Fire & Frost
Author: Meljean Brook
Date: 2013-03-25 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Steampunk; Paranormal Romance; Romance; Anthologies; Paranormal; Fantasy; Urban Fantasy; Shapeshifters; Short Stories; Zombies
Description: Wrecked: A Tale of the Iron Seas by Meljean Brooks – Elizabeth has spent the past five years running from her father; her father’s huntsman, Caius, has spent the past five years pursuing her. But when he finally catches up to her on an airship flying above Europe’s zombie-infested cities, Elizabeth discovers that Caius isn’t the only danger she has to fear—and now that he’s found her, Caius doesn’t intend to let her go… Speed Mating by Jessica Sims – Estrella may be going into heat, but she’s determined to remain in control. Just because she’s ovulating doesn’t mean she has to settle for just

Table of Contents

Title Page

Wrecked by Meljean Brook

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Epilogue

Authors’ Note

Other Works by Meljean Brook

Copyright

Wrecked

A Tale of the Iron Seas

Meljean Brook

Chapter One

HER FATHER’S HUNTERS HAD FOUND her.

Elizabeth recognized them as soon as she rounded the corner toward home—a man and a woman flanking the front door of her boarding house. Heart thumping in her chest, she resisted the impulse to dart behind a passing steamcoach. A quick movement would draw the hunters’ attention.

Dear God. They were so close. In another twenty steps, she would have crossed the busy street and fallen straight into their hands.

Without a change in pace, Elizabeth tucked her chin deeper into her woolen scarf, burying the bottom of her face. Acrid smoke billowed behind the steamcoach as it rattled past, the dingy cloud obscuring her view of the hunters—and preventing them from seeing her slip into a tinkerer’s shop. Inside, she pretended to browse the clockwork novelties displayed in the window, stealing glances at the hunters as she wound up a jumping frog.

Matthias and Amelia. Almost five years had passed since Elizabeth had seen either of them, but both looked the same as they had when delivering wild beasts to her father’s sanctuary. Wide-brimmed hats shadowed their eyes. Ankle-length brown coats buckled over their chests and concealed the weapons harnesses they always wore.

Nothing about the hunters looked overtly threatening, but passersby seemed to sense the danger. A pair of gentlemen cast their gazes to the ground, as if hoping to avoid notice. A young boy and girl who had been laughing up at the sparsely falling snow and trying to catch the tiny flakes on their tongues suddenly had their hands gripped by their governess and were hurried past the boarding house. In this part of Brighton, where moneyed travelers browsed the shops for expensive trinkets and enjoyed the cleanest air that England had to offer, Matthias and Amelia were wolves among hens. But Elizabeth had seen a hunter receive the same wary glances from residents of the lawless smuggling towns she’d hidden in after escaping her father’s estate. No matter where she ran to, people seemed to recognize what the hunters were.

Predatory, unrelenting…merciless. After they sighted their prey, they’d stop at nothing to bring it in.

Elizabeth edged a little farther away from the window, the instinct to flee yanking at her every nerve. Matthias and Amelia had been standing long enough that a dusting of snow had accumulated on their hat brims and shoulders. Had they searched the boarding house yet, or were they waiting for someone who was already inside?

Was Caius Trachter with them?

A familiar ache started in her chest. Caius. After she’d fled from home, he’d pursued her halfway around the world and back again—and two years before, he’d finally caught her in the Ivory Market, on the western coast of Africa. Elizabeth had made the mistake of bolting the moment she’d seen him, trying to lose him in the chaotic marketplace, but it wouldn’t have mattered if she’d run or calmly continued walking. Caius had already spotted her. He’d taken her down with an opium dart as if she were an animal, and she’d woken tied to a bed in an airship bound for the Americas.

Caius had attended to her every need during the voyage…also as if she were an animal. Her father’s hunters didn’t kill their prey; they cared for the captured beasts until delivering them into her father’s keeping. So Caius had fed Elizabeth, guarded her door—from inside the cabin, with his back to her—while she’d bathed, and walked with her on the promenade deck for exercise. For a week, he’d rarely left her side, sharing her every meal and sleeping on the floor beside her bed. In those few moments when he’d left her alone, she’d been tied again.

But animals didn’t talk to their captors, and Elizabeth had barely allowed hers a moment’s peace. She’d begged for Caius to free her. She’d threatened him. She’d promised to give him anything if he released her.

When she’d realized that she couldn’t give Caius what he wanted most—his own freedom—she’d appealed to his compassion instead. She’d told him of the fate awaiting her at home and the horror that had forced her to flee on the night of her twentieth birthday.

For a short time, she’d believed that her pleas had affected him. She’d believed that Caius no longer saw her as prey—or as the pampered girl he’d met when he’d been forced into her father’s service to pay off his family’s debts.

Two years older than Elizabeth, he’d been a sullen, dark-haired fifteen-year-old boy with a gleaming shackle of indenture around his left wrist and resentment burning in his eyes every time he’d looked at her. Apprenticed to a hunter, then a huntsman in his own right, Caius had spent most of his time away from her father’s sanctuary, returning only when he’d brought new animals in. The years had passed, and she’d watched him grow from a sullen youth into a hardened young man. By the time Elizabeth was sixteen, his resentment had cooled into quiet hostility—and with every encounter, his obvious dislike only made her determined to change his opinion. She’d wanted him to smile at her, to talk with her.

And with every encounter, she’d been increasingly bewildered and hurt by his icy, insulting responses. She’d done nothing to deserve them. Yet his hostility only seemed to grow.

But he’d warmed to her on the airship. At least, she’d believed that he had.

Though Caius had been all but silent during the first part of the voyage, in the days before they’d reached Johannesland he’d told her stories of his hunts for lions and rhinoceros and zebra—animals that she’d seen when he’d brought them in, but she’d never heard how he’d caught them or of the dangers he’d encountered transporting them out of zombie-infested lands. He’d joked about how a machete could be a man’s closest friend when facing one of the ravenous creatures. He’d mentioned fighting mercenaries and rival hunters who’d attempted to steal the valuable animals for collectors or naturalists in competition with her father. He’d spoken of the people he’d met while pursuing her around the world, the letters he’d received from his mother and sister since leaving home, and of the life he’d planned to have before his father had died and left his family destitute. He’d told her of how he’d once hoped to attend a university, obtain a comfortable position as a solicitor, and marry the girl he’d loved at fifteen—a pretty blonde named Katarina.

But after they’d reached the shores of Johannesland and boarded the locomotive that would carry them over the last leg of their journey, Caius told her that if he brought her back home, Elizabeth’s father had promised to release him from his service. All debts paid in full, and the thirty-year period of indenture would end the moment Caius walked through the door with Elizabeth in hand.

Aboard that locomotive, Elizabeth had realized two things. One, Caius hadn’t warmed to her. He’d been explaining why he would never release her. Given an option between his freedom and hers, Caius had chosen his own.

Two, she couldn’t blame him for it. After all, she’d been asking him to choose her freedom over his—and she understood all too well how the need to take charge of one’s own life could drive a person to make selfish and desperate choices. And so as the locomotive’s steam engine had chugged its way around a steep mountainside, she’d made her own desperate choice.

In a maddened effort, she’d broken away from Caius and jumped from the railcar.

Only sheer luck and a tree had saved her. The last she’d seen of him, Elizabeth had been clinging to the top of a tall white pine that stood on the side of a deep ravine while Caius had searched the rocky banks of the river below, calling her name until he’d shouted himself hoarse. His voice had finally failed him, but still he looked for her along the stones and the rapids. A full day had passed before he’d searched far enough down the river for Elizabeth to alight from her tree—exhausted and bruised but free.

She’d hoped that Caius would believe she was dead. Without a body, however, her father must not have been satisfied and sent his hunters after her again. And this time, he apparently hadn’t trusted Caius to complete the job alone.

Matthias and Amelia still waited outside the boarding house door. Caius was possibly in her room at that very moment, searching through her belongings.

There wasn’t much to search through. She never purchased more than a few changes of clothing suitable for blending in with the local population. Too many times, she’d had to abandon everything but what she carried—and so Elizabeth carried everything that she needed with her in a satchel and in pockets sewn under her clothes. When she’d escaped the sanctuary five years before, she’d taken a small fortune in gold and jewels. Some she kept with her; she’d hidden the rest of her money away in various cities.

Elizabeth didn’t worry about what Caius might find in her room. She never left anything that might reveal where she spent her days or where her next destination would be if she was forced to run again.

And she was always prepared to run again.

At this time of day, she could easily leave Brighton by one of four routes: a boat at the pier, traveling by post steamcoach or boarding a locomotive to another town, or purchasing a fare on a passenger airship. If those failed, there were several other, more difficult routes by foot or horseback or steamcart, or by hiring a personal balloon. It wouldn’t matter where she went; for now, she just needed to put distance between herself and the hunters.

But first, she had to wait until the hunters left. Every muscle tense, she watched through the window, winding up another toy. After a few minutes, a man emerged from the boarding house, and her heart stopped.

Not Caius. Her father.

Tiny gears ground beneath her clenching fingers. She released the windup’s key. Her hands shook as she replaced the little bird in the window, its wire feet skittering over the shelf. The music box chirped a cheery tune and the copper wings flapped, and Elizabeth was struck by the sudden terror that the noise would give her away.

Trying to control her panic, she glanced across the street again. Her father didn’t look in her direction; he was speaking to the hunters. More gray peppered his dark hair. From this distance, she couldn’t see whether her absence or time had lined his face, but she knew his eyes would be as sharp and bright as the mind behind them. A brilliant man, her father. But never a cold one. When he loved, his heart burned unceasingly.

She should have known he’d never accept death as the end. Her father never had.

While she watched, he gestured north along the street. Relief slipped through Elizabeth, releasing some of the tension holding her in its grip. He must have spoken with the boardinghouse matron. Elizabeth never left anything for someone to find—except for lies. She’d told the matron she intended to spend the day on Modiste Row. In truth, Elizabeth had walked to visit the menagerie at the Retreat, as she did almost every day. Now she would run south as soon as her father went north.

The three started in that direction. Movement near Amelia’s feet drew Elizabeth’s gaze. A pair of lean gray dogs were rising from the walk at her heels.

The hairs along Elizabeth’s spine prickled with cold sweat. Hounds. Her father wasn’t tracking her by scent yet—he would want to discover her himself, and follow her as far as his information took him—but as soon as he discovered that she hadn’t been to the dressmakers’ shops, he’d use the dogs. No doubt he had a handkerchief or some scrap of fabric from her room to provide a scent. When he did, Amelia’s hounds would lead them straight to her.

And now Elizabeth’s only option was an airship. One that was leaving within the next half hour. Any later than that would be too late.

She waited until they were out of sight and fled.

SHE WASN’T DEAD.

Although he’d followed Elizabeth—a living, breathing Elizabeth—for the past hour, Caius couldn’t truly believe it. Not until he spoke to her, until he touched her, until he heard her voice. He needed to now. But he forced himself to wait, standing in the shadow of a parked lorry with his hat low and his gaze fixed on the tinkerer’s shop. From his angle, the window reflected an image of the street, of passing steamcoaches and pedal buggies, but now and again he saw her face peering through the glass like an apparition.

But she was no ghost.

Elizabeth Jannsen was alive.

And now she was bolting out of the tinkerer’s shop, racing along the walk on the opposite side of the street. Heading toward the airship field, most likely. Flyers departed on a more regular schedule than boats, and she would know that her best chance of escaping the hound was by sea or by air. Elizabeth always made her trail difficult to follow—so wary and clever, it had taken Caius three years to catch up to her the first time.

He couldn’t lose her again now.

The need to pursue her tore at him, but Caius remained where he was until she reached the end of the street and rounded the corner, tugging her hat over her brown curls as she ran. She’d grown her hair out again. Careful to keep distance between them, he started after her, desperately seeking out any other changes when he caught sight of her darting across the high street crossroad. He would have recognized her back and shoulders anywhere—and it was fortunate he’d recognized them an hour before, or she’d have turned and spotted him in the menagerie, and this chase would have begun then.

Caius didn’t intend to capture her now, though. He only intended to make certain that Willem Jannsen never would.

Elizabeth was already a step ahead of her father. Caius was, too, but only because he’d pursued her for so long. He knew her better than Willem Jannsen did—not the woman her father wanted her to be, but the woman that she was. So when Caius had arrived in Brighton just ahead of her father’s airship and discovered that Elizabeth wasn’t at her boarding house, he’d gone to the place she’d most likely be: the Retreat.

Over the Horde Empire’s two-hundred-year occupation of England, the governors and magistrates had used Brighton as a summer retreat. When the Horde had fled during the revolution over a decade before, the governor had abandoned a collection of exotic animals rescued from the European continent. Now they were tended by volunteer zoologists who hoped to breed the rare beasts and restore populations that had been eaten to near-extinction by zombies.

Caius had known that Elizabeth would visit the menagerie as often as possible, just as she’d visited the sanctuary’s keep each day. Even at thirteen years of age, she’d spent most of her time in the company of animals. That hadn’t changed as she’d gotten older—or when she’d been on the run.

Or when everyone had believed her dead.

Caius could still feel the painful jolt his heart had given when he’d seen her standing at an enclosure overlooking an Iberian lynx. He’d barely been able to stop himself from going to her then and there.

He only wanted to keep her safe. But Elizabeth wouldn’t have felt safe if she’d seen him. She’d have fled—and in her panic, might have run straight into her father.

She’d once been desperate enough to jump from a railcar to escape that fate. Caius would do anything to see that Elizabeth was never so desperate again.

That meant he had to follow her at a distance and be content with the little he saw. The flash of bright red stockings and sturdy black boots as she ran. Her strong grip on the satchel slung crosswise over her shoulder, preventing the bag from bouncing against her hip. The tail of her blue scarf hanging down her back, and the line of her jaw when she stopped at a street corner and waited for a spider rickshaw to pass.

As she paused, Caius drank in the sight of her. He’d thought the jolt to his heart would ease as surprise faded and truth settled in. She was alive. He’d thought the need to touch her and to take her into his arms would diminish, but that desire was only growing.

But that desire had always grown. From the day he’d met her until grief had shattered his heart, that need had never diminished.

Of course it wouldn’t now, either.

The rickshaw skittered by and Elizabeth broke into a run again—still headed toward the airship docks. Caius kept pace at a jog that he could maintain for hours.

Elizabeth moved just as easily, as if she’d never leaped from a railcar into a ravine. But he couldn’t assume she hadn’t been injured. The menagerie might be the reason she’d come to live in Brighton…but more than half the people born in England during the Horde occupation possessed mechanical prosthetics or tools grafted to their bodies. Even if she’d lost a leg, it could be replaced here, and she had enough money to purchase one that moved as smoothly as a limb made of flesh. Until he saw skin, Caius couldn’t know that she’d escaped unscathed.

A heavy ache filled his chest. How the hell had she survived that jump? Christ. He could still see her, that last wild glance back at him before she’d leapt. He could still feel the terror and disbelief when he’d lunged for her, when his fingers had brushed the hem of her coat but he’d gripped nothing in his fist. The memory had haunted his nightmares for two years.

But she was alive.

The street widened leading to the airship field. Almost fifty balloons floated overhead in ordered rows, from luxury passenger liners to sturdy ferries to flyers for hire that Caius wouldn’t trust to carry him across the Channel. He slowed to a walk beside a steamcoach, using its bulk for cover when Elizabeth stopped at the schedule written on two slate boards near the field entrance. Choosing the next departing airship.

It wouldn’t matter which one she chose. This would have been the best route of escape when Caius had been chasing her, because he would’ve had to wait until he found another airship headed in the same direction. At one time, it would’ve been the best way to lose her father and the hound, too. No longer.

His gaze rose to the south end of the docking field, where the private airships were tethered. A cloud clipper with a gleaming hull and twin balloons hovered in the fourth station, smaller than many of the personal yachts in the same row, but sleek and swift—the Mary Elizabeth. Her father had purchased the airship shortly after Caius had removed his shackle of indenture. In the past two years, the sight of that clipper had meant one thing: it was time for Caius to run. Not to escape Jannsen but to lay a false trail, leading Elizabeth’s father and his hunters away from what mattered most—but Caius had inadvertently created a path leading them to Elizabeth.

He wouldn’t let that trail end in her capture.

A moment later Elizabeth sped past the slate boards, into the northern docks. Caius waited until she was out of sight before going to look at the schedule, his gaze sliding down the list and stopping on one. Kingfisher. The skyrunner was leaving in twenty minutes—a four-day journey to the Ivory Market. A fast flyer and a destination where she couldn’t be easily traced. She would have chosen that one.

A glance at the fare made him suck in a sharp breath. He’d spent most of his money hiring an airship to bring him to Brighton ahead of her father. This would take every last denier he had.

He’d pay it, gladly. But Caius would be stranded in the Ivory Market until he earned enough for a fare home, and he’d already been away longer than he’d intended.

Caius’s mother would understand. His sister would, too.

His daughter wouldn’t.

The cost of this trip wouldn’t be the money. It was the additional weeks of his daughter’s life that he would miss and never get back. It was the four days of being on the same airship with the woman he loved—all the while knowing he would never have another four days with her again.

Yet it was well worth the price if his daughter and Elizabeth were safe. Willem Jannsen would come after her. But he wouldn’t expect to find Caius standing in his way.

So the chase was on. And this time, Caius meant to end it.

Chapter Two

AS SHE ENTERED HER PRIVATE CABIN, Elizabeth’s heart was still pounding from the wobbling autogyro ride she’d taken from the airfield’s entrance directly to Kingfisher’s main deck. She could have boarded the airship via the cargo platform, as passengers typically did, but walking to the docking station would have led the hounds directly there. Eventually her father would track down the autogyro pilot and learn which airship Elizabeth had taken, but after the pilot had flown her to the skyrunner, she’d paid him to take a message to her boardinghouse matron. So that would give Elizabeth an extra hour, at least. Probably more. No other passenger vessels were leaving for the Ivory Market for several days, and even if her father hired an airship, that crew would need time to secure the provisions and coal needed for the long journey.

