Coughing water, the Wind Steppe princess awoke to grey skies above and the crashing of water. An arm was positioned under her breasts and pulling her along. She grasped that thick arm for support as Dante swam toward the beach.

Anara continued to cough as she attempted to aid Dante by kicking as well, though she probably wasn’t very much help.

Finally they touched bottom and together trudged toward the beach. As a wave came in, Dante moved behind her to break some of the water coming against her.

Exhausted and breathing heavily, Anara collapsed onto the wet sand.

“Are you all right, Princess?”

Too tired to talk, she nodded while tucking loose strands of wet heir behind her hears. She looked up, glancing about their prison. It was small, but there was a lot of beach and some forest surrounding that small mountain of slick rocks.

“There isn’t much to see,” Dante said, his large chest still heaving as he caught his breath. “We’ve used this island in the past to offload goods taken from Atalayan ships we plundered.”

He looked back toward his ship, its stern facing the beach as the first mate sailed away. So then, she thought. He knew the island.

Being trapped wasn’t so bad, but being trapped with him worried her. On the ship only a while ago she had a momentary moment of lust when she had thought he was breaking into the stateroom. But now…

She tried not to look at him. She found that she could not, and was relieved to find that he wasn’t staring through her soul as usual.

“You seem thoughtful, Princess.”

“Do I?”

“Indeed. Are you wondering how we will escape this island?”

She nodded. “Of course I am.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, not looking regretful at all, “but there won’t be an escape.”

His attitude made her forget about asking further questions. They were alone together now.

But even that thought was broken when she shivered and crossed her arms in a feeble attempt to warm herself. A storm was on the approach, and though the wind wasn’t heavy, it was no light breeze. It also seemed to carry an inordinate chill. Wearing a wet night dress didn’t help.

But where could they go for cover? The island had a large beachhead, higher ground where there were some of those odd trees she had seen before with the fronds and the fruits, and then farther were the cliffs, the rock wet and black. They gave her a chill, though the bright green grass and moss grew there, making it seem cold and yet alive.

With a start as she remembered the journal she had put in her pocket earlier. If Dante discovered she had it on her person, she didn’t know what would happen.

“We have to escape,” she said, raising her voice slightly against the breeze and the crashing of the waves.

“There are many more islands farther north,” Dante said, pointing in a general direction as he moved up the beach. Anara turned to look at him. He rolled up his sleeves. “The approach to this beach is safe,” he added, “but the other islands have jagged rocks and coral reefs that would kill us should we swim to them.”

She breathed out heavily. “So what are you saying? We wait for your friends to return and kill us? They seem to want something from you.”

He nodded.

“You should give it to them,” she added.

Dante glanced farther inland, then back to her and smiled. “I would, but I don’t have what they want.”

“I don’t believe you.”

He shrugged. “Neither do they. For some reason people believe me to play games with them.”

She couldn’t help but smile in amusement. “I wonder why.”

Quickly sobering, Anara remembered what the mate had said just before tossing her into the water. She was alone on this island with Dante. She looked at him. At least he wasn’t a wretch as Duke Korr was.

“What are you thinking about?”

She glanced into his violet eyes. “Nothing of your concern, Captain.” She turned and stalked farther up the beach to an area that had no trees. She was surprised when she found flagstones planted into the sand.

Dante came up behind her and pointed to something she hadn’t noticed. It was a fire pit. “This is where we come to cook and carouse in the night,” he said. “The fishing is wonderful. And easy.”

She saw a pile of broken glass and bottles in a rocky depression not far off. “And many other things it seems.”

“Alcohol is often a release,” he said. “You never know when one day will be your last in this life.”

Her eyes came to an old chest. She pointed at it. “What is that?”

He walked away from her toward the chest, gesturing for her to come after him. He opened the lid when he reached it. There was no lock, so whatever it was, it wasn’t very valuable. When she approached close enough to see, he said, “Harpoons. I told you, the fishing is easy here.”

Anara saw weapons, not things to catch fish with. She nodded, looked out to sea.

“Are you hungry?”

She needed time to think about what she would do. Teeth near to chattering, she said, “I am.”

“Then I will bring us back something to eat. Take the flint and the other materials and start a fire.” He gestured to a pile of collected driftwood before turning to lift out one of the long harpoons.

She nodded and their eyes found each other. Their stare lingered somewhat before Dante broke away.

“I’ll be back soon.”

She watched the waves as he removed his boots. “Why is it beginning to glow?” She could see it now, a faint blue coming from the water in splotches.

