moaning breaths, then he turned his head away as the next wave crashed. Not because of the water. Because he couldn’t bear to see it wash over her.
But this time, when the water receded, he felt the stake tremble.
His fingers were unable to feel the rope, much less clutch it. Marcus heaved and bellowed. Panted and groaned. He held his breath through another wave. Heaved again.
Slowly, with the sucking sound of being pulled from a living wound, the stake came free.
He curled away from the next wave. The water only made his joints and bones ache more. Where he had torn the skin around his ankles and wrists, the salty wash felt like hot acid.
His fingers refused to make a fist. He curled his left hand limply around the stake and punched his arm down into the sand by his side. Again. He lifted his hand up to his face, then clenched his eyes against the next wave. Blinking away the salt sting, he saw the stake’s blunt end was now caught into the ropes at his wrist. He turned and reached and jammed the stake into the sand by his right arm’s pinion. He dug and groaned and coughed through two waves, pulling as hard as he could all the time.
His right arm came free.
He sat up. His fingers were thick as sausages and utterly numb. He clamped the pair of staves together between his palms and attacked the sand by his left foot. With his feet spread-eagled it was a gymnast’s trick to reach it at all. His groin hurt worse than his wrists from the strain.
His left foot pulled free.
The stave holding his right foot seemed to take the longest of all. Now he could not stop himself from looking over and staring at Kirsten’s immobile form. Each new wave formed a foamy moonlight shroud. Marcus ripped out the final stave.
He crawled over to Kirsten and flicked the seaweed from her face. “Please, sweetheart, open your eyes.” He dropped his face close to hers, then to the chest, praying for a sign, a breath, a heartbeat. All he heard was the next wave.
He crawled to her hands. He heaved and roared and plucked the stave free. Down to her feet. Again.
He moved to her left side, so that his back took the next wave’s force instead of her head. He dug his numb hands under her and wept anew at the realization that he did not have the strength to lift her.
“Kirsten, help me, please.” He bent over her face, used the flesh of his palms to pry back her jaw. He fitted his lips to hers. She tasted of salt and impossible cold. He breathed. He held his mouth pinned there as the next wave crashed over them. Release. Breathed again. A third time. Another wave. And he knew they had to move.
He pushed and rolled her because there was nothing else to be done. The weight of her was an impossible task. He lifted and yelled and heaved and shoved her a yard farther up. Again. Over and over until they were both completely covered with sand and debris.
He did not know how long he continued with the gasping, weeping effort. Aeons. But he did not stop until the sand which formed their outermost cover was utterly dry, a frosting that shimmered in the moonlight. He remained on his knees above her, swaying slightly. Mouthing her name. Begging her to wake up.
She groaned.
The sound was so soft he could scarcely believe it at all. Then she shifted slightly, and took a deeper breath. Shuddered. Groaned again.
Only then did he realize his head was throbbing worse than his arms. The pain seemed to sweep up all at once, a wave so strong it could divorce itself from the sea and still be capable of crashing him to the beach, thrusting him down, then plucking him away.