By the time he reached the Market, she would have already left again. The hounds might track her to another docking station, but it wouldn’t matter. Unlike Brighton, the flights in and out of the Ivory Market weren’t registered. She would board another airship and there would be no trace left of her to follow. Not even an eyewitness.

Opening her satchel, Elizabeth made certain her trousers and coat were still folded inside. She wouldn’t alter her appearance yet. That had to wait until she reached the Market, or this crew would be able to give her father a description of a young man to follow. Let her father continue asking about a young woman, instead.

Kingfisher’s engine suddenly thrummed, starting a vibration through the boards under her feet. Through the hull, she heard the faint rattle of chains as the cargo platform was raised against the deck, followed by shouts from the crew to release the tether anchoring the skyrunner to the station.

Preparing to depart—and she was still free. By the skin of her teeth.

Even now, her father might be entering the airship field. Elizabeth wanted to go up on deck, to watch the hounds lose her trail at the autogyro stand, but giving in to the urge could be a mistake. If Elizabeth could see her father then he could see her, and all of her running would have been for nothing. Better to wait in her cabin until they had flown at least a mile south.

The tread of boots sounded from the passageway. Already anxious, Elizabeth tensed as the steps paused at her door—then moved on. A moment later, she heard another cabin door opening and closing.

One of the other passengers, then. When she’d asked, the captain had told her there were four men aboard, aside from the crew. Not many, but the fare was expensive and the route dangerous. Most airships followed the Atlantic coastline around Europe to avoid flying over Horde territory. The higher price reflected both the risk the aviators took and the speed with which they’d arrive at the Ivory Market.

It was a risk Elizabeth was willing to take, as well—and speed that she was willing to pay for.

After a few minutes, she glanced out the porthole. Only water below. They’d already left Brighton.

She went up on deck to watch England vanish into the distance.

WITHIN AN HOUR almost everything had vanished into a thick swirl of white. Standing near the front of the skyrunner and looking back along the airship’s side, Elizabeth could barely make out the shape of the balloon at the stern, as if the envelope simply faded away into the heavy fall of snow. Nothing on the ground was visible, but she’d flown this route before and knew what lay below. Hundreds of years ago, the French occupied these lands. But that was before the Horde’s armies and war machines had rolled in from the east. Before the zombie infection had swept across the continent. Before most of Europe had fled to Scandinavia and the New World.

Now there were only the ruins of cities and villages overgrown by the surrounding vegetation. There were only forests and fields harvested by the Horde.

And zombies.

The ravenous creatures roamed unchecked over most of Europe and Africa. Only a few walled cities and outposts stood on each continent. Elizabeth thought the risk of flying this route wasn’t that it took them over Horde territory—she’d hidden in several villages at the edges of the empire when Caius had been chasing her, and had felt as safe there as she had anywhere in the New World or around the North Sea. The real danger came from the slim chance that the airship would be forced to ground, its defenses overwhelmed by the dead, and the passengers’ flesh torn apart and consumed while they were still alive—or worse, suffering a bite that would turn them into one of the creatures.

Animals didn’t become zombies, though. They were just eaten.

Her cheeks stinging from the cold and wind, Elizabeth looked east. There was nothing to see but falling snow. But her father’s family had originally hailed from that direction. Nobles from the lowlands of Holland, they’d migrated to Johannesland in the northern American continent, near the great freshwater lakes. With the permission of the local native trade federation—an arrangement strengthened by several marriages over the years—her father’s ancestors had developed large tracts of land as a sanctuary for many of the animals brought from Europe and Africa.

But not all of the species survived. Of those that had, their populations—small to begin with—had declined over the decades, so that few breeding animals had remained by the time her grandfather inherited the sanctuary.

When her father had been a young man, he’d traveled around the world searching for a solution. He’d sent hunters to find specimens to reinvigorate the breeding stock—and to save the animals from certain extinction if they remained in zombie-infested lands. And he’d appealed to Horde smugglers, who exported stolen technology out of the empire to fund their rebellions.

The machine they’d found had surpassed even her father’s hopes. Created by order of a Great Khan after he’d failed to produce a son or daughter, the device had been designed to replicate him so that the issue of his flesh could be implanted in the womb of his favorite wife. Elizabeth didn’t know if the Khan had succeeded in his plan, but it didn’t surprise her that the Horde had invented such an incredible machine. They’d created other marvels, both wondrous and terrifying. The zombies’ infection was not a natural sickness, but caused by tiny mechanical bugs in the creatures’ bodies. In the occupied territories, similar bugs had allowed the Horde to graft prosthetics and tools to the bodies of laborers. Her father’s hunters were infected with the same bugs, which made them faster and stronger than uninfected men and women—and allowed them to heal more quickly.

But the bugs weren’t all the Horde had created. There were the monstrous kraken and megalodons in the seas. The boilerworms and the floating jellyfish. Towers which could broadcast a radio signal and control an entire population.

Few people knew of her father’s machine. In the New World, any Horde technology was automatically suspect. But his success had been noticed by scientific societies and other conservationists. Soon he was not just replicating specimens from the sanctuary in Johannesland, but from other sanctuaries throughout the Americas. His hunters brought in more animals and he delivered their replicated issue to other naturalists struggling to renew failing populations.

He’d met her mother in that way. A naturalist from Manhattan City, she’d brought a chimpanzee to his sanctuary. Within a week, her mother had married him.

Ten years later, she’d died giving birth to Elizabeth.

A lantern flared to life near Elizabeth’s post, radiating faint heat across her cheek. Startled, she glanced up. The day had grown dim—though white flakes still filled the air, night was falling. Each breath streamed from her mouth in a frozen ribbon, slipping away into the wind.

Suddenly cold, she made her way down the ladder to the second deck. She removed her coat and hat, grateful for the copper pipes that circulated hot water from the boiler room and throughout the airship, warming the cabins to a comfortable temperature. In her quarters, she lit her lamp and tried to fluff some life into her flattened curls. She would be expected at the captain’s table before too long, where her conversation would consist of lies about who she was and why she was headed to the Ivory Market. That would be easy enough; she’d done it many times before. She always had different names and stories at the ready.

Blast it all, though—she’d grown weary of telling them. Just once, Elizabeth wanted to be herself.

But she never had been…except for the one week she’d spent on an airship with Caius. He hadn’t expected her to be anyone else and she hadn’t pretended to be. For the first time, she’d just been Elizabeth.

She would have preferred an opportunity to be herself while she wasn’t tied to a bed, however.

A knock sounded at the door. Most likely the porter coming to announce dinner.

“I’ll be there shortly,” she called. “Thank you!”

Another knock. More insistent this time.

For heaven’s sake. Did they think she needed an escort to find the captain’s cabin? She wasn’t likely to become lost on the way; it was on the same deck as her own quarters.

Frowning with irritation, Elizabeth opened the door and encountered a wide chest. She glanced up.

It was as if she’d conjured him from her wish to be herself. A tall man with broad shoulders stood in the narrow passageway. Dark hair. A face that had been a beautiful, sullen boy’s—now harder, leaner, with shadows carving sharp angles from his cheekbones and jaw.

Caius.

Her heart plummeted.

She slammed the door and hit his booted foot, wedged against the frame. He pushed into the cabin. She turned to run and his left arm snagged around her waist. Kicking the door shut, he clapped his gloved hand over her mouth before she could shout for help.

“Don’t be afraid, Elizabeth.” His big body crowded her back against the bulkhead and she tasted the warm leather of his glove on her tongue. “I’m not here to— Bludging hell!”

Yanking his thumb from between her clamped teeth, Caius shook his hand as if to fling away the pain. He stared down at her, his eyebrows drawn and his expression dark. All at once, his lips quirked into a smile and laughter glimmered in the blue of his eyes.

Elizabeth hauled in a breath to scream.

Caius’s head swooped down. His mouth captured hers.

And suddenly, she had no breath at all.

CAIUS HADN’T INTENDED to kiss her.

But she was so warm. Alive. And her lips were stiff beneath his.

He drew back before she recovered from her surprise and bit him again. She stared up at him, brown eyes wide in an expression frozen by astonishment.

“Forgive me, Elizabeth,” he said, though he wasn’t at all sorry. Caius had wanted—needed—to do that for years. But now wasn’t the time, and he sure as hell didn’t have the right. “You don’t need to run. I’m not here to take you to your father.”

As he spoke, Caius watched her anger burn away the shock. Her features tightened.

She didn’t believe him. He didn’t blame her.

And she was alive.

He didn’t have the right but couldn’t help himself. Catching her face between his palms, he kissed her again. Her body went rigid. God, he had to stop this. Her hands clenched on his biceps and he braced himself for another bite. Incredibly, she rose onto her toes, softening against him. Caius couldn’t halt his disbelieving groan when her lips parted beneath his.

Elizabeth. Here, alive. In his arms.

And she was returning his kiss.

Heart thundering, he angled his head and delved deeper. Her chest hitched as he penetrated her mouth and tasted her, sweet and hot. A shudder ran through her slender frame. Her fingers slid into the hair at the back of his head and fisted, as if to hold him closer.

Or to hold him in place.

Sharp pain sliced through his lip. Caius jerked his head back, tasting blood.

Christ, he deserved that. He had to get this need under control. This wasn’t what he was here to do.

Not to kiss her, not to touch her. Just to make sure she was safe.

She glared up at him, her lips reddened and a flush darkening her cheeks. Her palms flattened against his chest and shoved.

Caius didn’t move. “Elizabeth—”

“I’m not going back.” Her voice shook with resentment and frustration. “Get out. Leave me be.”

He would. But not yet. “Come up on deck with me.”

Her mouth compressed into a tight line. She averted her face, eyes bright with sudden tears.

Caius knew she would hate that. When he’d been twenty years old, no longer an apprentice but a huntsman, she’d happened upon him unexpectedly in the sanctuary’s keep, her arms full of the alfalfa she was carrying to the giraffe paddock. Her startled gaze had met his before she’d given him a wry smile—and, as if they conversed easily every day, she’d suddenly told him,

“Do you know what I despise? That I cry when I’m upset. I especially hate it when I’m upset and having an argument, because as soon as the tears begin falling they undermine my every point, no matter how rational.”

He’d noted that her eyes were red, then. As if she’d been crying—and arguing.

And he’d hated his desperate need to go to her, to offer comfort. He couldn’t remember now what he’d said in reply, but it had probably been similar to so many of his responses to her. What had upset her? Was her feather mattress too soft or her clothing too fashionable? Did she have a bag of jewels that was too heavy to carry?

Caius didn’t remember. He only remembered how hurt had darkened her eyes. He remembered the ache in his chest and the heavy weight of the shackle on his wrist. He remembered how she’d softly said, “My father doesn’t believe that I don’t like apples,” and how he’d scoffed and walked away, telling himself with every step that she wasn’t worth the hours he’d spent wanting her, thinking of her.

He’d been such a fool.

Gently, Caius cupped her cheek in his left hand, wishing he could feel the warmth of her skin through his glove. “I know I’ve upset you. But I’m here to help. Your father has an airship and he’s not far behind.”

She sucked in a sharp breath. Her gaze searched his face as if looking for the truth. “I don’t believe you.”

He knew she wouldn’t. “That’s why I want you to come up on deck with me. I’ll show you.”

As if his offer was evidence enough, her gaze tore from his and wildly swept the cabin. Already beginning to panic. Trying to think of where to run.

But there was nowhere to go.

“Elizabeth,” he said softly and waited until her eyes met his again. “I won’t let him take you.”

She shook her head and slid away from him, reaching for the door. “I have to see.”

He caught her hand. She tried to yank it away but he held fast. She glanced back, her gaze snapping with anger.

“You asked me to go up on deck with you.”

“Yes.” His fingers tightened around hers. “But I won’t let you jump again. I’m here to protect you.”

Frowning, she glanced down—not at their hands, he realized, but looking for the shackle. Wondering why he would risk helping her when the price of breaching his contract of indenture was so high.

His coat sleeve and glove covered his left wrist, but she wouldn’t have seen a shackle beneath them, anyway.

“I don’t wear it anymore,” he said.

Surprise lifted her gaze to his. “Did he give you your freedom?”

“No.” On his last visit to her father’s sanctuary, Caius had taken his freedom—along with something far more valuable: his daughter. “A friend helped me remove the shackle.”

“Unlawfully?” Understanding lit her face. “So he’s not only chasing after me.”

“No.”

But he wasn’t chasing after Caius, either, as she probably assumed. For now, however, Caius would let her think so. Elizabeth would more likely let him help her if she believed they were running for the same reasons: they both wanted to remain free of her father.

On a deep breath, she closed her eyes. Debating whether to trust him, he knew. After a long second, she shook her head. Not rejection—resignation. Acknowledging how few choices she had.

But Caius swore that by the time they reached the Ivory Market, she would have as many choices as she wanted.

She reached for her coat and satchel. “Let’s go up, then.”

HER MIND WHIRLING like an autogyro’s blades, Elizabeth didn’t know what to think or what to believe. Everything was different. Caius had found her…but he wanted to help her. And when he looked at her or when he spoke, she didn’t see coldness in his eyes or hear ice in his voice, as she always had before. There was no frost now. Only fire.

She couldn’t make sense of it. She couldn’t make sense of anything.

Especially those kisses. The first one, maybe he’d meant to silence her scream. But the second…

No. She wouldn’t think of it. Because she couldn’t make sense of her response, either, and remembering the heat of his mouth and his taste made everything inside her clench into an unbearable ache.

And he’d called her Elizabeth.

She hadn’t even had to remind him that was the name she preferred now. All her life, she’d been called Mary—after her mother, Mary Elizabeth. Growing up, she’d taken comfort knowing that her father had given her the name of the woman he’d loved beyond any other, even though Elizabeth’s birth had killed her.

After she’d learned the truth, the name hadn’t comforted her any longer. And when Caius had captured her in the Ivory Market, she’d demanded that he call her Elizabeth instead of Mary…though not a single person aside from herself ever had. While on the run, she’d always used false names. But Caius had done as she’d asked—though he’d obviously thought she was being ridiculous. And he hadn’t believed her when she’d told him why she called herself by another name.

Yet he’d remembered. And he’d called her Elizabeth.

Maybe he believed her now.

Or maybe he just wanted her to believe that he did. This could all be a lie.

He’d said his shackle of indenture was gone and that a friend had helped him remove it, but taking off the clockwork device wasn’t easy. If it had been, many more indentured servants would tamper with them. Few people knew how to remove a shackle and even fewer could do it without triggering the blades or the poison inside the device; it was difficult to believe that he’d found someone who could help him.

If Caius had removed the shackle, she was glad for him. Abandoning her father’s service would make him a fugitive and jeopardize his mother’s and sister’s freedom, but of all people, Caius would know how to protect his family and hide them away.

But he might have lied. Her father might have removed the shackle so that Caius could pretend to help her and lull her into complacency—not hunting her down but setting a trap. Giving her reason to trust Caius and to keep him near after she arrived at the Ivory Market, until her father could catch up.

Yet that made no more sense than anything else did. Caius must have boarded the airship in Brighton. He could have taken Elizabeth to her father then.

And she didn’t know what to believe anymore.

Caius preceded her up the ladder to the main deck and took her hand as she emerged into the stinging cold. The wind caught the long length of his coat and swept it behind his legs like a brown woolen flag. The snow was falling more heavily than before. The speed of their flight made the flakes whip by at a near horizontal angle. Near the bow, an aviator cleared a drift piled up by the storage crates, tossing shovelfuls of snow over the rail. Lanterns cast a warm glow over the deck and illuminated a thick halo of white around the ship. Elizabeth couldn’t see anything in the darkness beyond.

Caius adjusted his grip on her hand, turning their palms together and lacing his gloved fingers through hers. Her heart thumped. He didn’t hold her hand like a captor holding a captive’s. He held her hand like a lover.

No matter what he thought, Elizabeth wouldn’t have jumped. He had no reason to keep hold of her. But she didn’t pull her hand away.

He led her along the deck toward the stern, and she didn’t look at the aviators they passed. She knew what they must be thinking—that she and Caius had planned an airship tryst. She’d heard it was common for illicit lovers to book different cabins to give the appearance of propriety and then spend the trip together. No doubt the crew believed that was what she and Caius had done.

Briefly she considered appealing for help from the aviators before discarding the idea. Caius wouldn’t be an easy man to subdue, and any attempt would just endanger the crew.

And if Caius was telling the truth about his intention to help her, she might lose a strong ally. If he wasn’t telling the truth…she couldn’t do anything about it now except play along. Eventually, he might lower his guard, just as he had in the railcar two years before.

They passed the quarterdeck. The wheel stood at the center of the deck, behind a thick plate of glass that shielded the pilot from the wind. Approaching the stern, the noise of the engine rose until it reached a deafening roar. The twin propellers spun in a blur of steel, spitting swirling sheets of snow into the billowing trail of steam and smoke.

Without relinquishing his hold on her, Caius pointed beyond the propellers.

Elizabeth struggled to see anything beyond the white. The lanterns’ glow illuminating the nearby flakes made it all but impossible—but even if the lamps had been extinguished, the snow fell so heavily she doubted there would be more than a few dozen feet of visibility beyond the sides of the airship.

How had Caius seen anything in this snowstorm, let alone an airship in the distance?

He couldn’t have, she realized. He couldn’t know whether her father was following them.

So he’d lied.

The pain of that realization was an unexpected knife through her chest. Blindly, she stared into the distant dark, her throat thick and her eyes watering.

Except…there. A pinprick of yellow light. She blinked.

It was gone.

Heart pounding, she watched the same spot, wondering if the light had been her imagination or if she’d truly seen it.

There it was again. A faint light in the distance. A lantern from another airship.

Caius hadn’t lied.

The ache in her fingers made her realize how tightly she’d been gripping his hand. Now he was looking at her with concern, and when she eased her hold on him, he gently squeezed her fingers—as if reassuring her.

Because he thought that seeing her father’s ship had upset her. It should have. But she’d been far more upset by the belief that Caius had lied to her.

Now she was overwhelmed by relief that he’d told her the truth, but she had nothing to be relieved about. Her father’s hunters were on that airship, and they wouldn’t wait until they reached the Ivory Market before attempting to capture Elizabeth. As soon as they flew near enough to Kingfisher, they’d come aboard.