“La Lanterna dell'isola,” he said in Amalfi. “This place isn’t called ‘The Lantern Isles for no reason, yes? There are magical muscles with glowing pearls.”

“Magic?” she asked skeptically.

He nodded. “I’ll bring you one.”

“I’ve seen them before.”

“Aye?”

“Yes,” she said, “in the Wind Steppe. They’re precious.”

“But did you know they only come from this sea?”

She didn’t.

“Make a fire. Warm yourself. I’ll be back very soon.”

She regarded the blue-black sky beyond the slick cliffs. “Is it not going to storm?”

He smiled. “It always storms here.” He turned and he walked on toward the beach with his harpoon in hand.

It wasn’t the only harpoon from the chest.

She busied herself with her task of getting a fire going. She was a princess, so she was surprised he didn’t doubt her ability to do it. There were many other things she could do as well.

Wondering about what Dante had told her, she knew she couldn’t leave the island. Not if what he had said was true, and of course it was, otherwise his crew would not have marooned him here. With her for company.

She searched inside the chest after caressing the smooth wood on the other harpoons. The way he had moved before came to her mind. She wasn’t fast enough to defend herself with these if it came to that.

She found a flint and a dagger, along with some dry wood shavings. She took them to the fire pit and bundled them in the bottom, then set to piling the driftwood atop in proper fashion, but before striking the flint on the dagger, she tested the blade for its sharpness and found that she was disappointed. A shell from the beach would have more of an edge to it than this old thing.

As she struck the blade with the flint, causing sparks to fly into the wood shavings, she wondered what would happen should she give herself to Dante. He was a prisoner here on this island, and his crew was coming back to collect whatever it was they thought he had. They were probably going to kill him. And they weren’t stupid. They knew she was worth a lot of coin to the Atalayan nobility. These non-magic folk wanted to instill power into their bloodlines to increase their already vast power.

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Dante knew that. He was a noble himself—practically royalty, being a Duke. Dukes were high in rank, weren’t they? She didn’t know how they structured their noble houses and what titles meant what. So his threat to sell her on a slave block had been false. Surely he would have held on to her, either for himself or for some noble willing to pay a king’s ransom for her. What if Dante wanted her for this reason? Would that be so bad? Anything was better than Duke Korr of Atalaya, especially if Dante wanted her to himself.

Would her father care who she married? Surely he would—his alliance with Atalaya depended upon it. She couldn’t be certain of any of these things going through her head. These were things that should have been thought of before. But she had been safe on the ship while Dante was captaining her, despite his transgressions.

Dante didn’t want her for her blood. Dante wanted her body. That was why he equated her with fruit. He wanted to feast on her flesh like a beast. And part of her wanted him to. The other part shrunk back in terror.

It was this part of Anara that was considering the knife in her hand. He was going to get himself killed by being stubborn with his mutinous crew. Then what would happen to her? Would she be hauled to some other place, like an item to be auctioned off to the highest bidder—or would the crew have their way with her? She looked down at the dagger, her knuckles white on the hilt. She gritted her teeth and struck the flint furiously. Sparks flew and the dry wood shavings finally caught. They smoked profusely as the weak flame guttered in the wind.

They would have their way with her. Apparently they were so ignorant of her value, they had left her with Dante. Or did they not care about her maidenhead? She could still breed regardless of its… intactness.

She shook herself from these thoughts, an anger boiling inside her. She tried ti distract herself. Anara had made fires many times—even with a flint, since she was a Whirlwind and not a Scorcher. She knew how to survive in the wilds, not that she did very much surviving. She blew on the shavings and they caught much better. Orange flames licked about and began to travel to the smaller bits of driftwood now.

The meager heat that radiated toward her made the princess shiver and her skin prickle. She held herself for a moment, shivering as the flames consumed the wood, eventually leaving behind glowing coals. She was about to feed the fire when she heard footfalls behind her.

Taken aback at the sight of Dante without clothes made her think of the statues. Well, he was still wearing his breaches, but he had ripped them off below the knees. Other than that, his skin was completely bare, droplets of water still trailing off of him.

His muscles shown very well. Perhaps not as well as the Thithian statues at the pool of Lolitila, but these muscles were real, on a very real man standing in front of her.

What did he look like without his breaches?

Blinking, she noticed he was watching her regard him and busied herself with the driftwood. She tossed another piece onto the fire.

“Do you like what you see, Princess?”

She flinched, but only slightly. He had caught her admiring his body. How perverse was she?

“Of course not, ­Captain di Niente.” She wasn’t certain what that meant, but she knew it wasn’t polite. “I was simply looking at that fish you caught.”

