Page 59 of Vengeance of the Pirate Queen

I can’t say anything for a full five seconds. “You blame me?”

“Didn’t say that.”

“You said I messed up.”

“Isn’t that what you’re thinking?”

“I asked what you were thinking.”

“You don’t care what I think. You respond better to tough love. So there it is. The advice you would give yourself if you could think past your guilt. Get over it.”

He didn’t tell me what I expected to hear, yet I’m somehow angrier than if he had.

Alosa said I would make mistakes. She was right. I just didn’t expect to fail so miserably. Or to feel the way I do when it happened. The pain of my shortcomings is a constant pressure against my skin. Something trying to beat its way out of me. I want to be alone. I want to hunt. I want todosomething so I don’t have to think.

But none of those are options right now.

I stand from the log I’d been perched on and begin to pace. Sitting still is driving me mad, despite the hours of running we all had to do today.

“I failed them all,” I say after a moment, because talking is the only thing I have left, and he’s the only one who stuck around to listen.

“You saved them,” he says. “We’re here. We’re alive. We have food. Alosa will come for us if we can survive long enough.”

“Alosa isn’t supposed to save us. I’m supposed to save those girls. Instead, I’ve gotten more of us stuck here.”

Kearan picks a stick from the ground, dusts the snow off it, and begins breaking off the smaller branches. “Plans change.”

“That’s your advice?Planschange.”

“Captain, you don’t want advice. You want someone to yell at and fight with so you can take your own attention off yourself.”

I am so sick of him telling me exactly what I’m thinking.

I pull a knife from my waist and throw it. It lodges into the trunk Kearan’s sitting on, barely an inch away from his leg.

He looks down at it, grins, and says, “Do that again.”

I reach for another knife and fling it. It lands just a bit above the first.

“Throw until you miss,” he challenges.

I grab a knife with my left hand, toss it to my right, then hurl it with all my strength. It strikes near Kearan’s thigh. But he doesn’t have to encourage me anymore. I grab and throw, grab and throw. Five knives. Ten knives. All making a neat outline surrounding where Kearan sits.

The fifteenth and final knife lands near his left calf, tearing through the thick pants he wears. When he dislodges it, a small line of red appears on the blade.

“Missed,” he says, not showing an ounce of pain or shock. He throws the knife back at me, and I catch it out of the air by the blade without slicing my skin.

As he somehow knew I would.

We stare at each other. Me out of breath, him with that ridiculous grin, and something within my chest shifts ever so slightly.

“Now,” Kearan says, “what’s the plan, Captain?”

I wipe the knife free of blood on my own pant leg and return it to my person. “We find those girls. Get them to safety. Wait for Alosa to arrive. I keep this crew alive and well until then.”

“Good. What’s the first step?”

“I need to get a closer look at whoever lives here to see if they’ve captured Alosa’s crew.”

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