Page 35 of The Minotaur's Little Peach
She takes a breath that seems to cost her effort. "Garruk took him. Varkas' brother. Tomás saw them dragging him into a cart near Merchant's Row this morning."
The floor tilts under my feet. "That's impossible. He was coming to see you. He left to visit your shop and pick up supplies."
"He never made it to me, Soreya."
The words physically hurt, each syllable driving the breath from my lungs. Taran fusses against my chest, sensing my distress through whatever mysterious connection exists between mothers and children. His small sounds of protest seem to come from very far away, muffled by the rushing in my ears.
My knees give out.
I don't feel myself falling, don't register the impact as I hit the wooden planks. Everything narrows to a single point of agonizing clarity: Daegan is gone. Taken. Possibly hurt or worse, and I'll never see him again.
The thought shouldn't tear through me like this. It shouldn't feel like someone has reached into my chest and ripped out something vital. I've known him for months, not years. We've shared conversations and quiet mornings, not decades of marriage and shared dreams. This isn't the same as losing Korrun.
But it is. Zukiev help me, it is.
Because somewhere between his patient hands teaching me to tend the fruit trees and his gentle voice soothing Taran through fussy nights, I stopped seeing him as just Korrun's brother. Stopped thinking of him as temporary help or family obligation. He became Daegan—the man who brings me kaffo in the mornings and remembers how I like it prepared. The man who reads to Taran in that warm rumble that makes my son's eyes drift closed in perfect contentment. The man who looks at me like I'm something worth protecting, worth staying for, worth building a life around.
The man I was falling in love with, even as I told myself we needed to go slow.
Taran's cries grow more insistent, his small body rigid with the kind of distress that comes when the person holding him is too lost in grief to provide comfort. I try to soothe him, try to offer the steady presence he needs, but my hands are shaking too badly to be of any use.
"I can't," I whisper, the words scraping past the tightness in my throat. "I can't lose him too. Not now. Not when I just started to?—"
The confession hangs unfinished in the air between us, too raw and terrifying to complete. Because admitting I've fallen for Daegan means acknowledging that I'm capable of loving someone other than Korrun. Means accepting that my heart has shifted without my permission, opened itself to new possibilities even as I insisted we take things slow.
Mirath drops to her knees beside me, her hands steady as she helps support Taran's weight. "We'll find him," she says, but there's something hollow in her voice that suggests she doesn't quite believe it herself.
The room spins around me, walls closing in until I can barely draw breath. This can't be happening again. I can't survive losing another person I've let inside the careful barriers I built aroundmy heart. Can't endure watching another future I'd barely dared to imagine disappear into violence and blood.
But the fear cutting through me isn't just about being alone again. It's about losinghim—Daegan with his quick wit and gentle hands, Daegan who makes Taran laugh and brings light into rooms that felt too dark for too long. The man who was teaching me it's possible to love again without betraying what came before.
I may have lost him before I ever got the chance to tell him how I felt.
20
DAEGAN
The world returns in fragments—salt-crusted rope cutting into my wrists, the rhythmic slap of waves against hull planks, and the unmistakable stench of tar mixed with unwashed bodies. My head throbs like someone's taken a mallet to my skull, each pulse sending lightning bolts behind my eyelids.
TheSiren's Callnever smelled this foul. Even in the worst storms, when we couldn't wash properly for weeks, my ship maintained a cleanliness these bastards wouldn't recognize if it bit them on the arse.
I keep my breathing shallow, even, while my mind catalogs everything I can sense without opening my eyes. Three distinct voices somewhere to my left—two playing cards by the sound of slapping leather, one muttering complaints about the quality of ale. The gentle rock beneath me suggests we're anchored, not sailing, which means we're likely still close to shore. Close to Soreya.
The thought of her sends a jolt of panic through my chest that has nothing to do with my current predicament. By now she'll have realized I never made it to Mirath's shop. She'll bepacing that little house, Taran fussing in her arms as she watches the door and tries to convince herself I'm just delayed by some merchant's sob story.
By the Lady, what if she thinks I left? What if she believes I got spooked by our conversation about taking things slow and decided the sea was easier than whatever's growing between us?
The rope around my wrists has loosened during however long I've been unconscious. These idiots tied sailor's knots without understanding the mechanics—tight enough to cut circulation, but not properly secured against the natural stretch that comes when someone stops fighting and goes limp. Amateur mistake. The kind that gets you killed when you're dealing with someone who's spent half his life rigging lines in storm-tossed seas.
I flex my fingers carefully, working feeling back into them while keeping the rest of my body perfectly still. The guard closest to me—judging by his breathing—is maybe six feet away. Far enough that I'll need to move fast once I make my play, close enough that surprise will be my only advantage.
One of the card players laughs, a sound like grinding metal. "Garruk's taking his sweet time with whatever business he's got onshore."
"Probably making sure the message gets delivered proper," another voice responds. "Man wants the whole damn island to know what happens when you cross the Renn family."
Message. My blood goes cold as the implications sink in. This isn't just about revenge—it's about making an example. Garruk doesn't just want me dead; he wants everyone to see what happens to anyone who stands where Korrun once stood. Including Soreya.
Rage floods through me, hot and clean, burning away the last of the fog clouding my thoughts. I've spent months learning to care about something beyond the next port, the next cargorun, the next storm to weather. Found myself wanting to build instead of just survive, to protect instead of just endure. And now some thick-skulled bastard with delusions of honor thinks he can use that against me.