He seemed distracted slightly and glanced at the fish he had sticking on the harpoon. “Yes, of course.”

He approached her and put out an upturned fist. Opening his fingers, he revealed a glowing pearl there. It was bright.

Anara’s lips parted somewhat. These pearls that seemed so common in these waters were rare in the Wind Steppe. “It’s beautiful.”

“Indeed,” he said, gesturing for her to take it. “It’s yours.”

Her guard went up. “And why should I accept a gift from you?”

He seemed taken aback for a moment, then smiled at her. “You’ve been accepting my gifts ever since coming to my ship. Don’t stop simply because we’re marooned together, alone, here on this island.”

She closed her eyes as he said those words. Of course he didn’t think for one moment that they weren’t alone, marooned together on this godsforsaken pirate’s den, but speaking the words meant that he was thinking about them—about their aloneness and isolation.

Grudgingly she snatched the pearl out of his hand.

Seeming not to take notice, he smiled and put the harpoon down a few feet away. Anara turned her back to him and warmed herself on the fire as he cleaned the fish. She would have helped, but she wanted to irk him.

“We will eat soon,” he said. “Are you not hungry now?”

“How are you cleaning that thing without a knife?”

“Oh, I had one in my boot.”

“I see,” she said, turning to look at him. He was on his knees, cleaning the fish, his back turned to her. She looked at the knife in her hand.

“I see you let the flames die,” he said. “That’s good. We don’t want to burn the succulent meat. Have you ever had kavoracci before?”

“I don’t know.”

There was no way she was going to do it. She couldn’t kill him.

“You’ll like it. We’ll cook it and eat it, and then we will go into the caves.”

“What is in the caves?”

“Many things,” he said. “Silky white sand, a crackling hearth with a cauldron of hot water so we can bathe, even. It gets quite cold. And there’s a storm on the horizon as you have pointed out. The clouds that come from the north are very, very cold. The rain is almost freezing.”

“How is that possible?”

He chuckled. “You’re the Wind Steppe Princess,” he said. “You tell me. Something to do with the Ththian flying plains. They affect the weather in strange ways. Snow comes to these islands at unusual times throughout the year. You didn’t know?”

Looking up into the sky, she could see one of the plains. It was darkened by clouds—barely visible. She wished she could go back and escape all of this.

“No,” she said, genuinely surprised. “I never did. How would I?”

“I suppose you wouldn’t,” he said.

Something came to Anara then. The words Dante had spoken. “You said a burning fire with a cauldron of hot water?”

“Yes, I did. Are you looking forward to a hot bath?”

“I am cold. But you said burning hearth. Burning.”

She was looking at him, the blunt dagger in her hand. He turned, wiped at his face, the knife in that hand. “I did, didn’t I? Well, I went into the caves and started the fire there before preparing the water. I told you the fishing here was easy.”

She raised the knife. “You think you’re going to bed me in there, don’t you? What, you plan to take me while I’m naked in a tub of hot water? Do you think I’ll be relaxed, ‘loosened up’ for you, Dante?”

Her heart was beating fast. She wasn’t afraid. She was waiting for his answer. She knew what it would be.

“Do you trust me?”

Frowning, she said, “Gods, no.”

“I meant…” he said, a mild sign of exasperation on his face, “do you trust my word?”

His word? She thought about that for a moment as the wind whipped her loose tresses about. Yes, she did.

The Wind Steppe princess nodded with one strong dip of her chin. “Yes, I trust your word.”

“Very well,” he said, the finest example of sobriety and honor as he put a hand to his chest. “Anara of the Iizuhlian Wind Steppe khanate. I, Lord Duke Dante Campione of Amalfi, by all the gods and goddesses—on pain of death—do swear that I will not touch you unless you ask it of me.”

It was the longest, most sincere sentence she had ever heard in utterance, and she believed every single word—knew that they were true. And something inside her was terribly disappointed with that oath.

“Very well,” she said, gritting her teeth. If he wasn’t going to give her what she wanted, she would make him how.

But she didn’t care.

With her Whirlwind magic she hurled a cyclone into Dante. He flew across the ground several feet, landing on his back amidst sand and scree.

She ran to him, knife in hand, bent toward Dante, who had his hands on his face and grabbed—

Her hand passed straight through his head!

She blinked, taken aback and tried to grab another fistful of his hair. Surely she had simply grabbed the air above his head in her haste, but when she made to grab his hair a second time the same thing happened again.

Her jaw dropped as Dante’s body became opaque and wisped away with the wind. She looked about, wondering what had happened.