And Caius intended to stop them. Two hunters against one. Why would he take that risk?

She glanced up at him with a frown. “Why are you helping me?”

Shaking his head, he leaned closer. To kiss her again? Her stomach clenched in anticipation.

But he turned his face away at the last moment and waited with his ear near her mouth. Just coming closer so that he could hear her over the engine’s roar, she realized.

Elizabeth didn’t know which was sillier: the anticipation she’d felt in that moment when she’d thought he might kiss her, or the heavy weight of her disappointment when he didn’t.

Pushing that disappointment away, she called over the noise, “Why are you helping me?”

He pulled back to look down at her, the golden light from the nearby lantern warming the left side of his face and casting dark shadows over the right. His gaze searched her features for a long second before he answered.

His mouth moved. She didn’t hear him over the engine. Yet she recognized the shape of those words, and they made her heart careen wildly in her chest.

But she couldn’t believe them. His reply had to be a lie.

She’d thought he’d been lying about her father’s airship, though—and he hadn’t been. There was no reason to believe he’d lie now.

So she’d just mistaken the words, had misread the shape.

“Because I lost you” made more sense than what she thought he’d said. And he had lost her in that railcar. She’d escaped him.

But that wouldn’t be a reason to help her. He’d failed to bring her home. If anything, that would be more reason to hand her over to her father.

It had more likely been “Because I loathe you”—because he had for so many years. She’d seen his resentment and dislike every time he’d come into the sanctuary. But that wouldn’t be a reason to help her, either.

What she thought he’d said made no more sense, though—and Elizabeth was too afraid to ask him again.

Too afraid to find out it wasn’t what she’d thought.

But she shouldn’t care what it was or wasn’t—she needed to focus on what to do now. Either Caius was truly here to stop her father, or he was just keeping her occupied and complacent until her father arrived. If it was the first, she would let him help her. And if it was the second…Elizabeth wasn’t sure what she would do.

One thing was certain, however: jumping wasn’t an option this time. The fall would kill her. And even if she used one of the emergency gliders stored near the lifeboats, the zombies would kill her shortly after she landed.

If Caius meant to hand her over to her father, she would have to let him do it—then escape as soon as she could. Until then, she would ally herself with Caius, and prepare to run again at the first opportunity.

God. She was so tired of running. Just the thought suddenly exhausted her, and a heavy ache settled in her chest when she imagined Caius betraying her after promising to help.

Could she trust him? She shouldn’t.

But she desperately wanted to. Probably because he was her only hope of escaping her father.

No other reason.

Chapter Three

SHE HADN’T BELIEVED HIM. CAIUS hadn’t expected her to. But his throat was tight and his heart pounding as he watched her struggle with his declaration.

Because I love you.

Emotions chased wildly across her face. Her expressive features were an open plain, concealing nothing—and after years of trying not to see her, he didn’t want to look away.

Finally she tore her gaze from his. Doubt settled into her furrowed brow and wariness haunted the shadows in her eyes. Still uncertain of his motives and afraid he would hurt her.

As he had so many times before.

After entering her father’s service, every time he’d returned to the sanctuary he prayed she would be there—and he prayed she wouldn’t be. Her face had been as transparent then, sweet and earnest, but he’d never trusted what he’d seen. He’d never let himself trust it.

In turn, Caius had hidden everything he’d felt for her. Elizabeth was the woman he’d wanted from the day he’d first understood what wanting was. Not just arousal or an erect prick. It was needing not just anyone, but someone.

But he couldn’t have her.

The law would have allowed it. He’d been in service to her father, but an employer couldn’t prevent his indentured servants from marrying or living as they chose, as long as they fulfilled their duties. Indentured servants weren’t owned; they weren’t slaves. But with a shackle around his wrist that would poison him if he didn’t return to her father at regular intervals to have the clockwork counter rewound, Caius hadn’t seen the difference. He hadn’t been his own man—and until he was, Caius couldn’t call a woman his.

And the woman he wanted had been right in front of him.

So her sweetness had angered him, because he wanted to hate her, wanted her to be shallow and cruel and use her status as a weapon. Every breath she took angered him, a breath he wanted to feel on his skin and never would. Her attempts to flirt angered him, because he wanted everything her smiles promised.

But Caius hadn’t understood any of that then. At the time, he’d only been angry with her—and angry with himself for wanting her even though anything between them was impossible. She’d had to know it was impossible, too. She was beautiful and wealthy, and he was bound to serve her father for thirty years. So he’d told himself that she was playing with him.

When she’d run away, Caius had been glad of it, because he thought she’d finally demonstrated that she was everything he’d told himself she was. A flighty, capricious, stupid girl, running into danger when she had love and security at home. He’d thought she was a fool for tossing it all away. For so long, he’d tried to make himself believe she was spoiled and selfish, and she’d suddenly proved him right.

Five years ago, his anger—and his shame that he’d ever wanted her—fueled his chase. He’d been determined to take her back to the sanctuary and wipe his heart clean of her.

But it hadn’t been so easy. Tracking her meant seeing the places she lived and speaking with the people who’d known her. None of them described her as thoughtless or capricious or haughty, but friendly and quiet and sad. Just as she’d often been in the sanctuary.

Just as he’d told himself she couldn’t truly be.

By the end, it hadn’t been anger fueling his chase, but a desperate need to see her again. Yet he’d still tried to hold on to reasons to think less of her. So when she confessed the story behind her conception and birth—and that she wasn’t truly her mother’s daughter, but her mother’s duplicate—he’d told himself that she lied. He’d thought it was a clever story, based on just enough truth to be plausible. Caius had known of her father’s machine. He’d seen tintype photographs and painted portraits of her mother. Aside from small differences in their hairstyles and weight, she and Elizabeth looked exactly alike. But he’d already made up his mind about her, and so he’d believed her tale was a ruse to persuade him to let her go.

And it had been too difficult to believe her father would make Elizabeth take her mother’s place, to step into her mother’s role as his wife. Willem Jannsen loved his daughter. Caius had seen evidence of that so many times—and he’d seen the man’s heartbreak when Elizabeth had fled. So it had been easier for Caius to believe that she would discard that love and impugn her father’s name during her silly flight around the world.

He’d wanted to believe it.

But after he’d caught up to her, her panic and desperation had been real. So Caius had spent the last half of the journey talking to her, using every word to remind himself why he had to take her back to her life of ease and luxury.

Never for one moment had he believed that she’d toss herself off the side of a mountain—and that leap had destroyed him.

He’d driven the woman he loved to her death.

The wall of anger he’d put up around his heart had shattered when she’d jumped. Nothing protected him after that. For days he’d searched for her body, a broken man. But losing her hadn’t been the only devastating blow. When he’d returned to the sanctuary to report her death to her father, Caius had learned everything she’d told him was true.

No pain could compare to watching her jump. But realizing how determinedly he’d clung to his illusions about her had wrecked him again.

Even now, with Elizabeth standing beside him and his hand holding hers, he was still wrecked. Two years of agony had receded in the joy of seeing her alive, but her jump had torn a jagged wound through his heart that he didn’t think would ever heal.

He’d been such a fool. From the day they’d met, he’d systematically destroyed every opportunity to win her trust, her friendship…her heart. Two years before, he’d had a chance to help her. Instead he’d tossed away everything he knew about her, and had chosen to chase after the woman he’d wanted to believe she was.

After she’d jumped, he’d tried to make amends. Not to Elizabeth. That would have been impossible. But he’d given a toddling young girl the help that he’d never given Elizabeth, and he’d fallen in love all over again.

Now he had a chance to make amends to Elizabeth. Not to earn her forgiveness, and with no expectation of love; Caius knew he was too late for that. But he could help her now—and make certain she remained free.

He watched her search through the storm behind them. By the clench of her fingers, he knew when she spotted the Mary Elizabeth’s lanterns again. She glanced up at Caius and tugged him closer.

His body stiffened as he bent his head toward her. She couldn’t know the exquisite torture of her heated breath against his ear, the lavender scent of her hair.

She raised her voice over the noise from the engine and propellers. “How long until my father’s airship has caught up to us?”

Caius could have answered her by raising a few fingers to indicate the hours left, but he turned his mouth toward her to speak. A knitted cap covered the shell of her ear. Dark curls nested in the hollow between the curve of her jaw and her blue scarf, dotted by tiny drops from melted snowflakes that sparkled in the lantern light. God, he wanted to kiss those glittering beads away, taste her coppery skin.

With need curling a tight fist in his gut, he told her, “Two or three hours.”

She drew back to look up at him, as if seeking confirmation. When he nodded, she cast her worried gaze into the falling snow and the darkness beyond. Then determination flattened her lips, her brows drew together, and suddenly she was pulling him away from the airship’s stern toward the ladder leading below. She let go of his hand in the companionway. Reluctantly, Caius released his hold on her. He didn’t fear now that she would jump—her posture and expression told him that she was prepared to fight rather than run—but the longing ache in his chest was a continual reminder of how few of these small touches he would have. Whatever occurred with her father would probably happen tonight. Afterward he and Elizabeth would continue on to the Ivory Market, but on that journey Caius would have no more excuses to hold her hand, to lean close as he spoke.

He would be fortunate if she spoke to him at all.

So he glutted himself on the sight of her, trying to memorize every detail as he followed her down the dim passageway to her cabin. At the threshold, he hesitated. He’d pushed his way in earlier to stop her from running before he could tell her of his intention to help. He wouldn’t usually enter a woman’s bedchamber uninvited.

It was a rare occasion when he entered a woman’s bedchamber at all. Aside from Elizabeth’s, he hadn’t been in one for seven or eight years. And before that, a few taverns and alleys, with the image of her face burning on the backs of his eyelids whenever he closed his eyes.

Frowning, she glanced back and gestured him inside. Intended for a single passenger, the layout of her narrow cabin mirrored his. Darkness filled the porthole opposite the door. A wardrobe cabinet had been built into the corner at the foot of the narrow bed. Warm yellow light shone from a gas lamp atop a small vanity.

Her cabin was as empty as Caius’s was. Even to go up on deck, Elizabeth hadn’t left any of her belongings behind. Though her ever-present satchel had been slung over the bed when he’d forced his way in earlier, now it hung across her chest again.

Caius passed her at the door and crossed to the porthole in three strides. Not a thing to be seen outside. He removed his hat before facing her. His long coat was stifling in the warm cabin but he didn’t unbuckle it. He wasn’t here to make himself at home.

Elizabeth swung the door closed. Tugging her scarf from her neck, she eyed him warily. “I can’t trust you.”

Though Caius already knew she didn’t, hearing her say it was an unexpected punch to his stomach, leaving him sick and shaken. But he didn’t react; he only nodded.

Because he knew she had little choice except to trust him now—at least for a little while. Elizabeth knew it, too. She dragged off her cap and tossed it onto the bed, her eyes haunted. “So what do we do now?”

“You don’t have to do anything. You’ll go to dinner and return here to sleep. If they come aboard, I’ll stop them—and by morning you’ll be free.”

“That simple?”

“Yes.”

Unease slipped across her expression, her teeth briefly catching her lower lip before she asked, “How will you stop them?”

By killing them—or getting near enough to it that they wouldn’t pursue her or Caius’s daughter again. But he said, “I’ll have the advantage of surprise. They don’t know I’m here and an injury that incapacitates their legs or arms will force them to retreat. After you’ve reached the Ivory Market, they won’t find you again.”

“And you think that will be simple?” Sudden, wry humor lifted her dark brows. “I should have lain in wait five years ago and maimed you.”

That wouldn’t have stopped him. And even if it had, she wouldn’t have been safe. “Your father would have just sent someone else.”

“But he wouldn’t now?” Realization darkened her eyes. “You don’t really mean to injure them.”

Caius didn’t answer. Uncertainty tore across her features. She looked away from him, shaking her head.

“I don’t want anyone to die.”

Neither did he. But he wasn’t just doing this for her. As long as Willem Jannsen lived, neither Elizabeth nor his daughter would be free.

“That will be up to your father,” Caius said.

Still shaking her head, she sank onto the edge of the bed and rubbed her arms through the sleeves of her coat as if cold.

Or as if afraid. Maybe of him. Many people were. They didn’t meet his eyes in the street and went out of their way to avoid crossing his path. He couldn’t remember when the change had come—whether it had been while he was an apprentice or after he’d become a huntsman. He couldn’t recall any change in himself. One day he’d just realized that no one looked at him as they once had.

Except for Elizabeth. The way she’d looked at him had never changed. Always hopeful and earnest when she first saw him. And always hurt by the time he left her.

It had been the same when he’d caught her two years before. Earnest and hopeful the first week on the airship. Then devastated by the end.

Now she looked troubled and defeated, her voice dull. “How did he find me?”

“By chance.” Her father hadn’t been looking for her; everyone had believed her dead. “He was pursuing me through Norway when he met with an acquaintance of your mother’s, who mentioned that she’d seen a woman who could have been your mother’s twin coming out of a boarding house in Brighton.”

And when Jannsen had abruptly abandoned his pursuit in Norway, Caius had backtracked the man’s path to discover why. The same fear that led people to cross the street to avoid him had helped Caius quickly extract the information from the woman. Within the hour, he’d hired an airship to Brighton.

Elizabeth closed her eyes. After a long second she glanced up at him. “My father was pursuing you? He hadn’t sent Amelia and Matthias?”

“No.”

Confusion creased her brow. “Why? Even if you’re a fugitive…why would he come after you himself?”

“Because you jumped, and I would sacrifice anything to make sure it never happened to anyone else,” Caius said bluntly. “So I destroyed his machine.”

Though that wasn’t the only reason her father pursued him. But Caius didn’t know how Elizabeth would react to the news that her father had created another duplicate—or that Caius had abducted a child that wasn’t his.

That child was his daughter now—and not a substitute for Elizabeth. Caius had never asked or expected his daughter to be like her. But given Elizabeth’s history, he feared she might believe it of him. She might think he was yet another man who couldn’t let go of the woman he loved.

“His machine?” Dismay filled her voice. “You destroyed it?”

“Yes.”

She stared at him, but Caius didn’t think she was seeing his face. That dismay was on behalf of the sanctuary.

It had been an incredible machine, and Caius believed in the necessity of the work it had done. But it had become a terrible device when used as Willem Janssen had.

With a sigh, Elizabeth nodded. “Perhaps it is for the best, anyway. I told my father that machine had become a crutch—and eventually conservationists would have been breeding replicated animals to their own offspring. Better to have a few duplicates spread across different sanctuaries to strengthen a population’s overall numbers and stop there.”

And Caius would hunt for new specimens, if necessary. He believed in that work, too.

“So you destroyed his machine.” Her gaze sharpened. “What did you do then?”

“I ran. To England, first. Then other places.” Though few in the New World, where anyone infected by nanoagents was forbidden from crossing many borders without special sanction. When he’d served her father, Caius had possessed the necessary permissions to travel almost anywhere. As a fugitive, he hadn’t. “Many locations were the same that you’d run to. Chasing you taught me more about hiding than hunting ever had.”

Her quick laugh left a smile on her lips. God, he loved her mouth. Her eyes. The way she tilted her head to look up at him again, not the dismayed stare but her entire face lit by humor.

“Truly?”

“Yes. I learned well from you.” He smiled now, too. “So I avoided the Ivory Market.”

Where he’d caught up to her the last time. She laughed again, nodding as if in agreement—then stopped herself, biting her lip. Uncertain. Nervous.

Her gaze flicked to the mattress beside her leg.

In the next moment she surged away from the bed, standing on the opposite side of the cabin with her back pressed to the bulkhead. Shoulders stiff, her arms folded tightly beneath her breasts. She didn’t meet his eyes.

Perhaps remembering the days that had followed, and how he’d tied her after he’d caught her.

Caius remembered those days, too. That had been the most torturous week of his life. Not just because her pleas to let her go had tormented him.

She had tormented him. Her sweetness and her ferocity and her beauty, and her determination to escape, no matter the cost.

And at one point, Elizabeth hadn’t begged or threatened. She’d offered herself to him—her virginity and anything else he wanted. She’d lain in bed with her wrists bound and her face flushed, and she’d asked Caius if he would take her body in exchange for letting her go.

God help him, he’d considered it for a moment. He’d considered climbing into the bed and between her thighs, then pushing deep inside her sweet warmth. He’d considered letting her escape, then returning to her father and claiming that he hadn’t found her. He’d considered giving up his freedom for a few hours in her arms.

Caius had considered it—then had coldly told her that he didn’t want her.

By the flush on her cheeks now, he thought she was remembering that offer, too. Perhaps remembering the lie he’d given in response. Her gaze fell to his mouth. “Why did you kiss me earlier?”

Even as she spoke, dismay returned to her eyes. She hadn’t meant to ask, Caius realized. But she hadn’t been able to help herself.

He couldn’t help himself, either. “Because I’ve always wanted to.”

Doubt filled her expression again—along with the same hurt he’d seen in her eyes so many times. Hurt that he’d put there when he lied, when he’d pretended not to care.

Now it was there because she couldn’t believe that he did. She must think he was playing with her.

“That’s not possible. Never between us.” She looked away and her voice roughened. “I despise you. And I can’t trust you.”

Despising someone wasn’t a reason not to kiss them. It wasn’t a reason not to spend hours in bed with them. Caius had despised her, too, because of how she’d made him feel. He thought now it was the same for Elizabeth. The desire was there between them—it had always been there. He’d known it from her first flirtatious looks in the sanctuary, from those smiles that killed him and made him dream of running off with her. He knew it from the hitch in her breath the second time he’d kissed her.

But she didn’t trust him. That was far more important than desire.

And he’d already accepted that nothing between them was possible. It shouldn’t scrape his heart raw to hear her say so.

Yet it did.

“I know,” he said past the ache in his throat. “And I won’t attempt to kiss you again. After we reach the Ivory Market, we’ll go our separate ways.”

Still not looking at him, she nodded, her eyes bright and her jaw locked.

Upset.

He’d thought hearing that would have pleased her. But maybe she didn’t trust that he’d leave her alone.

