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Callum took in a breath. “We
can do this.”
    “Under the circumstances, I don’t think we
have much choice,” Cassie said, “and I agree that if we stick
together, we might get out of this in one piece. I won’t lie,
David, if you don’t want me to.”
    The cutter pulled up to within fifty feet of
their wreck and stopped. A man came out of the wheelhouse and put a
megaphone to his lips. “Do you need assistance?” The helicopter
hovered overhead.
    David laughed at the absurdity of the
question. They were standing in a husk of a ship, slowly sinking
into the Bristol Channel. What did they need if not assistance?
    “Just follow my lead, my lord,” Callum
said.
    “Will do,” David said.
    If they weren’t planning on telling the
truth, he might have suggested that Callum cease with the ‘my
lords’, but David was who he was: a twenty-year-old American boy
turned King of England. What he hadn’t said to Cassie was that he’d
wanted to tell the truth because that mantle of responsibility was
so solidly his now that he was completely uninterested in
pretending otherwise. He’d been arrogant, though, and probably
delusional to think that anyone here would accord him comparable
respect.
    For years, he’d played over and over in his
mind what he would do if he ever returned to the twenty-first
century. He’d known about MI-5; he’d known that they’d chased his
parents across Wales. But he honestly hadn’t spent any time
thinking about what they might do to him if they apprehended him.
He was about to find out.
    Callum moved to the ship’s rail and held up
his badge. “Security Service! I must get these people to Cardiff
immediately.”
    Callum had left his badge in David’s care
when he’d gone to Scotland, before he met Cassie. David was
grateful for whatever impulse had told Callum not to leave it
behind this time. That Callum had brought it didn’t necessarily
mean that he wanted to forsake his life in the Middle Ages, only
that he’d been thinking about it. A lot.
    Cassie filled Callum’s place beside David.
“I have a bad feeling about this.”
    David smirked. He couldn’t help it; Cassie
had said the phrase so perfectly.
    The man with the megaphone peered at
Callum’s badge, and then someone in the wheel house, whose face
David couldn’t see because of the glare off the windshield,
signaled his approval. The first man gave a quick salute to Callum.
“Sir!”
    Callum glanced back at David, who shrugged.
It was too late to change course now; they were committed. Twenty
seconds later, a lifeboat appeared in the water off the back of the
cutter and surfed towards the wrecked cog. It pulled up to the
side. David and Callum reached over the rail to grasp the hands of
the first man out of the lifeboat, the same one who’d spoken to
them through the megaphone; they helped him to hop over the rail
and onto the deck, and then he handed each of them a life
jacket.
    “I’m coastguard rescue officer Dan
Timmons.”
    “David Llywelyn.” David shrugged into the
life jacket.
    Callum held up his badge. “I’m Agent
Alexander Callum.”
    David did a double-take at Callum’s use of
his first name. It was completely normal to give it under these
circumstances, but this was only the second time David had heard
‘Alexander’ come out of Callum’s mouth. In the first instance,
Callum had been drinking mead for the first time and had consumed a
few too many cups.
    “I’ll need to speak to my superiors
immediately,” Callum said.
    “You can radio them from the ship.” Timmons
words came out clipped. His first priority, as it should have been,
was not to chat but to get them off the cog and to safety.
    “Thank you.” Callum said.
    Cassie went first, clambering over the rail
with Callum steadying her by holding onto her upper arm. The
officer who’d remained in the lifeboat reached for her hand, but as
she stepped into the lifeboat, the buoyant surface caused her to
lose her footing, and she went