Page 32 of Captive of the Pirate King
“I’ll be fine. Go ahead and circle around to the hot springs from a different angle, so they won’t know you were with me.”
“Oh. All right.”
After binding my chest, hiding my family ring, and dressing myself, I trudge away into the forest, trying not to feel hurt. Locke is advising this separation, this caution, for my sake. He wants to protect me. But it makes me sad that anything between us will have to be kept a secret.
What am I thinking—there’s nothing between us except mutual fascination and thwarted lust. He only likes me because I’ve been the mysterious fruit, within arm’s reach but forbidden. Once we finally have sex, we can drive this attraction out of our systems and go on about our separate lives.
I can’t afford any more distractions. My mission to find Mordan has already gone far enough off course.
I need to find my brother. For his own sake, and that of others.
As I swish aside dangling fronds and duck under vines, my mind takes me back to the day my brother cut his knee. The day I first discovered my ability.
Mordan was in the garden with two of his friends. He was ten, five years older than I was. When I went out to see if the boys would let me join their game, I couldn’t find them at first. Then I heard sobbing and wailing from beyond the hedgerow at the back of the garden. I squeezed through the gap Mordan and I often used to reach the fields.
In the center of a field, above the yellow grass, Mordan’s two friends were whirling in midair, carried by incessant eddies of wind. They were both crying, pleading, asking to be let down. My brother stood nearby, feet planted and hands held aloft.
“Mordan, what are you doing?” I asked.
“They wouldn’t play the right way,” he said. “I’m punishing them so they’ll learn. You know, like Mother and Father do with us.”
“But these are your friends,” I said. “You don’t get to punish them.”
“You’re five,” he spat. “You don’t know anything.”
One of the boys began to moan, “I’m going to be sick, I’m going to be sick!” And then he vomited, and the filth spewed in a wide arc and splattered my brother’s clothes.
Mordan let out a shriek of rage, and he spun the boys faster and faster, until I could barely see their faces. They weren’t shrieking anymore, and somehow I knew that was a bad sign.
“Mordan, stop!” I cried. “You’re hurting them!” And I shoved him with all my five-year-old strength.
My brother crashed to his knees, and his hold on the boys broke. Their spirals slowed, and they tumbled to earth.
Climbing to his feet, Mordan glared at me through tears. “Look what you did,” he choked, and he pointed to his scraped knee, which was oozing copious amounts of blood. A sharp rock lay on the ground where he’d fallen; its edge had cut him to the bone.
“I’m bleeding,” he wailed. “Oh, it hurts, it hurts so much!”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, overcome with guilt, because I loved him, idolized him, and I couldn’t bear having caused him pain.
“Kiss it, Veronica,” he sobbed. “Kiss it better.”
I kissed it, tasting his blood on my lips, salty and bitter.
“It didn’t work,” Mordan screeched. “It still hurts. Kiss it again.” And he gripped the back of my head and made me kiss the wound harder. More of his blood seeped into my mouth, coating my tongue.
I struggled and got free of his grip, though he pulled my hair until a clump of it tore loose. The pain broke something in me, shattered the illusion I’d had of him. I began to see who he was, the unreasoning wild anger he was capable of.
“Stop crying,” I shouted through my own tears—I still don’t know if I was saying it to myself or to him.
Mordan quit crying instantly, cut off mid-sob. No more tears streamed from his eyes, and he looked at me, complacent and calm.
I gaped at him, astounded. Then I said tentatively, “Help them up.” And I nodded to his two friends, who lay dizzy and weeping on the ground.
Mordan gave them each a hand and pulled them up. Next I told him to apologize, and when he did that without question, I knew what my power was.
The taste of his blood faded, and once that happened I could no longer control him.
When my influence dissipated, Mordan remembered what I’d ordered him to do. He understood my ability more quickly than I did.