Blast it all. He shouldn’t have kissed her. “I only mean to protect you now, and to make certain no one comes after you again. I only mean to help.”

“How can I believe that, Caius?” Her gaze snapped to his, hard and angry. “You hate me. All my life, you’ve hated me.”

“I didn’t hate you.”

Her laugh in response ended as abruptly as it started, as if the sound was too sharp and painful, cutting her as it emerged. Eyes glittering, she looked away from him again.

God damn it. He couldn’t bear to see her cry. He couldn’t bear being the reason for it. And he needed her to look at him, to believe him. Desperation carried him across the cabin, stopping an arm’s length from her. Close enough to touch—but he wouldn’t touch her.

“I didn’t hate you, Elizabeth,” he repeated hoarsely. “I hated that you were everything I wanted and couldn’t have.”

Her gaze shot to his face again. Lips parting, she stared at him. “Why would you tell me something like that when I’ve just said nothing could come of it?”

What would be the point of trying to protect his heart now? He couldn’t damage it any worse than he already had. So he had nothing to hide. And he had nothing to gain or to lose.

“Does it matter what I tell you? Will you trust me? Will you no longer despise me? Does it make any difference?”

Wordlessly, she shook her head.

“Then the least I can do is give you the truth. And I never hated you.”

Her chest rose and fell on a short, shuddering breath. Then another. Her gaze searched his face. Still uncertain what to believe.

Her throat worked. When she spoke, her voice was tight and high. “Was it true what you told me on deck—your reason for helping me?”

“Yes.” Unable to stop himself, he took another step toward her. Close enough to kiss—but he wouldn’t kiss her. The confession came more easily this time, but was just as gruff to his ears. “I love you.”

Hope flashed across her expression. Doubt chased it away. “You don’t even know me.”

“I do.”

“We only spent a week together on an airship. You never talked with me before that. And when you did speak to me…” Flattening her lips, she averted her face.

When Caius had, he’d been cruel to her.

Now his love was hurting her, too—because she didn’t believe him. But disbelief wasn’t enough to wound someone. Disbelief only hurt when someone wanted to believe.

He knew that too well.

“I followed you for so long, Elizabeth. And I lied to myself about who you were, despite everything I saw and everything I knew about you. Not anymore.”

She huffed out a short breath and pinned him with a challenging glare. “What could you possibly know?”

“I know why the animals are so important to you.”

“Because I’m a naturalist’s daughter.”

“That might be part of the reason. I don’t think it’s all of it. When your father sent me to hunt you down, the first place I wanted to look for you was with your friends. But I discovered you didn’t have any. I thought it proved everything I believed of you—that despite your wealth and beauty, you thought yourself better than everyone, so that when the time came to run, there was no one for you to run to. But everywhere you went, no one said that. They said you kept to yourself, but you weren’t arrogant or proud. And everywhere you went, you were still visiting animals. It didn’t matter what sort. A donkey or a kitten or a cur on the street—petting them if they’d allow it and feeding them if they didn’t.”

She was shaking her head. “That isn’t a secret. My life has always revolved around caring for them.”

In the sanctuary. “Why did you try so hard with me, then—despite every insult I said to you? Because I’m so handsome?”

A laugh startled from her. Her gaze swept over his face. “It must have been the only reason.”

But it hadn’t been. “And because you didn’t have anyone else. I never realized how you were kept secluded. I thought that when you returned to your big house every day, you would have entertainments and friends. But there was only your father and his colleagues…until I came. A boy, only two years older than yourself. And for the first time in your life, you thought you might not be alone with only animals to keep you company. You thought I might be a friend—finally, a friend with two legs instead of four. That’s why you tried so hard.”

“No,” she said, but it was barely a whisper over a broken breath.

“But I didn’t try at all. I should have been that friend twelve years ago. I should have been that friend five years ago, when your father sent me after you. I should have been that friend two years ago, when I caught up to you. So I’m trying to be that friend now.”

Tears swam in her eyes again, but this time she didn’t look away. She stared up at him. Yearning held her features absolutely still; her arms wrapped around her middle as if hugging herself tight.

“I know you, Elizabeth. You. Not who someone wants you to be, but who you are.”

She closed her eyes. The tears spilled over her cheeks and she shook her head. Still not trusting him.

“I know you have no reason to believe me. I hid everything I was from you, and I never let you know me. But by the time we arrive in the Ivory Market, you’ll know who I am. We’ll go our separate ways.” The thickness in his throat roughened his voice. “But there will always be one friend you can go to, no matter your troubles. A friend who will always believe you. Who will always help you. That’s who I am.”

She seemed to crumple. Standing stiff against the bulkhead one moment, in the next she buried her face in her hands, muffling a wounded cry. Her shoulders slumped. As if her knees had given out, she began to slide down the wall.

And God help him, Caius broke every promise to himself. Lurching forward, he caught her before she hit the floor and gathered her against him, letting her sob into his chest. His eyes burning, he tried to soothe her, pressing kisses to the top of her head and murmuring a vow never to hurt her again.

Elizabeth slowly quieted, but she didn’t leave his arms. Her cheek lay over his heart, her fingers softly curled beneath her chin, her gaze staring into nothing. Now and again another shudder wracked her body, and with each one, he held her tighter.

But he had to let her go.

The knock came too soon. Through the door, the porter called, “Five minutes to dinner, miss.”

Raising his voice, Caius thanked the man. As the porter’s footsteps moved on to the next cabin, Elizabeth stirred in his embrace and lifted her head. Cupping her cheeks in his gloved hands, he looked down into her tear-ravaged face. Her eyes searched his, and he watched her wariness and uncertainty return—and the hope.

“Go on, then,” he told her quietly.

She answered with a slight nod, a tiny movement that was heaven against his palms. “What will you do?”

His gaze fell to her softly trembling lips. But he wouldn’t kiss her. “I’ll keep watch above.”

And try to prove himself the friend he’d said he was.

ELIZABETH HAD NO appetite, but she knew from experience that it was best to eat when she could.

As the only female passenger, she’d been placed at Captain Harker’s right hand. She must have been proving very dull company. Barely a word had passed her lips since she’d sat at the table, but the captain bore it well. He spoke with the men, and though she felt his gaze upon her from time to time, he didn’t attempt to drag her into the conversation.

Elizabeth was grateful for it. A gruff man with a weathered face and long black beard, Harker had already shown himself to be a kind man, as well. When she’d arrived for dinner, he’d taken one glance at her, eyes still slightly red and swollen from crying, and carefully pulled her aside for a private word.

She suspected that the crew had told him she’d been holding hands with Caius on deck and that he’d been in her cabin when the porter had come by, but the evidence of her tears must have alarmed him.

Quietly, Harker had told her, “We are no strangers to shipboard romances on Kingfisher, Miss Dvorak. But I want to be sure this is of your choosing. One word from you, and I’ll make certain that you won’t see Mr. Trachter during the remainder of this voyage.”

Her heart still overwhelmed by Caius’s declaration, the captain’s concern had almost started her crying again. So many years alone, and in one hour, two different men offered to protect her without asking for anything in return.

Something her father should have done.

But although she didn’t know whether to trust Caius, Elizabeth would take her chances with him. “Thank you, but you need not worry. I’ve known Mr. Trachter since I was young,” she’d explained. “And our reunion was…emotional. He had to impart unhappy news to me regarding a mutual acquaintance.”

The captain had nodded. “If that is what upset you, then I hope the remainder of your voyage proves more pleasant. You can be certain of privacy aboard this vessel. And because sounds of love and sounds of distress can often be mistaken for each other, I’ll let my aviators know that you are not in need of rescue—so that you won’t be interrupted at a delicate time.”

Her face had flamed at that, yet the good humor in his voice made Elizabeth laugh at herself, too. It was scandalous, but so different from the stories she usually created to hide her identity. She was having an illicit tryst aboard an airship. Or rather, Miss Dvorak was.

With Caius Trachter.

In her bed.

At the thought of it, her cheeks had heated again, but not with embarrassment. Everything within her tightened when she imagined him there. In her bed. Caius—big and strong and rugged. When he’d kissed her, his unshaven jaw had scraped her chin. Leather gloves had covered his large hands, but when he’d tied her before, she’d felt the calluses on his palms against her wrists. She’d seen him bathe by the dim light of a candle when he thought she was asleep, watching from the dark as he lathered the coarse hair that shadowed his broad chest, her gaze following the water sluicing over ridges and planes of hard muscle.

He might be gentle. But a man like Caius would always be a little rough.

And she’d imagined being with him before. She’d imagined so many foolish things about him—at the sanctuary and after she’d fled.

She had kept trying with him, despite every time he’d hurt her. Because Elizabeth had believed that he was just as wounded and alone as she had been. And as she’d grown older, she’d begun building so many fantasies around him. Some romantic, some not. But in all of them, he hadn’t hated her. She’d told herself that he was like the lion that had once roamed the sanctuary grounds before being moved to a preserve farther south, where the climate was more agreeable. She’d worked and walked near the lion before, always wary of the danger he posed. Yet he never attacked, watching her instead with his tail flicking, sometimes loping away as if irritated. But when he’d been caged for transport, he’d lashed out when anyone had drawn near, clawing through the bars. Not enraged by the person—enraged by the cage.

She’d thought Caius was like that. And she’d imagined that one day he would come to her and say that he’d never despised her, that he’d lashed out because of his own cage, the indentured servitude.

But then Elizabeth had wondered if she just wanted to believe it so much because she’d felt her own cage closing around her.

She’d let herself continue to have those dreams, however, because aside from studying and the sanctuary, she’d had little else. When she’d finally run, she’d dreamed that if Caius caught up to her, he wouldn’t take her back to her father. That he’d just want her for himself, and they would run together.

But although she’d imagined it, Elizabeth never let herself succumb to those dreams. And a good thing, too. Because he hadn’t let her go—and she would have been a fool, running straight into the arms of her captor.

She couldn’t be a fool now, either. Even if the rough warmth of his lips still burned on hers. Even though his words still echoed in her ears, claiming that he was everything she’d imagined.

I hated that you were everything I wanted and couldn’t have.

If that was true…then Caius was wrong: she knew who he was, too. If it was true, she understood Caius better than he realized. If it was true, he could be someone that Elizabeth could run to instead of running from.

If it was all true.

She was so terrified that it wasn’t.

That fear and doubt lodged in her throat, making every bite an effort to swallow. Then the apple tart arrived at the end of the meal, and she couldn’t eat at all.

Elizabeth never forced herself to consume something she disliked anymore. Apples, duck, sweetbreads—all were foods her father had insisted were her favorites and had regularly made her eat them…but it was her mother who had enjoyed their flavors. It was her mother who’d told her father that she’d grown up preferring the company of animals to human friends, and so when Elizabeth had complained of loneliness her father had insisted she didn’t need any companionship but what she found at the sanctuary.

And Elizabeth had loved the sanctuary and studying to become a naturalist, just as her mother had been. But she’d wanted more.

So without her father knowing, she’d taken the entrance exams to the scientific university in New Leiden—close enough to the sanctuary that she could visit regularly. She’d announced her intentions on her twentieth birthday, the day she reached her majority. Her father had demanded that she attend university in Manhattan City instead.

Just as her mother had.

Elizabeth might have gone to Manhattan City, if only to finally be away from his controlling influence. Except during their argument she’d begun to cry, and her distraught father had confessed how he and her mother hadn’t been able to conceive, so they’d created a duplicate—a daughter for them to love. That when Mary died giving birth, he’d known she’d been returned to him and that he’d been given a second chance. That Elizabeth was the same woman, and he believed that when she was twenty-five years of age, she would journey from Manhattan City and fall in love with him as her mother had.

Elizabeth had known for many years that her mother’s death had broken something in him. She hadn’t realized how those broken pieces had warped in his mind and his heart, and how desperate he must have been to make himself believe it so deeply.

But his belief was unmistakable—and unshakeable. He would attempt to make Elizabeth into her mother, in every way.

Sheer horror had sent her fleeing.

Five years later, it had brought her here. Elizabeth wished she could hate her father, but she pitied him. A brilliant man, driven to madness by grief. And despite everything, she loved him. She had far more happy memories of her father than bad—and although they’d had arguments and frustrations, never once had he given her reason to suspect he saw her as anything but a daughter.

But in his madness, he did—and she didn’t know how to stop him now. He wouldn’t give up his search for her, and she had no protection, no power. Her only option was to run. And she was so tired of running, but there had to be an answer besides death.

Perhaps by hiding so well he’d never find her. By concealing herself until there simply wasn’t an Elizabeth Jannsen anymore. She’d stop visiting menageries, attending to animals, and acting in any way that might draw attention to herself. Whatever crumbs of her identity that had allowed Caius to follow her around the world needed to be destroyed. She’d toss away everything she’d worked toward and wanted, and erase every lingering connection to her conservationist roots.

A fugitive, maybe Caius would want to run with her. She wouldn’t be alone, then. There was no one better to hide with than a hunter. And there was no one else who would still know who she was, who she’d been.

There was no one else who had ever known.

But those were just more foolish dreams. When her father caught up to Kingfisher, he and his hunters would come aboard. She’d have no chance to hide. And Caius would have few options, too, except to lash out at the man who would cage them.

She didn’t want anyone to die—and she wanted to remain Elizabeth. The very thought of losing herself made her heart seem to wither, and despite what her father had become, the thought of losing him this way made her want to cry. But she just didn’t see a solution that would allow her to have both.

Movement near her elbow pulled Elizabeth out of her desperate search for an answer. The chief mate had entered the cabin and was speaking quietly into the captain’s ear. Harker sighed and nodded, the tip of his beard brushing the buckle that fastened his jacket over his stomach. On his order, a cabin attendant began closing the shutters over the portholes. The conversation around the table lulled as everyone looked to the captain.

“It appears that we have caught the attention of pirates,” he said, and when a murmur of alarm rose around the table, he held up his hand. “We are taking precautions, but I promise you there is little reason for concern. This happens with unfortunate regularity. The pirates know that the fare to the Market is a steep one, and they assume we are carrying someone worth taking for ransom. But in ten years, not a single pirate has been successful in boarding Kingfisher. They won’t be tonight, either.”

Not pirates, Elizabeth realized. They’d mistaken her father’s airship for a marauder’s.

She supposed there wasn’t much difference—and the captain’s confidence was reassuring.

“They are probably relying on the snow to cover their approach, but the storm offers us the advantage,” he continued. “Without lights to follow us by, they won’t be able to track our heading. At this moment, my men are shuttering all portholes on the ship. I ask that when you return to your cabins, you keep those shutters closed, particularly if you spark your lamps. By morning, we will be far beyond the pirates’ sight and their reach.”

Hope lifted through Elizabeth’s heart. Perhaps it would be that simple.

But it rarely was. And even if they did escape her father’s pursuit tonight, he would still come after her. When she reached the Ivory Market, Elizabeth would have to give up everything that she was and hide as best she could.

She felt the captain’s gaze on her again through the remaining minutes of their meal. Finally the glasses of spirits were poured—traditionally a male indulgence, and one that gave her an excuse to leave. As she rose and said her goodnights, Harker stood with her, offering his arm.

“Allow me to escort you to your cabin, Miss Dvorak.”

It was only a few doors along the same deck, but she couldn’t refuse. Elizabeth nodded and took his elbow.

In the passageway, he said, “Your man didn’t come to dinner. Instead he remained on deck and was the one who alerted my crew.”

Caius had? She’d assumed that one of the aviators had spotted the lanterns. But she couldn’t feign ignorance. “Yes, sir.”

“If you’ll forgive me, it’s a bludging snowy mess out there,” he said bluntly. “My chief mate tells me that if Mr. Trachter hadn’t pointed out the airship, no one could have possibly spotted it…unless he already knew it was there.”

“Yes, sir,” she said softly.

“Are they pirates, Miss Dvorak?”

“No, sir.” As they stopped at her cabin door, she turned to look up at him. “It’s my father.”

His gaze thoughtful, Harker nodded as if he’d already suspected that answer. “And is your life in danger? Or that young man’s?”

“Are you asking because you might have to decide whether to hand me over?”

“In the unlikely event that we do not lose them in the storm…yes.”

Because his men might have to fight her father’s men if they didn’t. Not just gruff and kind, but pragmatic. A runaway daughter wasn’t worth the lives of his aviators.

Though her chest hurt, Elizabeth tried to be just as pragmatic. “He doesn’t mean to kill us, Captain. Just to return us home.”

“Would it make any difference if you were married first?”

Married? Elizabeth frowned, then realized—the captain thought that was the reason her father was following them. That he had forbidden her and Caius from being together.

Now the captain was offering to perform the ceremony. Another kindness, but it wouldn’t have mattered.

“No, sir. Mr. Trachter broke his indentured contract.” And an indentured servant could marry whomever he wished, but a fugitive’s marriage could be quickly annulled. “So my father’s hunters would come aboard and take me, regardless.”

“Then I ask you again, Miss Dvorak.” Harker’s gaze was hard and direct. “Should I hand you over?”

Her stomach in knots, Elizabeth struggled to find a response. But it wasn’t her decision; it wasn’t her life at stake.

Perhaps the truth was the only possible response, then. His crew would be in danger if they fought her father. If the captain was trying to decide whether she was worth dying for, then Elizabeth could at least tell him why.

“My father is…not well. I look very much like my late mother. Exactly like her. So he imagines that I am her and wants me to take her place.”

A dark frown furrowed his brow. “That’s unnatural.”

Elizabeth stopped her automatic denial. All her life, she’d heard that word used to denigrate anything someone didn’t understand—particularly Horde technology. Unnatural was why her father had to keep a wondrous and helpful device secret. Unnatural was why Caius couldn’t return to the city where he was born without special papers. Many people would say Elizabeth was unnatural if they knew the truth of her birth. But a couple creating a daughter that they couldn’t conceive on their own wasn’t unnatural. It was wonderful.

What her father had done was unnatural, though. Grief had twisted his thinking, and it had never untwisted.

“Yes,” she said. “And I am sorry, Captain. I didn’t know he would follow me so quickly and endanger your ship.”