What did she do?

Something moved and she looked up as Dante—the real Dante, stepped out from behind a tree. “You wound me, Princess. And to think I had just sworn an oath to you.”

She pointed an accusing finger at him. “How did you…?”

He rushed her.

The next thing she knew she was on her back with Dante on top of her. She couldn’t move as he had her wrist pinned against her head, his blade tucked underneath her chin.

It made her hot and wanting. She wanted to scream “Yes, Dante! Fuck me!”

But she did not. Her shock had confused her.

“Why did you try to kill me?”

“I didn’t!”

“Then why did you attack me?”

“Apparently it wasn’t you.”

“Indeed. Now answer me, Princess,” Dante said. His tone left no room for artful dodging or lies.

She decided to test his patience. “Why?”

His eyes narrowed as his grip on her wrist tightening. He even moved the blade at her neck closer for a quick kill. “I don’t much like the idea of getting my throat cut in the night.”

“I wasn’t going to kill you,” she growled, struggling underneath him.

“Then what did you think you were doing?”

“I wanted to warn you.” She could barely look into his eyes as she said those words. She felt embarrassed, despite the fact that they were a lie. They made her look pathetic. “After your oath, I wanted to show you that I could protect myself whether or not you told me true. There. Is that good enough for you, Captain?”

He pulled back, looked at her skeptically for what seemed like the longest time. Finally he nodded. “Very well. But don’t try anything like that again.”

He got off her, stood and put out a hand.

She smirked. “Or what, Dante? Will you sell me on the slave blocks at the Ravager Coast?”

His serious demeanor lightened somewhat. “Don’t tempt me, Princess.”

She turned, looking for the fish she had blown ten paces away. She couldn’t see it among the debris. “How did you do that?”

“Do what? Dante asked. “Use magic?” He laughed. “Wind Steppe nobles are so ignorant about the world outside of their own.”

She blinked in utter astonishment, her eyes falling to the flagstones. She actually felt guilty for being stopped so thoroughly. He knew she would try something. But how?

He went where he had been hiding originally and picked up the cleaned fish. “The Thithian people didn’t disappear,” he added in explanation. “They never did. They simply spread out, becoming part of the various peoples of the world. Their bloodlines still exist—some of which are quite pure. It is said that some of them even possessed violet eyes that glowed in the darkness.”

He smiled.

“So you’re a Thithian, then?”

“Well, no,” he said seeming disappointed. “Perhaps if Thithia still existed, I would be. The Campione bloodline has a lot of Thithian, but alas we are not completely pure.”

“Your men won’t kill you,” she said. “Surely they will ransom you back to your family in Amalfi?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. They seem to hate me.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Surely they’re not so stupid as to kill you for whatever reason. Not when gold is involved.”

“We can speculate all night, or we can eat this fish.”

“Fine,” she said. “I’m hungry.”

“Indeed.” He picked up the fish which was ready for cooking and brushed the sand off before putting it over the fire. He used the harpoon to turn and cook it evenly.

They stood there in silence as the meat sizzled. Anara wondered what Dante was thinking. As if in answer to her thoughts he spoke. “Why did you kill me?”

She looked at him and blinked. They stared at one another. Was he serious? Had they not cleared that up? After a few moments of intense silence, Dante’s lips quirked in a smile, and for some reason, Anara started laughing.

“I’ll have to punish you for your insolence, woman.”

Still laughing, Anara agreed. “Perhaps you should punish me.”

“Indeed.” Their mirth subsided. “But before that, let us eat. The storm is nearly upon us, and I cannot leave a princess out in the rain—even if she does wish to kill me.”

He pulled the fish off the fire as the black clouds roiled in, bringing cold air with them. She ate ravenously, her mind furiously churning out thoughts.

Perhaps you should punish me. There was much more behind those words than Anara had immediately realized, but upon thinking of them, the Wind Steppe princess admitted to herself that she was aching for Dante’s touch.

It frightened her. But that was the girl inside her—the princess.

The woman wanted out—to be free.

Anara would end up the wife of Duke Korr, or an item to be used by Cordilio and his crew. She would have neither of those things.

The Wind Steppe princess was not in a position to make her own choices, but she could choose between the choices available to her.

Dante was here. She wanted him—had wanted this violet-eyed devil since laying eyes on him the first day the Parvita was boarded.

The princess couldn’t make this decision, and so Anara let out the woman within her—the one clawing for the surface. But this woman, and indeed the princess as well, were prideful creatures.

The Wind Steppe Princess would not ask Dante to bed her.

She would make him.