Page 78 of A Princess, Stolen
Nathan shrugged. “You can find a lot about it in the media. Mainly about the oil sands in Alberta because that industry is in the spotlight. Many large companies extract oil there and there are protests and actions, but they literally fizzle out at some point. Reporters are bribed or intimidated.” He laughed hard but immediately became serious again. “This is about the global economy, about billions. About America’s independence from the Middle East. Nobody cares about a few former French settlers on a lake who have mixed with the natives. We are nothing. We are unimportant. The world does not care about our suffering. Program directors receive bonuses if they do not broadcast certain reports and the boardrooms of the major newspapers are corrupt. That’s politics.”
I thought about how Dad had once amused himself with theupper-class buffoonswho always thought they were so influential, but had no pull compared to men like Dad. “We make politics,” he had said back then, “they only set trends.”
I stared at the ocean for a while and Sparta’s gaunt face flickered before me, his feverish eyes.I’m dying. I felt sorry for him despite everything he had done. And I knew that if all this was actually true, Dad would break my heart. And Nathan—he must truly hate me, hate me deeply, deep down inside.
“Hey, look at me, Will.”
I pressed my lips together.I can’t.
“Please.” He carefully turned my head toward him.
I blinked. His gaze was completely open even though the headband still made him look like a warlike leader of a dangerous force. “You’re not responsible for the things your father did. You didn’t falsify reports or poison our rivers. I know I let you feel the anger inside me and that was wrong. You’re not like him. I’m sorry.” He took my hand and squeezed my fingers, but I didn’t respond.
I recalled Pan’s words about Nathan having a good heart. It was a thousand percent true. How else could he say he was sorry when he had suffered such great losses? With a burning sensation in my chest, I thought about his back, the graveyard he wore on his skin wherever he went. I couldn’t even begin to imagine how terrible his childhood and adolescence must have been. I hardly knew anything about his life, but at least I understood his anger now.
I stood there completely still as new tears streamed down my face. I had lost every right to him and his goodwill.
“Don’t look away again.” Nathan gently wiped the tears from my cheeks with his fingers and stroked my long, loose hair with the back of his hand.
“I can’t,” I whispered. “I can’t look at you anymore without crying…what if one day you get sick too?” The thought wrapped around my heart and burned in my chest.
Nathan, however, smiled. “That won’t happen.” He sounded convinced.
“Why not? You can’t be sure.”
“That’s true. But I share something in common with you. I have allergies too.”
Excuse me?“To what?”
“Parvalbumin.”
“What is that?”
“A protein. It’s found in the white muscle meat of almost all fish.”
“You never ate fish in Coldville?” I asked, stunned.
He nodded. “Besides, I left there when I was almost eleven and didn’t return until much later.”
For a moment, I was immensely relieved. Nathan wouldn’t get sick! But that was selfish. What about all the others? Icarus, Pan, and Troy? There was another problem, the consequences of which I didn’t even want to imagine. I swallowed hard and stared at the floor. “My father will never meet your demands.” I felt the weight of my words sinking in. “Even if he’s guilty, he’ll never turn himself in…”
Nathan was silent. He was silent for so long that I finally raised my head. His lips were pressed together, a single thin line. No longer soft.
My heart started pounding. “What will happen to me then?”
Chapter 16
He didn’t answer but stared toward the shore and pointed to a shimmering dot bobbing up and down on the water. “It looks like a speedboat and it’s heading toward us as if they know who we are.” He looked at me, his face suddenly so grim that it took my breath away.
“Isaac?”
“Maybe! I don’t know.” Nathan clenched his hands. “It’s definitely not the police. Nor the Coast Guard, they actually have bigger boats on the East Coast.”
I grasped the railing because my legs suddenly went numb. “Sparta must have forgotten to turn off the transponder.”
“No…no, it’s off! But maybe he turned it on briefly after he noticed the change in course. Maybe he radioed the coordinates to Isaac when he realized that his plan for the Outer Banks had failed, I don’t know.”
Then he would have wanted the ring for money and medicine after all and not my death. “He told Isaac so he could finish it,” I whispered, horrified. “Sparta told me he no longer believed in the plan.” But maybe he believed that Isaac would implement itwith all his might and determination. I looked around in panic as if there was an escape route somewhere. “And now?”