His frown smoothed away, leaving an amused gleam in his eyes. “We’re not in danger yet. A man doesn’t fly as long as I have without learning how to disappear in a snowstorm—and this wily old fox knows a few tricks.”

THEY’D EXTINGUISHED THE lanterns on deck. Bundled tightly in her coat, Elizabeth climbed up the ladder and into the rushing dark. The wind snapped at her scarf and whipped tears from her eyes. She stopped at the edge of the companionway near the middle of the ship, waiting for her vision to adjust.

Engine huffing and rattling, Kingfisher hurtled through the night and the falling snow. Somewhere above, a full moon was shining. Only faint light penetrated the thick clouds, but after a few seconds she recognized the shape of the pilot’s wheelhouse and the framework of pipes warming the balloon overhead. Looking for Caius, she searched the deck for upright figures. Supporting timbers stood at intervals from bow to stern. Equipment lashed to the posts gave them irregular outlines, making it difficult to distinguish between the timbers and the aviators.

A shadow emerged from a nearby post. Her heart caught, then resumed on a thick, heavy beat. Caius. She couldn’t have mistaken the silhouette of his hat and broad shoulders or the long column of his coat for anyone else’s.

Without a word, he took her gloved hand in his. Pulse pounding, she let him draw her back into the shadows—where a lifeboat tied to the timber blocked the worst of the wind, she realized. From his position, he could watch over both sides of the airship and behind it.

His head bent to hers. Though loud, the engine wasn’t as deafening as at the stern, and he didn’t have to raise his voice as much to speak.

His warm breath caressed her cheek as he said, “Your father will either lose our trail or he won’t, but you don’t have to wait in the cold with us. If you want to return to your cabin to rest, I’ll wake you as soon as we know.”

After it was all over. “If you believe I would ever go below and wait for someone else to resolve my future, Caius, then you don’t know me as well as you think.”

His smile was a faint gleam. “You do often surprise me.”

Good. But she didn’t know what to do with the strange, heated tension rising through her. Feeling slightly breathless, she turned away from Caius and searched the sky behind them.

No sign of any lanterns. “Do you think we’ve lost them?”

“I don’t know,” he said, and when she glanced up, his profile was a sharp series of shadows layered over shadows: impenetrable from the brim of his hat to his eyes, the lighter slash of his cheekbone, dark again over his jaw. “We’ve changed heading and there are no lights to track us by. The storm will conceal the exhaust trail.”

“But?” Elizabeth knew, though. Captain Harker might be a wily fox. But her father had hunters—and hounds. “Can a hound track an airship?”

“I’ve seen Amelia do it before. Though not in a storm like this—and the wind is at our tail now.”

So Kingfisher might still have the advantage. “Have you seen their lanterns since we changed course?”

“No.”

That didn’t mean her father wasn’t following them. When Kingfisher’s lanterns went out, they might have realized that they’d been spotted and extinguished their own. The only way to be certain was to listen for her father’s engine...but that meant hovering motionless in the dark with Kingfisher’s engine at full stop. In that time, her father might close the distance between them, and it wouldn’t matter if the crew of Kingfisher could hear his engine then. Her father would be on them before they could fly ahead of him again.

The heated tension that had gripped her before changed into something sharper, tighter. No longer pleasant but roiling like sickness inside her.

Steeling her resolve, she said, “I don’t want anyone to die for me, Caius. If they come, just give me to him. I’ll escape again.”

“No,” he said. Not even raising his voice, yet she couldn’t mistake the implacable tone.

It wasn’t his decision, though. “You can’t—”

“No. And if you argue, I’ll tie you to the bed again until this is over with.”

If she argued? “So this is how you intend to be my friend? If I scream, you kiss me. If I say something you disagree with, you tie me to a bed. I can’t imagine what you’ll do if I walk to the quarterdeck without your permission.”

Oh, but the words had barely left her mouth before she did imagine what he could do—and she would not be tied, but her hands roaming over hard muscle and tanned skin. She saw the flash of his grin and was suddenly grateful for the darkness that hid the heat in her cheeks.

But he only said, “I’m a friend who will let you do anything but give yourself up.”

Blast him. Yet Elizabeth wouldn’t have let a friend give herself up, either. With a sigh, she stared into the dark again.

He took her hand and gave her fingers a reassuring squeeze before releasing her. “We do have a fair chance of losing them in this storm. We’ll reach the Ivory Market. I know you can hide well enough that he won’t find you. And if you need help…I’ll tell you how to find me.”

Heart full, she nodded. That was exactly as she’d hoped. Exactly as she’d planned, if her father and his hunters didn’t board Kingfisher. Her alternative to anyone dying.

When Caius had warned the crew of the airship’s presence, he’d known the storm was their best chance of evading her father’s pursuit. Caius must have been trying to create the same alternative—because even though he’d planned to kill anyone who tried to take Elizabeth, she’d told him in her cabin that she didn’t want anyone to die.

So he was attempting to offer her the chance to hide. Now she wanted to tell him, Come with me. But Elizabeth didn’t speak the words, still unsure whether she’d begun to trust him just because she wanted to so badly.

And if they did escape her father tonight, she would have days to make certain that she could trust him.

“Well, I hope that we lose them,” she said. “Then the next three days will be like a holiday.”

Though the shadows concealed his eyes, she felt Caius’s gaze on her. “And how would you pass the time?”

“Study, perhaps. Read more of Guerra’s monograph on megalodon predation of whales in the North Sea.” Along with clothes and money, she always carried the naturalist society’s most recent publication in her satchel. “All of the crew believes we’re having a tryst.”

He didn’t reply for a long second. “Does that worry you?”

“No. If there is a real woman named Magdalena Dvorak, I would worry that her reputation is ruined, but mine is not. I might use their assumption as an excuse to be very lazy in bed and rise well past a productive hour.” She gave him a wry glance. “The truth is, I already do that more often than I should.”

Caius abruptly turned his face away from her.

Of course. Her heart constricted. Throat tight, she said, “What do you wish to say? Do you wonder if I’ll complain about the softness of my mattress or the many hours I can sleep?”

His head whipped back around. “No,” he denied sharply. “I was trying not to think of you in bed. Or how I want to be there with you.”

The huffing engine seemed to quiet, muffled by the pounding of her heart. She touched his sleeve. “What else do you want?”

He shook his head.

“You said that the least you could give me was the truth, Caius. So tell me, what else do you want?”

The shadow over his jaw deepened slightly, as if he’d clenched his teeth. “I want to kiss you again.”

She wanted him to kiss her, too. To feel him cup her face in his hands and hold her as everything burned away into the heat of his mouth.

But that wasn’t all he wanted. Roughly, he continued, “I want to taste the skin on the side of your neck. I used to watch you feed the mink at the sanctuary, and when you leaned over the edge of their pond your braid would fall forward over your shoulder against that spot and I would think of it for days, of holding you still while I licked and licked. I want to tear away your dress and worship your breasts with my hands. I want to kiss your nipples and suck until they’re hard against my tongue. You destroyed me two years ago, offering yourself to me. Afterward, I stood at the door of your cabin and listened to you bathe, trying to imagine how you looked and knowing that I only had to turn around to see how beautiful you were. But if I did, you would have seen what imagining you had done to me, and you’d know how I’d lied about not wanting you.”

Breathless, she had to know— “What did I do to you?”

“Elizabeth—”

“Tell me.”

“Bludging hell, Elizabeth!” Voice harsh with frustration, he said, “My prick was hard as stone. Just as it is now, being here with you.”

Her gaze dropped, but in the dark, there was nothing to see except the solid shadow of his body. But it didn’t matter. Elizabeth had yearned for evidence that she could trust him, and his words now were enough.

Caius was here to help her. He would never admit to such things if he was working for her father. And whether the protective parent she’d known or the madman who believed she was his wife, if he’d had any idea that Caius wanted her, her father wouldn’t have let him anywhere near her.

Her heart buoyed by joy, she turned her face away.

He was here to help her, to be her friend. And she knew him. It was so incredible to discover that Caius was the man she’d always dreamed he was.

“God forgive me, Elizabeth. I shouldn’t have said— I wouldn’t have…” Trailing off, he angled his head lower as if trying to see her expression. “Are you smiling?”

Elizabeth lifted her chin. No hiding now. “Yes. I was thinking that if this does become a holiday, I would like to have a tryst. Not as Magdalena Dvorak,” she said, “but as Elizabeth Jannsen.”

It seemed that an eternity passed, but it lasted only a few beats of her racing pulse. When he answered, tension strained his voice. “Would you?”

She nodded.

“With me?”

She nodded again.

And gasped when hard fingers circled her waist and pushed her deeper into the shadows behind the lifeboat, the timber post against her back and the edge of a folded glider pressing into her shoulder. Already difficult to see, now they were completely hidden from the sight of the crew.

His gloved hands rose and caught her face. “Are you certain? Because I would take any opportunity to be with you, Elizabeth, but I don’t want to make a mistake and hurt you again. So don’t play with me about this.”

If not for the hoarseness of his voice, his doubt might have hurt her. But he was terrified of being wrong, Elizabeth realized. Just as she’d been afraid when he’d said he loved her. Because if he didn’t…

It tore her apart to even think of it. She had to trust that he did. But she knew that wasn’t easy.

“I never would play with you, Caius.” She might tease him, but never mislead him. “Not about this.”

“I know.” His thumbs stroked her cheeks. “But it’s so impossible to believe that you want me.”

God, she did. So much. And all so overwhelming, so new. “I’ve barely grasped that you want me.” After years of believing that he hated her. “What you told me—is that all you want to do?”

“It was not even near to all the ways I want to touch you.”

“Then tell me that, too.”

His groan was a low rumble. “Are you trying to torture me?”

“A little,” she admitted. But everything he’d said had tortured her, too.

“Then I would part your legs and taste you until you’re wet and begging for me to make you come. I’d cover your body with mine and drive as deep as I could again and again, watching your face because you don’t hide anything, and I’d know how you felt when I was inside you.” His voice deepened, so low and rough she could barely hear him over the engine. “I wish I could see you now. If I could, it would be easier to believe you want me as much as I want you.”

He didn’t need to see her. She would prove it to him. Sliding her hands over his shoulders, she lifted onto her toes. “Caius.”

“Elizabeth,” he said gruffly. The shadow of his head lowered—then stopped, as if he was waiting.

For her explicit permission?

Need overpowered her ability to speak. Heart pounding, she pushed her fingers into his hair and hauled him down to her lips.

Heat surrounded her. His mouth opened over hers with a demanding stroke of his tongue. His hands dropped to her waist and his arms gathered her close, his groan of pleasure a thrum through her chest and his arousal hard against her stomach. Hunger seared her nerves. She tried to push closer, closer, but Caius was pulling away from her, lifting his head.

Cold air kissed her moist lips. Breath ragged, she looked up. “Caius?”

His body stiffened. Still holding her against his chest, he turned toward the stern of the airship. She looked over his shoulder as a warning sounded from the crew.

Her stomach twisted into a knot. Had her father caught up to them?

Captain Harker began shouting orders, then his voice was lost as the roar of the engine changed—deeper, louder. Not a steady rattling huff but fast and irregular.

Not the sound of one engine, she realized with sudden horror. They were hearing two engines.

And both were at full steam. Her father’s airship had caught up to them but his crew must not have seen them yet, because no one would barrel through a storm like this so close to another airship.

How close? Were they higher or lower? Off to the side and on a parallel heading or coming directly toward them?

Desperately, she searched the snow-filled night. Her arms tightened around Caius’s neck. “Where are they?”

Even as she asked, a shadow moved through the swirling white on the portside tail. Just off to the side. Maybe they would miss each other—

All at once, the shadow’s shape resolved into the jutting prow of an airship, like a spear tossed out of the dark.

Directly at Kingfisher’s propellers.

“Oh, dear God,” she whispered, just Caius’s arm cinched around her and he dove for the deck.

A heartbeat later, her father’s airship rammed into them.

Chapter Four

ELIZABETH’S BACK SLAMMED INTO THE boards, knocking away her breath. A rhythmic thunk thunk thunk thumped heavily through the dark. Beneath her, Kingfisher shuddered in time with each thump—then jolted sharply to port.

Metal shrieked, a piercing scream that drowned out every other sound and resonated in Elizabeth’s teeth and skull, spiking agony through her ears. She couldn’t hear her own scream, only feel Caius above her, shielding her body with his and shoving her along the smooth deck. Around behind the lifeboat, she realized. Using it for cover.

The shriek rose and snapped. The boards trembled and the grinding of gears reverberated through the deck. The rumble of Kingfisher’s engine died.

Oh, thank God. Someone below must have thrown the engine to full stop.

Splintered wood hailed around them, pelting the boat.

Then nothing.

For a breathless second, Elizabeth couldn’t believe it. She lay still, waiting, with Caius’s tense body like steel over hers.

Well. That hadn’t been as bad as she’d feared.

In the sudden quiet, joyful shouts rose around them. Murmuring that he loved her, he loved her, Caius pressed kisses to her forehead and cheeks. Laughing and coughing, she sat up, clinging to him.

A metallic thwipkt! whipped through the air. The deck lurched.

Silence fell for a taut moment—then a high-pitched scream of pain and horror split the dark.

“Get down, Elizabeth!” Caius flattened her to the deck. “Down!”

Thwipkt!

The deck seemed to drop toward the stern. More screams—but the first abruptly cut off. Glass shattered nearby. The pilot’s wheelhouse. All around them, wood splintered and groaned. Another thwipkt! And another. Each followed by a jolt of the deck, as if it were falling out from beneath them.

The cables tethering the balloon to the wooden cruiser were breaking, Elizabeth realized—the tension snapping them like whips.

Terror dug into her heart with feral claws. The crash must have fractured the primary tether anchors at the stern. Now the weight of the cruiser and its massive steam engine were tearing the secondary cables from their anchors in succession, from stern to bow. Like a clamshell being forced open, the ship was ripping away from the balloon.

“Hold on to me!” Caius shouted.

The deck dropped again, a sharp downward slant. Elizabeth cried out as they suddenly slid past the lifeboat—then jerked to a stop.

Caius had caught the timber. But even that wouldn’t save them. She could hear wood cracking all around them. It wouldn’t be long before their support broke free.

Another thwipkt! and she screamed as the deck suddenly seemed to disappear beneath them. But they weren’t dropping to the ground. They dangled high above it, Caius’s arm around her waist and hanging on to the timber with his opposite hand.

A scream rushed past them. Someone falling. Dear God.

Wood creaking, the airship seemed to swing, as if the cruiser was hanging vertically from the balloon by the few cables remaining near the bow. It couldn’t be long before the metal fabric of the balloon ripped. The envelope was strong, designed to carry the weight of the cruiser and withstand the effects of extreme weather. It wasn’t made to do this.

Caius couldn’t hold them forever, either—though she knew he would try. Thank the heavens he didn’t have to.

“The glider!” she cried. “Can you reach it?”

“I can’t reach it without letting you go!”

She tightened her arms around his shoulders. “Then let go of me. I’ll hold on!”

He hesitated.

“Do it, Caius! I’ll hold on!”

The ship groaned, swinging as another cable broke. Elizabeth’s heart stopped for a terrifying moment when Caius’s hold vanished from around her waist and her arms bore her full weight. Frantically, she wrapped her legs around him. Grunting with effort, he hauled them both upward with one hand, blindly reaching for the glider’s hooks with the other.

Another scream as someone else fell. She prayed that others had gotten to the gliders, too.

A ratcheting series of clicks sounded by her ear—he’d opened the glider. Sheer relief made her weight seem like a feather’s. Clinging to him, she tucked her head against his neck.

“Don’t let go.” Urgency hardened his voice. “Whatever happens, Elizabeth, don’t let go.”

Heavy muscle bunched beneath her hands. He seemed to swing—so his feet could push them away from the deck, she realized, jumping out away from the ship instead of just dropping—and then there was nothing around them, and the sharp jolt of their leap and the glider catching the air knocked her legs from around him. Gritting her teeth, she locked her arms tighter.

“Elizabeth!” Desperation filled his shout. Flying the glider required both hands. He couldn’t hold on to her.

“I’m all right!”

Terrified, but alive and hanging on. Her stomach dropped and swooped as they leveled out, her feet dangling and skirts whipping around her legs.

Her eyes had squeezed shut. She made herself open them, looking into the dark beyond his shoulder.

An explosion of orange light burned her eyes. A blast of heated air hit her legs, seemed to toss the glider upward.

“Hold on!”

Arms shaking with strain, she did. The glider leveled out again and banked to the left.

Elizabeth dared another look and her heart pulled in two, ripping a denial from her throat.

On the ground, her father’s airship had caught fire, the falling snow forming a glowing halo around the wreckage and lighting the scene. A rolling white plain stretched around the airship, broken here and there by bodies or crates and pieces of the engine. Kingfisher floated above, balloon up-ended, the cruiser dangling beneath. A small two-seater balloon was in the air, flying toward Kingfisher. More emergency gliders circled around the airship. Eleven or twelve. Not enough for everyone who must have been on the two vessels.

She glanced down again. Oh, thank God. There were more people down there, racing across the snow—

Not people. Fear slicked the back of her neck in a cold sweat.

Zombies.

Drawn by the noise and the light, the ravenous creatures were converging on the wreck. She watched in horror as a glider landed on the snow and four of the zombies sped in that direction. A figure burst away from the glider. Not fast enough.

Eyes burning, she looked away, then bit back her scream when Kingfisher’s balloon suddenly split along a seam. The cruiser dropped—a lone glider flying away from the ship as it fell, a long sickening silence that ended with a deafening crash. The stern collapsed on impact, smashing in on itself. The bow snapped backward and slammed upside-down onto the ground. The remains of the heavy balloon flopped down around it.

More zombies turned toward Kingfisher’s wreckage, then Caius banked the glider away from the site and she couldn’t see either of the airships, only the glow of the fire illuminating the falling flakes of snow.

Flying away from the light and the noise and the zombies...but they had to land sometime. Kingfisher’s bow might provide a shelter.

But she couldn’t ask where Caius was going. She needed to be quiet, to avoid attracting the zombies’ notice. And every bit of her concentration and strength centered on her arms, the trembling pain that weakened her hold with every minute that she dangled above the ground. A few more zombies roamed below—all heading toward the wreck while she and Caius flew silently above the creatures’ heads.

