Page 67 of Captive of the Pirate King
“Do you want some liquor to help with the pain?” he asks.
“It’s not the pain,” I sniff. “It’s this horrible mattress, and this cabin, and everything. I want to get off this blasted ship, Locke—I can’t—can’t stand it—anymore.” A fresh wave of sobs overcomes me.
Locke kneels in front of me and pulls my head to his chest. I don’t even care what I said to him yesterday, or what he said to me, or what we’ve been fighting about—I throw my arms around him and cry.
When I’m done weeping, he makes the bed with the fresh sheets he brought, keeping his back turned while I clean myself up and make use of the supplies and fresh clothes. Afterward he disappears with the bloody sheets and the nightgown.
I settle back onto the bed, curled on my side with my legs pulled up, trying to find some relief from the twisting ache inside me.
Locke enters the cabin again, carrying a steaming cup. “Tea,” he says.
My mouth opens, but I cannot form words.
The Pirate King brought me tea.
With the same hands that printed tattoos onto the dicks of several agonized pirates.
He put clean sheets on the bunk with the same fingers that swung a sword and sliced a man’s throat open.
With the hands that choked off my breath, he stroked my hair while I cried. And he made me tea.
It’s wrong to love a thief and a murderer. But I’m so very afraid that I do.
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Locke settles back on his side of the bed while I sit against a pillow and drink my tea. It’s not a large bunk, but it is captain-sized, wider than most aboard ship—just enough to accommodate two people with a sliver of space in-between.
While he drowses beside me, I ponder the revelation of my own heart.
I suppose I’ve loved a murderer before. In a different way, of course. And Mordan’s brand of murder was a nauseating horror to my soul, while Locke’s killings are open, bold—honest? Clean? It seems wrong to apply those two words tokilling, but Locke only kills men in a fair fight, or as punishment for breaking the law of the Crowned Skull.
Mordan killed slowly, despicably, secretly, preying on the innocent. Stealing the air from their throats, flattening their lungs. Sucking them inside out.
The teacup shakes in my hands, and I prop my wrists against my knees to steady them.
I told Locke Mordan wasn’t precise with his air magic. But truth be told—he could be. Lethally precise.
I shouldn’t have made excuses for him, lied for him, or helped him hide the bodies. I should have told someone.
I was a child. I didn’t understand what I was doing.
But I understood enough. Enough to know it was wrong. Enough that I should have stopped him, said something, asked for help.
He always wept and promised he wouldn’t do it again. And then, when I let my guard down, when I played with my friends instead of wandering the hills and lanes with him—when I slept instead of being watchful—he would kill again. Animals at first, and then a small girl, daughter of servants on a neighboring estate. Everyone assumed she fell into the river, because it was swollen with runoff from melting snow. They never found her body.
But I know where it is.
There were others too. Four others. Not counting the ones Mordan killed the day he sent the tornados to his fiancée’s family estate.
I didn’t kill those people with my own hand, but in a way I’m as guilty of their deaths as Mordan is. If I’d spoken out after the first time, maybe the other deaths wouldn’t have happened. But I didn’t want to lose him. I thought I could fix him, given enough time and enough magic.
When I close my eyes I can still hear his voice in my head. “Bite me, Veronica. Make me calm. Make me stop.” He would cut into his own skin and force me to take the blood. He even gave me a knife to use on him—or against him—if I ever needed it. That knife is still somewhere in the sleeping quarters, belowdecks. I don’t think I ever want to see it again.
I curl up tighter, cupping my tea. Why am I even looking for my brother? Because I love him? Maybe—and because I fear him, too. I fear what he will do if he’s left unchecked, and I fear what he may have already done. He left Ivris when he was seventeen and I was twelve. It’s been eight years. What has he been doing all this time? Why did I ever think I had a chance of finding him?
Maybe I never expected or wanted to find him. Perhaps I concocted this search because I needed a goal to spur me into action and give me strength to leave home.
And yet—if I don’t find Mordan and settle this dread in my stomach once and for all, I will keep wondering where he is. I will bear a thousand phantom bloodstains from his past and future victims. I’ll carry all of that amorphous guilt because I was too stupid, too weak, toolovingto do what needed to be done.