Slowly, the glider lost altitude. Numbness had just begun to creep into her hands when her heels suddenly scraped over snow, her feet bouncing along until Caius’s boots hit and then they were tumbling, rolling, the glider’s frame cracking and the canvas shredding.

In the next second, he hauled her onto her feet. His coat was open, the brass buckles of his weapons harness glinting in the faint light. A machete gleamed in his left hand.

A man’s best friend when facing the creatures. She was suddenly glad that Caius had one—and that he’d declared himself her friend, too.

“All right, Elizabeth?”

It was a hoarse whisper. Making as little noise as possible.

Elizabeth nodded in response. Bruised and sore, with needles of pain stabbing from her shoulders to her fingers, but alive.

He cupped her cheek. Not looking down at her, though. His gaze searched the snow around them.

Heart racing, she scanned their surroundings. The snow still fell heavily, and although a bit of wind scattered the flakes it wasn’t the blinding torrent on the airship, offering fifty yards or more of visibility.

No zombies—but the fire burned in the distance, an orange glow against the sky. Any of the creatures heading in that direction might come across her and Caius in their path.

His hand dropping away from her cheek, Caius bent to the ground. Pinning the glider with his foot, he wrenched an arm’s length of the broken frame free. Canvas ripped. He paused for a long second, watching the snow around them before turning toward her. Holding the broken piece in his fist, he mimed jabbing the sharp aluminum point into his eye.

She nodded to show her understanding. If they came across any zombies, stab them through the head.

Caius gave her the weapon and took her free hand, tugging her away from the light. She hesitated. They might find some shelter in the wreckage; there wasn’t any out here in the open. He glanced back and lowered his mouth to her ear.

“There’s an outpost ahead,” he breathed. “I saw it in the flare of the explosion.”

A Horde outpost? With high stone walls—and possible rescue for those left at the airship.

She nodded. “How far?”

“A half mile. The storm will help cover us as we move.”

Then best to go quickly. She gestured for him to lead on, her boots sinking four or five inches into the snow with each step. Thank God not any deeper. He broke into a jog and she kept pace beside him, her heart thundering. She tried to be silent but her chest sounded like a bellows, each breath bursting into a frozen cloud, the snow crunching under her boots.

A distant crack split the air behind them. Gunfire. Someone was shooting the zombies—but that would only bring more, not scare them away.

All around them, shadows moved through the night, heading toward the sound of the shots. Faint moans and growls prickled the hairs on the back of her neck. She darted terrified glances over her shoulder as they ran, expecting to see one behind them at any moment.

But it came from ahead, rushing out of the dark and snow. Caius released her hand, sprinting ahead to meet it. Elizabeth faltered, horror slowing her steps. Covered in filth, the creature was naked, as if any clothing it had worn long ago rotted off. Some of its flesh had, too, skin hanging loose over its chest. She couldn’t tell whether it was male or female. Gaping wounds exposed shredded muscle and bone in its lower abdomen and face. Snarls ripped from a nightmarish mouth, the lips torn or bitten away.

Fingers like claws, it lunged for Caius. With a quick sidestep and a powerful swing, he hacked through its skull. The top half of its head dropped to the ground, an upended bowl. The body took a few more running steps before plowing into the snow, thick blood drooling from the severed jaw.

Her stomach lurching into her throat, Elizabeth raced past it, catching Caius’s hand again. A solid shadow stood directly ahead—the outpost wall. A hulking machine appeared on the left and they sped past an enormous segmented wheeltrack, larger than any vehicle treads she’d ever seen.

A harvester. Or a war machine.

They reached the wall. Elizabeth collapsed against it, catching her breath. His back to the stone, Caius’s gaze swept their trail before he nodded. “This way.”

Because the entrance to Horde structures almost always faced south. Without a visible moon, she didn’t know how he could tell which direction they were running in, but soon after rounding the corner of the wall they came across the massive wooden doors.

The massive open doors. No sound or lights within.

Caius’s jaw clenched. She knew what he was thinking. Those open doors meant the outpost had been abandoned or overrun. They couldn’t know what was inside—whether the site would be infested with zombies or empty—and the worst way to find out would be walking through those doors in the dark.

He looked away from the outpost and his eyes narrowed. Elizabeth followed his gaze. Another giant machine stood twenty yards away, a long armored body on dozens of segmented legs.

A second later they were running toward it, Caius’s hand holding hers.

Beneath the machine, only a powdering of snow lay over stiff, dried grasses. It must have been sitting for a while. Rust darkened the iron legs and flaked off beneath Elizabeth’s glove. The body squatted low to the ground, the legs folded like a locust’s—but the belly was still well over their heads. They peered upward, searching the shadows for a hatch.

How could they possibly see it? Tension gripped her chest as a moan sounded from inside the outpost. They both froze, watching in that direction.

Nothing.

Caius glanced up again and whispered, “We can’t risk a light.”

Only a fool would. But they were already being fools, Elizabeth realized. Even mobile structures had deliberately placed entrances.

She tugged on his sleeve. “South.”

And there it was, on the side of the machine; an oval door with a simple lever latch waited above the third leg. In plain sight, but it took another five minutes of searching to find the ladder built into the leg—a disappearing ladder, designed to prevent more than one person from going up. Pulling on small metal rings while climbing opened handholds and footholds above her and closed the panels below. Only two holds were available at any time: one to stand on, and the next one up.

Because it was a war machine, she realized. They wouldn’t have wanted an enemy to attack their entrance in force.

“Go on up and open the door,” Caius said softly. “Zombies can’t climb.”

So the creatures wouldn’t be up there…unless they’d already been trapped inside. But Elizabeth wouldn’t think of that.

Tucking her aluminum poker under her arm, she hauled herself up. A tiny platform the size of her foot projected from beside the door. She gingerly stepped onto it and looked down at the top of Caius’s hat ten feet below.

On a steadying breath, she gripped the latch. Rusted tight, the lever wouldn’t budge, even when she threw her full weight onto it.

She glanced down, met Caius’s eyes, and shook her head.

He gestured her back down and waited for her beside the leg. Her heart thumped when he pushed the machete into her grip.

“Will you stand guard?” he whispered. “I’ll try to open it. If I can’t, we’ll head around to the other machine.”

She nodded. A grin widened his mouth and his firm lips swiftly pressed to hers. Before she could kiss him back, he was climbing.

Smiling, she pivoted in a slow circle. A movement farther south froze Elizabeth’s blood, her fingers tight on the machete’s handle—but the zombie continued on, heading east toward the airships. She glanced toward the outpost doors to make certain nothing had wandered out, then looked up. Caius had reached the little step beside the hatch. Gripping the lever in his left hand, he hauled up.

A metallic screeeech ripped the air like a scream.

Snarls sounded through the dark. Elizabeth whipped around, searching for the zombies.

“Bludging hell!” He tore open the hatch, hinges squealing in protest. “Climb, Elizabeth!”

But one was coming fast, tearing through the outpost doors. She wouldn’t be able to climb high enough before it was on her. Gripping the machete, she faced the zombie.

A heavy thud beside her. Elizabeth stifled her scream. Just Caius. He’d jumped to the ground and now he spun toward her, his long coat flaring out around him.

“Up!” He grabbed the machete, pushed her to the ladder. “Up!”

Another moan behind them. Elizabeth frantically yanked on the first ring, shoved her foot into the first step. A wet thunk silenced the first zombie’s snarls. More were coming across the snow. Faster she went, yanking and climbing. She glanced back as Caius razed the neck of one zombie while slamming a second away with a boot to its chest. It staggered back and he chopped through its head. Then another came and she climbed faster, faster. Sick with fear, she reached the top and scrambled onto the step in front of the hatch.

“I’m at the door! Come up, come up!”

Below, Caius grunted as he hacked through a zombie’s head. Another rushed at him and Elizabeth cried a warning as a small zombie came from behind—a child. His machete embedded in a skull, Caius reached back and caught the little one’s face. Its head thrashed like a rabid dog’s with Caius’s gloved hand between its teeth before a hard shove knocked the creature back. Something dropped wetly from its mouth and then the child rushed him again, stopped suddenly with a chop through its head.

Caius yanked a ring and began to climb.

Her heart frozen, Elizabeth stared at the piece of Caius’s glove on the snow. The zombie’s teeth had ripped through the leather and torn it away.

Caius was moving too quickly and it was too shadowed to be certain, but she spotted a faint gleam on the side of his hand. Like something dark and wet.

Like blood.

Her chest seemed to fold in, crushing her heart. Her lungs only emitted short, broken breaths, and she clung to him when he reached the door, clung with tears in her eyes but she couldn’t speak at all, because her throat was too thick and her heart was wrecked, smashed beyond repair.

Caius had been bitten.

“Shh,” he soothed against her ear. “It’s all right. It’s over. Let’s go in.”

Into the cold and dark. A low ceiling forced them to hunch over. He shut the hatch and they listened. Silence. He called out, his deep voice echoing. Nothing. If any zombies had been inside the machine, they would have been snarling and groaning.

But it was already too late. It wouldn’t be long until Caius was one of them. That bite would take him away from her, and Elizabeth wouldn’t be able to chase after him.

Her mind dull, she barely registered the sudden glow—a small flame from Caius’s spark lighter. Copper pipes ran along the sides of a low passageway leading into the belly. Rust roughened the iron plates under their feet. To their right, a short ladder extended up through a hatch in the ceiling. Caius climbed up a few steps before dropping back to the floor, his boots clanging against iron.

“That looked like an access to the leg pistons and gun ports,” Caius said softly. Bent at the waist, he led her into the passageway. “We’ll find the living quarters. They walked these machines across two continents. They didn’t come all that way without sleeping.”

Throat aching, she nodded. They entered a chamber lined by two rows of levers and foot paddles—propulsion controls for the legs in this segment of the machine, she realized. An open panel in the floor exposed the machinery beneath, flywheels and long crankshaft arms with offset bearings that looked like teeth. On the walls, the faint outlines of several painted figures remained. A lion or tiger, and what she thought might have been a horse and foal. The ceiling had been painted blue—as if the men or women who’d worked those foot pedals were running across a cloudless plain instead of laboring inside the belly of a machine.

They followed another low corridor to the right, passing more chambers filled with levers and controls. A tattered cloth covered the entrance to the next; Caius glanced inside and pulled her in.

An altar chamber or a hearth chamber. Maybe both. It was roughly circular, and constructing that shape out of the metal must have been difficult; the room must have been important enough to warrant the effort. Embroidered fabric hung on the walls, the colors faded. Cushions covered in brown felt ringed the chamber, the stuffing all but flat.

A small dais sat opposite the door, topped by three clay pots. Caius strode across the chamber.

“Oil lamps,” he said, lifting one and tipping it back and forth slightly—in the hand that was killing him. He glanced back with a grin. “With oil. And just enough of a wick.”

She tried to smile, but the choking pain in her throat and chest must have made it look as false as it felt. His brows drawing in, Caius touched his spark lighter to the lamp and crossed to her side again.

His gaze searched her face. “Elizabeth?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to…” Cry. But that was becoming more difficult—and impossible when he wrapped her in his arms. Her heart a solid ache, she whispered hoarsely, “I shouldn’t have run. I should have just gone with him.”

But she hadn’t. And now so many people were dead.

Caius soon among them.

“No.” His voice was rough. “Your father gave you no good choice. And this wasn’t your fault.”

This was. She drew a sobbing breath. “I shouldn’t have let you help me. I should have stopped you.”

“Do you think I would have let you?”

No. Not the Caius she knew. Not the man who’d promised to be her friend.

And that promise had killed him.

Desperately she tried to stop her shudders. He was the one dying and she was the one crying. That was wrong, wrong—yet the tears didn’t stop. He gathered her up in his arms and carried her to the dais, where the lamp burned with a steady glow. Kicking a few cushions together, he sank onto them, holding her against his chest.

So strong and warm. She couldn’t let him go.

Her face felt hot and swollen. She dragged off her hat and curled against him, slipping her fingers beneath the chest strap of his harness. “What do we do now?”

“Wait until morning,” he said softly. “And maybe we’ll find something inside the outpost that’ll take us out of here.”

She didn’t want to, but had to ask, “How long can you go on?”

Someone without nanoagents would only last a few hours after a bite. But the mechanical bugs in his body would allow Caius to fight off the zombie infection longer. Eventually, though, he’d succumb. There was no cure.

“As long as I need to,” he said. And when her tears spilled over again, groaned and buried his face in her hair. “Don’t cry, Elizabeth. I can’t bear it.”

Because he loved her. And she’d said that she despised him.

Elizabeth couldn’t bear that he might still believe she did.

Shifting off his lap, she kneeled beside him, face to face. Kissing him, her tears still falling and her throat raw, she said, “I lied to you, Caius.”

“Did you?” His hands tangled in her hair and she felt his smile against her lips. “Tell me.”

“I don’t despise you. I hate that you hurt me.” With every cold response and his refusal to believe her—yet none of that seemed to matter now. On a broken breath, she said, “But I don’t hate you. I love you. I think that I have for so long.”

Caius’s body stiffened. His mouth taut, he jerked his head up to look down at her. His dark blue gaze searched her features, and whatever he saw in her face must have echoed her words, because in the next moment he kissed her as if he’d never kissed her before, as if he would never let her go.

He would have to, but when the torrent passed he held her and tenderly pressed his lips to her cheek, kissing away the trail of her tears. “Then why these?”

“Because I can’t bear to lose you now.”

“You won’t.”

It sounded like a promise. Was he trying to protect her? “I saw the zombie bite you, Caius. Its teeth ripped through the leather of your glove.” Her chest gave an agonizing hitch. “I saw it.”

He drew back. His mouth curved, his lower lip still slightly swollen where she’d bit him earlier. “You’re the only one who’s almost taken a chunk out of me lately.”

“But I saw—”

Untangling his fingers from her hair, he snagged the wrist of his glove between his teeth and stripped it off his hand.

His steel hand.

Stunned out of her tears, Elizabeth stared at it. The skeletal prosthetic resembled bones, yet when he made a fist his fingers curled as smoothly as hers. She pushed up his coat sleeve. The prosthetic melded smoothly into his flesh halfway up the length of his strong forearm, and the flex of tendons and muscle was mirrored in the subtle movement of small pneumatic tubes in his wrist.

Astonished, she wordlessly shook her head—then realization and dread slipped beneath her shock.

Caius had said the first place he’d gone after removing the shackle was to England—one of the few places where such an apparatus could be grafted to his arm. He’d said a friend had removed the shackle for him.

Her gaze dropped to the handle of the machete sheathed in his harness.

“Oh, dear God.” The joy that the zombie’s bite hadn’t infected him collided with the horror of what he’d done. “You cut off your hand?”

“To remove the shackle.” His voice roughened. “After you jumped, I went back to the sanctuary and discovered that everything you’d told me was true. And I realized that I should have cut it off five years ago, the moment your father asked me to hunt you down.”

Elizabeth understood that all too well. She’d jumped, desperate for freedom. He’d made his own desperate choice. Nodding, she glanced up—and froze.

“Caius?”

His face bleak, he watched her. “You thought I was dying?”

“Yes.” And because his stark expression and empty gaze made her stomach tremble with worry, she gave a nervous laugh. “So much crying over nothing.”

He didn’t smile. “Is that why you said it?”

Why she’d told Caius she loved him?

It had been. She wouldn’t have dared say it yet, if he hadn’t been dying.

She didn’t know what to do now. What to say now. When she’d thought she would lose him, nothing else had mattered. Not fear, not doubt, not remembered hurt.

Voice ragged, he asked, “Were you lying, Elizabeth?”

Violent rejection shot through her in response. She’d said it because he was dying, but she hadn’t been lying. She’d told Caius she loved him because she did.

And nothing else mattered now, either.

“No,” she said softly. “Every word was true.”

She just hadn’t been ready to say them. But she was ready for this—Caius’s rough, sweet kiss, the strong hands that lifted her against him. Smiling and laughing, Elizabeth said it again the moment she could take a breath—I love you, Caius—because he wasn’t dying, and he was here with her, and she never had to let him go.

Then his kiss slowed and softened; her heart beat fast and hard. Her fingers clenched in his hair, everything inside her winding up tight.

She couldn’t get close enough.

“Caius,” she begged, and he knew what to give, dragging her over his lap to straddle his hips, his grip firm as he gently rocked up between her thighs.

Oh, dear God. Sensation exploded below, pleasure bursting into desperate arousal. Crying out, she arched her back, grinding harder against him.

With a groan, Caius tore his mouth from hers. His lips burned fire down her throat. A delicious shiver raced through her as he pushed aside her scarf and licked the skin where her neck met her shoulder.

The spot he’d imagined tasting—and he’d imagined so much more.

So had she.

Aching with need, she whispered, “All of it, Caius. Everything you wanted.”

“Christ, Elizabeth.” It was tortured, gruff. “Not here.”

“Why?”

“You deserve better.” His heated mouth met hers again. “A soft bed—in a bedchamber that isn’t freezing.”

And she could have those later. She caught his face between her gloved hands. “You’re alive. I’m alive. We’re safe. That’s all I need—and to be with you.”

His eyes closed and his jaw clenched beneath her palms. Fighting an inner battle.

This was one she wanted him to lose.

She trailed her fingers down his throat, over his collar, down to the first buckle on his harness. “I think the best way to keep me warm is to cover my body with yours.”

The left side of his mouth quirked up in a smile, and that was the spot Elizabeth wanted to lick. She leaned in, softly parting her lips against the corner of his, and tasted.

Caius. A little salty—but mostly just heat.

And even hotter when he turned his head, mouth catching hers as she drew back. The battle over, the fight won. Eagerly, she returned his kiss, but this was already different, so different. Not just the joy and pleasure, but anticipation twisting them together in an urgent coil of desire. She tugged at the laces of her bodice, remembering—I want to kiss your nipples and suck until they’re hard against my tongue—oh, but they were already hard and tight beneath her chemise, the delicate skin around her nipples puckering when Caius dragged the linen away from her breasts, exposing her to the frigid air. He bent his head and captured her nipple between his lips.

She caught fire. Elizabeth tried to ride it out, rocking against him as pleasure seared her senses. But though she could feel the wetness between her thighs, the fire burned higher, hotter.

His fingers suddenly slid through her slick heat. Caius groaned when he touched her, and her hips jerked, pushing wildly against his hand.

Sweet God. Her body had never been so uncontrollable. She hadn’t known what she’d asked for. Her own hands had never felt like this, gentle and rough all at once. His fingers slicked over her clitoris, then returned to circle the sensitive knot of flesh when she cried out, her back bowing.

She hadn’t known a touch there could feel like this, either, though she’d sometimes rubbed the same spot until a pleasant little jolt shuddered through her. But that had been a spark. This was a raging conflagration.

“I can’t believe we’ve never done this before,” she gasped. “Oh, Caius. We should have started at the sanctuary. We’d have been such friends.”

With a sound that was half laugh, half agonized groan, Caius lifted his head. His frozen breath puffed across her nipple, so hot and wet from the attentions of his mouth that the chill in the air was another pleasure.

He tugged her bodice up, covering her. “We’ll make up for it.”

And he did within the next minute, tipping her back against the cushion. His features stark with need, he sat up and dragged off his coat, unbuckled his harness and let it drop to the floor. His ravenous gaze raked down her body.

“Pull your skirts up.”

His demand stole Elizabeth’s breath, but not her sense. She yanked them up to the tops of her woolen stockings, tied just above her knees.

Caius gave a satisfied nod. “You’re mostly covered, then. But throw this over us if your legs become cold.”

He tossed his coat beside her and followed it down—not settling between her thighs, as she’d expected and hoped, but gently pushing her legs apart and pressing his lips to the strip of bare skin between her skirt hem and her stockings.

Then moving higher.

Elizabeth stiffened, trembling, wondering if she should close her legs again and run away. He’d said he wanted to do this—but she hadn’t given it much thought and had never imagined it.

But she wouldn’t run again—and she would never run from him.

She squeezed her eyes shut, unable to watch, and she’d just realized that she could hide what he was doing by covering her legs with his coat when his mouth reached the apex of her thighs. His tongue slicked through the heat and wet.

Oh, God. Why had they never done this before?

The strangled cry she heard couldn’t have been a human noise, but it must have been because it was coming from her throat while she bucked against his mouth and her fingers twisted in his hair. His big hands pinned her hips in place and he licked while she sobbed his name, and licked and licked and licked and when she thought her body might snap he gave her clitoris a firm rough rub with his tongue.

And she did snap, a thousand times, every nerve and muscle breaking apart all at once—except for her heart, that was all in one piece, thundering as Caius rose between her legs and kissed her, long and deep. She melted into him, trembling from anticipation and her release.

He settled into the cradle of her thighs, his weight supported by his elbows. His fingers slid into her hair and she felt him against her entrance, thick and blunt.

Sudden pain made her bite back a cry. She tried to hide it, but Caius was watching her face.

“Elizabeth.” He gritted out her name between clenched teeth. “Forgive me. This is the last time I hurt you.”

But it wasn’t a quick, vanishing hurt like pulling out a splinter. Caius pushed deeper and the terrible ache moved deeper, too. How far did he have to go? Her teeth digging into her bottom lip, she curled her fingers into fists against his back and bore the thick intrusion. After an eternity he stopped, his body taut with strain and his breathing ragged. Softly, he pressed kisses to her forehead and cheeks and mouth, the rest of him motionless—as if allowing her time to become accustomed to the feel of the heated shaft buried inside her.

And she was. A little.

Then he suddenly shoved against her, drawing a surprised cry from her lips, but when he lodged even deeper the ache wasn’t so insistent. Above her, Caius froze and shuddered. His rigid sex pulsed inside her sheath.

A tortured groan ripped from his chest, rumbling against her breasts. “I’m sorry, Elizabeth. Forgive me. I’ve wanted you so long.”

Was he apologizing because he’d spent? That made no sense. “That is what this act leads to, isn’t it?”

“But you should, too. I should have waited for you to come.”

Well, she already had—when he’d licked her. She linked her arms around his shoulders. “It’s all right. I like this, too.”

Holding him in her arms and holding him inside her. Just having him so close felt wonderful, even if it was a little painful.

Though it wasn’t so painful now.

His head bent to hers. “It won’t be long,” he said between kisses.

“For what?”

“I’ll be ready again.”

Oh. She’d thought it was done. But there would have to be more to this, or so many women wouldn’t bother with expensive airship fares and illicit trysts.

Now she was all-too aware of the wide spread of her legs, of her bent knees and her boot heels digging into the felt cushions. Of her skirts bunched over her hips and his weight resting between her bare thighs. Of the sticky wetness where they were joined. Though he’d softened slightly, she could still feel his penis inside her, thick and heavy.

Caius licked that spot on her neck again, making her shiver. He tasted his way up over her jaw until his mouth slanted over hers, parting her lips with a possessive thrust of his tongue and a long, slow kiss. A moan rose through her chest when he suckled on the tip of her tongue, giving way to sharp, panting breaths as his hand slid into her unlaced bodice and teased her nipple to aching hardness again.

Heated arousal raced across her nerves, tugging and pulling them taut. Her sheath was tightening around him—or his shaft was stiffening. No painful ache this time, though she felt him so deep. Elizabeth moved her hips a little, testing.

Pleasure rippled through her flesh, clenching around him.

“Caius.” Gasping, she moved again. “Are you ready?”

God, please let him be ready.

He reared up and braced his hands beside her shoulders, determination hardening his jaw. “This time, I’ll come after you.”

“You always do,” she said breathlessly.

A laugh shook through him, then he rocked against her and there was no more laughing, just her cry and his groan and Caius pistoning his thick shaft back and forth inside her. Faster, faster. He’d worried about the cold but the flames were all but bursting through her skin, so much heat, stoked hotter with every deep thrust. Relentless, he pushed her higher, his gaze locked on her face—and she remembered that he wanted to see how much she desired him, needed him, but even in the dark he couldn’t have doubted. Not when she arched and shuddered beneath him, crying his name as the world burned around her. Not when she clung to him as he still moved inside her, pressing wild hot kisses to his neck and jaw. Not when she held him tight as he pulsed deep once more, whispering against his lips that she loved him.

And that she would never understand why they hadn’t done this before.

Chapter Five

FOR TWO YEARS, CAIUS HAD WOKEN with a hollow ache in his chest and his fists closing over nothing—though only after the nights he’d been able to sleep at all. It seemed impossible that Elizabeth was here now, alive. Even though he’d held her and kissed her, a part of him feared that he would open his eyes and she’d be gone.

But instead of emptiness, his heart was full and he held Elizabeth in his arms. He hadn’t needed to cover her body with his to keep her warm; he’d only needed to tuck her back against his chest and pile his coat and the wall hangings over them. Now she slept, her lips soft and her hands folded beneath her cheek. A small bruise marred her neck, marked by his mouth. Driven by desperate need, he’d had her like this in the middle of the night, pushing her skirts up and plunging into her slick heat. He’d sucked on her skin while his fingers had stroked the slippery bud of her clitoris, and her sweet cries had echoed through the chamber until her clenching sheath triggered his own explosive release.

The memory made Caius ache to have her again, but he only softly kissed the spot on her neck before pulling her tighter against his chest.

She loved him. That seemed even more impossible, more unbelievable than waking up with Elizabeth in his arms. But he’d seen it on her face, heard it in her voice. And he’d recognized the pain in her when she’d thought he was dying—he’d felt the same pain every moment for two years.

But he was here with her. And would be, for as long as she would have him.

A glance at his pocket watch told him that the sun would be rising soon. He didn’t attempt to wake her, but simply held on, breathing in the lavender scent of her hair.

Necessity finally forced him out of bed. While she stirred under their covers, he took one of the lamps and found a small chamber that served the purpose. He returned to find her up and shivering in her chemise, her dress discarded. Her frozen breath formed a cloud in front of her lips as she dug through her satchel.

Without glancing back, she said, “It’s easier to run in trousers.”

Caius had never run in a skirt, so he didn’t know firsthand, but he imagined it was. And propriety demanded that he turn around while she dressed, but it had been years since he’d looked at a woman—starting before she’d fled. He wanted to see everything now, while he still had the chance.

Elizabeth had said that she’d lied about despising him. He didn’t think she had. Caius knew exactly what it was to hate someone because it was impossible to stop loving them. He also understood that when she’d thought he was dying, her reasons for wishing she could stop loving him didn’t matter anymore.

But he’d lied to her, too. Or rather, he hadn’t told her everything that he should have. And she might despise him for that.

He had to take the risk, though. Elizabeth’s love meant everything. But so did a little girl.

“Elizabeth.”

She pulled on a man’s shirt, her head popping through the neck opening as she turned, her cheeks flushed from sleep and cold. “Did you look outside?”

“Not yet. This is something I need to tell you—” He stopped himself. Just tell her. “I have a daughter.”

“Oh.” Lips softly rounded, she stared at him. Suddenly she looked down at her hands and pulled her trouser buckle loose, adjusting a strap that didn’t need to be adjusted—hiding her face, but she couldn’t conceal the tremble in her voice. “Did you marry? But I know you wouldn’t be here with me if you were a husband.”

He wouldn’t have been. He’d have helped her, yes. But he wouldn’t have taken her to bed, no matter how desperately he wanted to.

And her faith made his chest tighten. He was glad she knew that about him. That he didn’t have to defend his character. It might be easier for her to accept why he had a daughter if she trusted that he would be an honorable man.

“I didn’t marry. I returned to the sanctuary after you jumped. I still didn’t believe what you’d told me about your father, but I’d begun to doubt, because you’d been desperate enough to…” A wild glance back at him. His fist closing over nothing. The familiar agony erupted through his heart. His throat was raw when he continued, “I had to tell him you were dead.”

But she was here. Alive.

Her gaze touched his hand. “This was before you removed the shackle?”

“Yes.”

And that hadn’t been as great a sacrifice as he’d imagined. At the time, he’d been too overwhelmed by grief to grasp the horror of what he was doing. But it hadn’t been an enormous loss. He got along well without it—and the steel replacement was a part of him now.

If the price of his freedom had been one hand, then it had been well worth the cost.

“There was a girl at the sanctuary when I arrived. About two years of age. She looked just like you.” Copper skin, curling dark hair, wide brown eyes. Beautiful. “And your father called her Mary.”

Realization hit her swiftly. “Dear God. Another duplicate?”

Caius nodded. He didn’t know whether Willem Jannsen had replicated Elizabeth or her mother—but most likely Elizabeth, using some bit of her that she’d left behind. “He must have created her shortly after you left, in the event you never came back.”

“So you took her?”

“Yes.” And he would never regret it. But if Elizabeth believed he had any other reason than to help a young girl, it would destroy him.

“Of course,” she said, as if she would have made exactly the same decision. Her response eased the bands of tension around his chest. She reached for her coat and slipped it on. “Where is she now?”

“With my mother and sister.”

Her eyes narrowed. “And where are they?”

He had to laugh. His evasion had been automatic, and the same sort she’d used so often while running: giving an answer without really answering at all. “Krakentown.”

A smugglers’ town in Australia—where he’d been close to capturing her once, without even realizing it.

Surprise arched her brows. “You knew I was there?”

“Not until after you left.”

“I heard you were looking for me. So I ran again.”

He’d offered a fortune of her father’s money to the residents there, hoping that one of them would have information about her. Not one had told him anything. A month after leaving, he’d found an aviator from the airship Elizabeth had boarded when she’d abandoned the town, and Caius had bribed the man to tell him where she’d gone. But if she’d stayed in Krakentown, he’d never have caught her. He’d have lost the trail and spent years trying to pick it up again.

So when he’d run with his mother, sister, and daughter, he’d known exactly where to go—to the town where no one would reveal that his family was there, even if offered a bag of gold.

“And the girl, the other Mary—she is just above four years of age now?”

Caius nodded, unable to prevent his smile as he pictured his daughter—unable to prevent the ache of missing her. “She calls herself Rainbow.”

“Rainbow?”

“You chose which name you wanted everyone to use,” he said. “I wanted her to do the same. In hindsight, maybe I shouldn’t have left that decision up to a two-year-old girl.”

Elizabeth’s laugh rang out. “Perhaps not. But at that age I would have called myself ‘Colicky Scream,’ so you should consider yourself fortunate.”

“I do.” More fortunate than he’d ever imagined. “And I don’t know if there is something of you in her, or if this is something that many young girls do, but she is already trying to bring home every animal she encounters. I expect to find a small menagerie when I return—and she’s probably giving them the run of the house.”

Her smile turned wistful. “That was one thing my father did right. He always gave them room to be what they are.”

At the sanctuary. But giving the animals room hadn’t been the only thing he’d done right. “It was important work.”

“Yes.” Sighing, she glanced up at him with haunted eyes. “I don’t want to run anymore.”

“You won’t have to. You’ll be free as soon as we’re away from here.” Maybe she would want to be with him—and with Rainbow. Caius would ask her. But she’d hadn’t even been ready to admit her love. He’d give her more time before he asked for forever. “We’ll search the outpost, see if there’s anything we can use to return to the coast.”

Where they might hail a passing airship or boat.

She nodded. “What do you think happened to the people here?”

He didn’t know. “Maybe overrun by zombies. But there have also been rumors that a Horde rebellion is moving across Europe toward the empire, and that the people are abandoning the outposts to join it.”

And Caius didn’t know which he should hope for. If the outpost had been abandoned, the rebels had probably taken with them any machine in good repair that could be used for travel. If the outpost had been overrun, the machines would still be there—but more zombies would probably be roaming within those walls.

Elizabeth’s brow furrowed. “So it will be one bad situation or another.”

“Yes.”

“If we were still on Kingfisher, our situation would be worse,” she said matter-of-factly, and stuffed her dress into her satchel. “So I will hope that the rebels abandoned this place, because it means that fewer people died. And if we must, we will create our own machine from whatever they’ve left behind.”

Such determination. Heart full, Caius crossed the chamber and caught her up, then kissed her while she was still laughing in surprise.

He didn’t care which situation they found themselves in. All that mattered was standing by Elizabeth’s side through whatever danger they faced, and that she was alive.

And that she loved him.

OIL FROM THE LAMPS lubricated the latch and hinges on the entrance hatch, transforming the screech from the previous day into a thin squeak. Elizabeth looked out through the hatch, blinking. After the darkness inside the war machine, the light from outside was blinding. Clouds still filled the sky. Only a few scant flakes drifted down—which meant they were no better or worse off than they’d been during the storm. They could see more easily across the distance, but zombies could see them more easily, too.

For a long minute, she stood with Caius at the war machine’s entrance, waiting. Opening the hatch apparently hadn’t drawn any attention. No moans or growls. No zombies in sight, aside from a single rotting foot sticking out of the snow beneath them—one that Caius had killed while she’d been scrambling up the ladder.

Caius dropped to the ground first. Machete at the ready, he glanced beneath the war machine toward the outpost. A second later, he gestured her down.

They raced across the snow to the outpost doors. While she watched for zombies behind them, he studied the courtyard beyond the open doors. A frown darkened his face. Between sweeps of the area, she glanced at his profile. What was he seeing?

But the outpost must not have been overrun. He took her hand and they slipped through the doors, staying close to the wall.

Nothing moved. The large courtyard they’d entered was shadowed by rows of tall wooden granaries that spoke to the site’s purpose. A wind turbine’s sails turned lazily. To the right, heaps of snow topped round stone buildings. More granaries stood beyond them. Still and quiet, an air of abandonment hung over the entire area.

Yet the workers must not have left very long ago. Not more than a year. The rest of Europe was a ruin, but not here. None of the roofs had collapsed. Elizabeth detected faint creaking from the wind turbine, but it wasn’t the rusted squeal of neglect.

She glanced away from the turbine and saw that Caius’s focus had narrowed on the center of the courtyard, where several lumps disturbed the even blanket of snow. He tugged her forward, his gaze sweeping the ground.

Because there were footprints, she realized. Nothing distinct, just depressions. But they must have been made while the snow had still been falling.

Her fingers tightened on his, her heart pounding. Zombies, then. They’d known there might be some about.

He stopped in front of the first lump and prodded it with his boot. Elizabeth stifled a cry as snow fell away from a zombie’s ruined face.

Were they lying in wait under the snow?

But…no. Another prod of his boot, and the zombie’s head rolled to the side. Decapitated. Frozen blood formed black ice in the snow.

Killed during the storm.

Eyes wide, she glanced up at Caius. She’d seen him hunt before; she’d seen him hunt her. The same predatory focus hardened his eyes now as his gaze swept the footprints leading in and out of the courtyard.

“They came from that direction,” he said softly, gesturing around behind the stone buildings. “Then they retreated inside them. Two men, at least one of them injured when they fought the zombies. Accompanied by a dog.”

Her heart jumped. “A hound?”

“Maybe. The snow erased too much detail for me to be certain, but it’s probable that they came from the wreck.” His grim gaze met hers. “The stride length of one of the men matches Matthias’s stride.”

Caius would know; he’d tracked the other hunter hundreds of times while apprenticed to him.

But Matthias and the other man hadn’t entered through the outpost doors, or Caius would have seen their tracks there, too. They’d flown here on a glider, maybe, though the distance between the wreck and the outpost made that difficult to believe. More likely they’d arrived in the two-seater balloon Elizabeth had seen while she and Caius had been gliding away from Kingfisher—though she couldn’t see that small balloon now. Maybe behind the stone buildings.

“Elizabeth,” he said softly, dragging her attention back to him. “I think the second man is your father.”

Chest tight, she nodded. “Let us find out, then.”

Her hand in his, he followed the tracks to the entrance of the second stone building, a red double door that opened on a center seam. The left door stood a few inches ajar. A slice of daylight fell across floorboards trampled with tracks of snow. Caius hesitated and glanced back at her, eyes dark with concern.

She knew what he would ask and headed him off. “I’ll go in with you.”

Standing to the side of the entrance, he pushed the door open wide. A soft growl—but that wasn’t a zombie. A hound.

The single room was large and open, the roof supported by wooden posts. Light spilled in through the door, but after the brightness from outside, her eyes had to adjust to the dimness and shadows. More evidence of abandonment here. A basket lay on the floor near the entrance. Near the center of the room, a small table with curving legs had fallen on its side. A broken pot. A woven mat. As if the people who’d lived here had forgotten the items when they’d left—or had decided they weren’t worth the effort of taking.

Pulling her close to his side, Caius stared into the shadows at the back of the room. Elizabeth followed his gaze.

Her heart constricted. Against the far wall, her father sat on a pallet of cloth, his arm around a lean gray hound and a machete across his lap. Though it was freezing, he’d taken off his coat.

The hound growled again and she heard her father’s soothing murmur, saw him rub the dog’s ears. Saw the glint of tears on his cheeks, his joyous smile.

The bloodied bite mark on his neck.

Her heart seemed to drop out of her chest in a rush. “Papa?”

“You can come close.” A hitch broke his voice. “I’m not done yet.”

But almost. Eyes glassy with fever, his skin tight and hot. She fell to her knees beside him, her throat burning with tears.

“Mary,” he said and took her hand.

“Oh, Papa.”

“Is this Matthias?” A few feet away, Caius stood over a prone figure covered by a cloth.

Her father gave a weary nod. “Bitten, too. He ended it not an hour ago. Then I had to finish him.”

Killed himself, then her father had to make certain Matthias wouldn’t return as one of the zombies. Her breath shuddering, Elizabeth made herself ask, “How long do you have?”

“Not very. I’ve been trying to make myself destroy her first.” He stroked the hound’s back. “She won’t leave my side. I left the door open, but I fear she won’t run after my end has come—and that’s an irony I’d rather not die with. I spent my life trying to save animals from these creatures, and in my death I would become one and tear her apart. Will you take her with you, instead?”

“Of course.” She lifted her hand to the hound, and at a word from her father, the growling stopped and she received a wet lick across her fingers. “What’s her name?”

“Artemis. A finer hunter you’ll never see.” His breath came in shallow gasps. “Matthias and I came here, hoping to find help. But it was dark when we landed, and the two-seater’s engine brought the creatures.”

“What of Amelia?” Caius asked, and Elizabeth heard the roughness in his voice. He’d have fought—maybe killed—both hunters while protecting her. But they’d been his mentors, once. He’d hunted beside them.

“She was at the bow of the Mary Elizabeth with Apollo when we flew into the propellers.” Her father met her gaze again; his words thickened and trembled. “We tried to take the two-seater to Kingfisher to find you, Mary. I was coming for you when the cruiser fell. I watched… I saw—” His voice broke. “I thought you fell, too.”

She squeezed his hand. “No. We made it safely away.”

“I thought I’d killed you.” A harsh sob ripped from him. “I thought I’d killed my daughter.”

His daughter. Elizabeth couldn’t breathe. “Papa.”

“I should have known you weren’t dead when he came to tell me you were. You always fought everything. You wouldn’t give up and jump to your death.” He cupped her cheek in a burning hand. “Now you look at Trachter as she looked at me. And my heart is full and glad, knowing that you weren’t alone.”

He thought she and Caius had been together the past two years, Elizabeth realized. That they had falsified her death. But there was no reason to tell him differently.

“And you took the young one as your daughter—as it should be. I never meant for this. We wanted a daughter and I tried to make her something else, Mary. I betrayed you and I betrayed our daughter.”

Looking at Elizabeth, but talking to her mother. Slipping out of lucidity.

“I’m here, Papa.” Her throat aching, she kissed his hand. “I’m here.”

The sharpness returned to his gaze, but the same pain was still there. “Forgive me, Mary. My daughter.”

Eyes swimming with tears, she nodded. “Yes, Papa.”

“Is the young one well?”

Rainbow. She glanced up at Caius.

“She is,” he said.

Her father gave a weak nod, closed his eyes. “I left the sanctuary to my daughter. I had meant the younger Mary Elizabeth, but the solicitors will know you and they won’t quibble over which one of you it goes to. It could be yours or hers, if either of you want the responsibility.”

“I do.” She’d always wanted it. “I’ll take care of it.”

He squeezed her fingers, and she saw the pride in his smile. “There’s enough coal in the two-seater to take you to England. There are other survivors waiting at the wreck. They’re depending on you now.”

“We won’t let you down.”

“You never have.” His voice rough, he kissed her, then looked up. “You’ve already loved her better than I did, Caius. Please take care of her.”

“I will.”

That wasn’t enough, because he couldn’t fulfill that promise if she returned to the sanctuary—and she wanted him to be with her. “You must give him his freedom, Father,” she said. “He’s a fugitive.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Caius said. “I’ve already taken it. I won’t let anyone take it away again.”

“It does matter,” her father said. “And you will have it. Upon my death, all debts will be considered paid, all contracts fulfilled.”

She hadn’t known that. “Truly?”

“I never made it common knowledge. That might speed my end.” He gave a wry laugh that faded quickly into a short breath. He pushed weakly at her hand. “Go on, now. Be away from me. Take my coat with you. You’ll need the extra warmth in the two-seater.”

Tears spilling over, she nodded and pressed her forehead to the back of his hand. She couldn’t let him go yet. Not like this. Not yet.

“Elizabeth.” Caius gently touched her shoulder. “Go on and wait by the door.”

Wait for what? But she knew. Dear God, she knew.

Her father couldn’t use a gun to end it—the noise would just bring the zombies. And if he used the machete, it wouldn’t be enough to stop him from coming back as one.

Caius had to finish him.

“Take Artemis,” her father breathed.

Blindly, she nodded. Artemis trotted at her heels as she made her way to the small, tipped-over table. Righting it, she sat and buried her face in Artemis’s warm ruff, clinging to the hound as the terrible noises came from behind her. She didn’t look around.

Caius joined her a few minutes later, carrying her father’s coat. His face was tight and his eyes flat as he draped it over her shoulders. And they had to go—but first, she wrapped her arms around his stiff form and held him tight.

He hadn’t had an Artemis to cling to.

Slowly, his arms came around her. He didn’t say a word. Nothing could make any of it better, she knew. But this helped.

With a deep breath, he finally stepped back and looked down at her. “When we return with help for the others, we’ll see that he’s properly taken care of.”

Throat too raw to speak, she could only nod.

His gloved hands cupped her face. “Ready, then?”

As she could be.

They quickly located the two-seater—and a zombie wandering nearby. Caius destroyed it with brutal efficiency, and the controlled rage in his eyes told her part of him was still back in that stone building with Matthias and her father.

Or perhaps just remembering how she’d cried.

Digging her spark lighter out of her satchel, she lit the two-seater’s furnace. Now they had to wait for the boiler to heat—a silent process, fortunately. As soon as they engaged the engine, every zombie remaining in the outpost would come running toward them. They’d have to quickly fly into the air soon afterward; the aluminum frame provided almost no protection.

When steam billowed from the vents, she climbed into the rear seat and urged Artemis in. With Caius’s help, the hound crowded in, sitting on the floorboards between Elizabeth’s feet with her forepaws on her lap.

He looked down at her. No rage burned in his eyes now. Just love and determination.

“We’ll make it through this, Elizabeth.”

“I know it.”

She lifted her face for his hard, swift kiss. A moment later, he closed the vents and the engine rattled to life. Her fingers tightened on Artemis’s ruff.

Caius jumped into the front seat and shoved the lever between his legs forward, lifting the flaps. The small propeller at their tail began to spin. Slowly, they began to skim a few feet over the snow.

Not high enough yet.

Her heart pounding, she looked back. Nothing to see through the smoke and steam, nothing to hear over the engine. But they had to be coming—and a zombie only had to grab on to the frame to pull them back down.

Higher, higher. They were approaching the outpost wall. Caius banked slowly to the right and the zombies were suddenly there, running just below, grasping over their heads. A zombie’s fingers brushed the bottom of the frame and Elizabeth cried out in terror, leaning over the rail and slapping it away. The two-seater rocked wildly and then they were safe, safe, flying over the courtyard that was teeming now, the zombies following them across the snow until the two-seater passed over the high outpost wall.

Artemis whined softly and licked her cheek. Laughing, Elizabeth kissed her furry face.

In front of her, Caius turned his head and she saw his grin. He shouted over the noise of the engine. “You always were good at escaping!”

Yes, she was.

NIGHT WAS FALLING again when they flew in to Brighton’s airship field. Exhausted, cold, and hunger digging a hole in her stomach, Elizabeth didn’t wait to land before she was pointing out a skyrunner and calling to Caius, “That one!”

His jaw tightened, but he nodded and turned the two-seater toward the mercenary’s ship. She tried to stand as soon as they landed, but the second she stepped out of the frame her legs folded. Sitting too long. But Caius caught her and swept her up against his chest, carrying her toward the docking station with Artemis at his heels.

“Are you certain?” He looked up at the skyrunner. “This one?”

“I’ve hired her before. Her captain will go anywhere for the right price.” And more importantly, would get them there in one piece. “I used her to escape you once—though she captained a different airship then.”

“I know,” he said. “I bribed her for information later. She took ten livre of your father’s money and sent me five thousand miles in the wrong direction.”

Elizabeth laughed, then looked up as the skyrunner’s platform chains rattled and began a slow descent. A woman stood on it—not the captain but the quartermaster, as tall as an Amazon and rigid in her aviator’s uniform, a pistol tucked into her belt.

She looked them over, her accent heavily French. “You have interest in hiring Lady Nergüi’s services?”

“A rescue,” Caius said. “Our airship went down on the plain southeast of Old Chartres. We’ve people waiting for our return.”

“Then we need passage to Krakentown, by way of the Ivory Market,” Elizabeth added, and Caius’s arms tightened around her.

“Krakentown?” The quartermaster’s brows rose. “That’s a dangerous route.”

Not for this airship. And it was the reason why Elizabeth had chosen it. These mercenaries weren’t just the best choice for the rescue. They were also as dangerous as any pirate or smuggler that flew round the bottom. “Only because women like your captain are flying it.”

The woman’s expression didn’t change. “An expensive route.”

Which was what she’d really meant. “I have the money,” Elizabeth said. “And we need to leave as soon as possible.”

“Then I’ll ask the captain if she’s interested. Do you have a name?”

“I hired her before as Katherine Wallace,” she said. “But we are Elizabeth Jannsen and Caius Trachter—and Artemis.”

The quartermaster nodded and clanged her weapon against the platform chains. As it began to rise, Elizabeth glanced up at Caius, who no longer appeared doubtful at her choice of airships, but slightly stunned.

Carefully, he set her down. “Krakentown? You’ll come with me?”

“Yes.” Elizabeth grinned and rose onto her toes, linking her arms around his neck. “We’ll have that airship tryst, after all.”

Pain suddenly swept across his features and made a bleak wasteland of his face. “For as long as you’ll have me.”

Her heart clenched. He’d thought that was all she wanted? Urgently, she pulled herself closer to him.

“No, Caius. I want to go to Krakentown with you. Then I want you to come with me—back to the sanctuary. With Rainbow, too. And your mother and sister. Anyone you want, as long as you’re with me.” She caught his face in her hands. “And I’ll have you forever, if you’ll let me. I’ll even ask the captain to marry us—though she’ll probably ask a fortune to perform the service.”

Caius stared at her. The pain and bleakness gone, thank God. But disbelief remained.

Nervous, she said, “Is that all right?”

“I’m wondering if I’m awake,” he said hoarsely. “You want forever?”

“I do.” But now she worried. “We don’t have to marry, though. Or return to the sanctuary. If you feel that marriage is another shackle…and at the same place—”

“No.” Caius shook his head, voice suddenly rough. “It’s not the same, Elizabeth. Freedom is having a choice to make, to be who we want to be. And I want to be yours.”

And she wanted to be his. “Then I’m going arrive in Krakentown a married woman,” she said. “But first, I’d like to have an exceedingly illicit tryst.”

He laughed, and she felt his smile against her lips. “I swore that I’d always help you, Elizabeth. As your friend, you can be certain that I’ll help you with this.”

“I knew you would,” she said, and lifted herself into his kiss.

Epilogue

BY THE TIME THE AIRSHIP REACHED Krakentown, Elizabeth had indulged in a tryst that would have set a society matron’s hair afire and married the man she loved. She couldn’t have said which was better.

With a man such as Caius, both the tryst and the marriage were the sweetest pleasure.

She stood near Lady Nergüi’s bow as they flew over the darkened town, Caius at her side. Nervousness bubbled in her stomach and perspiration dotted her brow. The cold of winter in the north had given way to summer in the south, and even though night had fallen, the heat of the day lingered on.

Below, the airship’s lanterns glinted off the carapace that had once been the armored shell of a giant kraken. There were other carapaces throughout the town, large and small. Many of them were used as residences, surrounded by more buildings made of red clay brick. It was a smugglers’ town unlike any other, orderly and quiet instead of a glorified rum dive—and all of it humble compared to the city-towers on the opposite side of the continent.

At the southern end of town, the airship slowed to a hover over a modest brick house. A woman with dark hair stepped out of the front door and looked up before darting back inside.

“My sister,” Caius said, and Elizabeth’s nervous stomach tripped over into roiling anxiety.

As they rode the cargo platform to the ground, Caius’s sister returned outside accompanied by an older woman. Caius’s mother, Elizabeth knew, but she only had eyes for the little girl in nightclothes holding her hand.

It was like looking at a tintype photograph of herself at the same age. The same hair, the same eyes. And when Caius jumped from the platform while they were still a full three meters above the ground and the little girl flung herself into his arms, there was no doubt: Rainbow was very much like Elizabeth.

And her heart filled tight as a balloon when she saw Caius’s face, eyes closed as he hugged the girl close, spinning her around. A father, with so much love for his daughter. She wondered how he had any left over.

But he did. So very much. There was no doubt of that, either.

The platform jolted to a stop. Elizabeth stepped off and felt the curious looks from his sister and mother—then from the little girl, who spotted her over Caius’s shoulder.

Rainbow asked the question that the other women probably wanted to. “Who are you?”

Who would she be to this girl? A mother, a sister? She didn’t yet know.

“I’m Elizabeth,” she said.

“That’s one of my names, too,” she said, but the girl’s interest in Elizabeth vanished when her gaze dropped to the hound at her side. Her eyes widened. “I like your puppy.”

So did Elizabeth. “I think she would like to have you as a friend. She loves to be petted.”

Obviously taking that as an invitation, the girl squirmed in Caius’s grip. He let her down, and introduced Elizabeth to his mother and sister.

Within moments of the word “wife” being spoken, she was surrounded with welcomes and tearful embraces. Elizabeth was barely aware of the airship overhead leaving—heading toward the docks for the night. She’d already paid the fare for passage back to the Americas. By the same time tomorrow, she would be returning to take over the sanctuary. With Caius, her hunter. She couldn’t have asked for more. Yet already, she had more—two women, eager to be family and friends.

So much—and so overwhelming. His mother must have sensed it, because not much time passed before she was scooping Rainbow up. “All right, love. It’s back to bed for you.” She started back toward the house, stopping to kiss Caius’s cheek. “We’ll hear everything of where you’ve been and what you’ve done in the morning.”

After a hug from his sister, they were left alone. Elizabeth looked up at Caius—who was watching her, his gaze intensely blue and shadows deepening the sharp angles of his face.

“And who are you?” she asked.

His answer came immediately. “The man who loves you.”

No. He was so much more than that. Caius Trachter, her husband, her hunter, her friend.

“The man who tied me to a bed,” she said, starting toward the house.

His voice lowered. “And will again, the next time I catch you.”

That wouldn’t do at all. She stopped, dismayed. “But I swore to myself that I would never run from you again. How will you catch me without a chase?”

His slow, predatory grin held a heated promise. “If you run, we could find out.”

Her heart tripped over with anticipation. Who was he? The man she loved. Who was she? The woman who loved him—and who desperately wanted to know what Caius would do after he caught her.

Laughing, Elizabeth whirled and ran.

But not very fast.

- The Iron Seas by Meljean Brook is a steampunk romance series which combines nanotech and pirates with a gritty, gaslit Victorian atmosphere to create swashbuckling steampunk romance…with an emphasis on the steam. You can find a guide to the Iron Seas world on her website. Meljean is also the author of the Guardians paranormal romance series. To receive notices about her new releases you can sign up to her newsletter, or visit her website for more information, book descriptions, and excerpts.

www.meljeanbrook.com

Other Works by Meljean Brook

STEAMPUNK ROMANCE

The Iron Seas

The Blushing Bounder in Wild & Steamy

Here There Be Monsters in Burning Up

The Iron Duke
Epilogue Novella: Mina Wentworth and the Invisible City

Heart of Steel
Epilogue Novella: Tethered

Riveted

Wrecked in Fire & Frost

Salvage in Enthralled (July 2013)

PARANORMAL ROMANCE

The Guardian Series

Falling for Anthony in Hot Spell

Demon Angel

Paradise in Wild Thing

Demon Moon

Demon Night

Thicker than Blood in First Blood

Demon Bound

Demon Forged

Blind Spot in Must Love Hellhounds

Demon Blood

Demon Marked

Ascension in Angels of Darkness

Guardian Demon (August 2013)

Into the Light (September 2013)

Unconnected Works

In Sheep’s Clothing in Under Her Skin

Frozen (June 2013)

FIRE & FROST

Copyright © 2013 by MELJEAN BROOK, JESSICA SIMS, and CAROLYN CRANE

“Wrecked” © 2013 by Meljean Brook

“Speed Mating” © 2013 by Jessica Sims

“Conjuring Max” © 2013 by Carolyn Crane

“Frozen” excerpt © 2013 by Meljean Brook

“Vixen” excerpt © 2011 by Jill Myles

“Mr. Real” excerpt © 2012 by Carolyn Crane

Title font “Northwoods High” by Allen Chiu at dafont.com. Used with permission.

Cover design by Meljean Brook.

Cover photo © olly - Fotolia.com.

Proofreading by Brenda at The Eclectic Editor.

Additional proofreading by Fedora Chen.

This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles and reviews.

ISBN: 978-09894-611-08 (EPUB)