Chapter 8
Chapter eight
James
The scent of roast chicken, potato, garlic, and something salty hits my nostrils, making my stomach clench so hard I feel my abdominal muscles contract. The rumble seems to roar through the mess. No one here will be wondering whether I am hungry.
“I think your stomach is telling you to behave this time. So you can actually enjoy this meal with us,” Captain Pestilence tells me.
“I won’t actually be enjoying it when I am having it with you,” is a response that flashes through my mind. To stop the words from tumbling out, I bite my lip hard enough to draw blood. A faint coppery taste fills my mouth, making my stomach twist.
Killian smirks, and suddenly, I am being manhandled again, rough hands pushing me down on a wooden stool.
Porcelain clatters in front of me; it’s filled with a piece of chicken, weird greens that look like a cross-over between green beans and a stick, and roasted potatoes.
I hate to admit it, but it smells wonderful.
Granted anything would to someone who has been without food for twenty-four hours. This just smells even more appetizing.
Instead of complimenting the food, I ask: “Are you trying to poison me with these stick greens now?”
The second the words leave my mouth, the thunder of about a dozen pirates laughing rolls through the room.
“That’s samphire, landlubber,” the ebony-skinned pirate who was among the ones that kidnapped me, scoffs. She seems to be another high ranking pirate.
“Well, excuse me for not knowing your foods. It’s not like you know my foods like neverberries either, do you?
” I say with a shit-eating grin that is all teeth.
The woman scowls at me and then glares at Killian like she is asking him if she can hurt me.
I am more surprised he moves his head in a barely there shake—indicating I am not to be harmed this time than the fact I pissed off a pirate.
They seem to be a sensitive bunch. I am surprised he doesn’t just sic his guard dog on me like I expected him to.
“So what’s next? What is your brilliant plan now?
Just starve me until what… I tell you how to get to Peter?
Because that is not going to happen…,” I scoff, despite them feeding me now.
It seems they relish in being kind enough, in having the moral high ground.
Openly doubting that might make Captain Pestilence snap to the point where he reveals more of his plans for me.
Just to get me to shut up and prove they are indeed better than Peter.
“So do you realize he might not come for you? You might not even know your value to him. As his new favorite toy is more fragile than his ego. But no, darling, we will not starve you, and we do not need you to tell us where Peter is. We picked you up out of his backyard, remember?” Another non-committal answer.
My left eye twitches, as I feel frustration rise inside of me like bile.
He keeps painting Peter as the villain, our relationship as fake, and Peter as a scoundrel who has a lot of exes.
I sigh, and with that, the energy to come up with another snippy answer rushes out of my body along with the air streaming out of my lungs.
The salty taste of the unknown vegetable, samphire as I’ve been told, bursts on my tongue as I focus my energy on eating instead of commenting.
The food is full of flavor, reminding me more of Sunday dinners with my parents’ than the food in Silvermist I shared with Peter and the Lost Ones.
Loud voices and booming laughter ring through the mess.
I try to catch snippets of the conversation, but I am unable to.
There is too much going on all at once. My entire body jerks up, as if on its own accord, at the sound of angry wasps swarming through the mess.
Louder than the voices and the laughter.
A sound I know too well, a sound I have heard every morning while making breakfast.
“Tinkerbell, how dare you! After all he did for you…” Somewhere in the back of my mind I hear wood clattering on wood, my attention solely focused on getting to the brownie.
“I saw you as a friend, I tried to…. never mind me… After everything Peter has done for you.“ I jump up, but something is wrong. I don’t move forward, but I don’t fall down either.
Like I am suspended in midair, my windpipe narrowing down.
Killian’s good hand clamping down on it.
The air turns prickly, burning as I struggle to get enough of it into my lungs.
“After all he has done for her, you’re acting like you’re her friend.” Despite being held up by just my throat, I shiver. I pant against the pressure on my chest; no longer just from being unable to fill my lungs fully. The white edging at my sight line seems to tremble with how my body shakes.
“He fucking ruined her. He ruins everything. And you aid him, calling yourself her friend.” Killian has been mad before, and I think he has no other emotion. His anger is usually like fire, hot and raging—destroying, but gone in a flash. Now his voice is so cold it tingles my skin like ice.
“Never speak to or about her again.” The words drift into my skull, muddled and muted, like my head is underwater. My eyes burn; they are so tired, I … just close them for a… Someone drops a sack of potatoes on the ground. Odd, but I’d recognize the sound everywhere.
Breathing hurts even if I get more air. Maybe sleeping will help I think to myself, as I let the darkness swallow me whole like a warm blanket.
I wake up in my comfortable bed from the weirdest dream I ever had.
Peter has gotten to me with all of his pirate talk, and his warnings to keep safe.
I sit up, shaking my head in an attempt to dispel the unusual dreams. The fabric beneath my fingers feels unusual, coarse, close to the clothes I wore back home on earth.
They brush over drawstrings, again closer to the attire I wore back home, not the small buttons sewn to silk I have just gotten used to.
And then the tips of my fingers start to tingle, the cold spreading to my spine, where it freezes my spine and stomach.
The latter drops to the soles of my feet as I feel my bare skin, where a necklace should be.
My eyes fly open, even the dim light in the room stinging. It wasn’t a dream—this isn’t my bed in Silvermist castle. It isn’t even my bed back home.
“Good, you’re alive,” a voice I now remember scoffs. He is not really happy I am alive, or well, if he is, it is because he wants to use me.
“Where is my necklace,” I try to scream but my voice squeaks, and suddenly I remember.
I didn’t fall asleep. He strangled me, before dropping me to the floor like dead weight. Rough bandages brush my fingers as I trace my neck for bruises.
“GONE.” One word, like a cannon shot. That slams the foundation from underneath my life here in Silvermist. The necklace is…
was… my anchor to the life I am building with Peter when we are not together.
“At the bottom of the ocean, you’ll find out all the goat has done for Tinkerbell.
By the time he comes for you, there will be nothing left of you anymore. ”
If I had been standing on my two feet, my knees would have buckled; now my body just jerks. The movement makes something glint in the corner of my eye. A silver razor. And all thoughts leave me.
All but one… the idea of slitting his throat with it. My body moves to it before I can think about it, my nails biting into the palm of my hand, leaving crescent shaped marks. As my fingers curl around the cool metal. “Stop acting like a child, you can sit back up.”
Pride and the taste of victory numbs the pain in my entire body as I snap open the razor.
The idiot has no idea that he is about to die.
I launch myself at his throat. I feel lighter and stronger than I have ever felt the moment I see the first dark red bead well up on the tanned skin of his throat.
“You’ll bleed out before breaking me,” I snarl, moving to slit that sharp blade across the smooth skin covering his Adams’s apple.
But a sharp pain in my wrist causes my fingers to slam open.
I am waiting for the soft thud of the razor clattering to the floor.
It never comes. Instead, I hear the sound of biscuit crumbling, and the waves of the ocean now crashing in my skull.
My stomach turns at the tangy copper taste of my blood seeping into my mouth through half parted lips.
“Bastard, you actually head bumped me,” I scoff. The only sound following my accusation is the whoosh of skin dragging over wet skin, followed by a wet whistling sound as Killian sucks the blood from his thumb.
“You fight like a faun,” he taunts. Somehow his use of “faun” instead of the offensive “goat” , makes his words feel more insulting. As if he’s suggesting that fighting like a faun is so much of an insult it doesn’t need slurs.
“Doesn’t mean I am taking the risk of another trim by you,” Killian explains the presence of the two pirates taking everything I can use to stab from the bedroom.
Or hut. I am not sure what to call this.
It’s a simple room, with a small bunk, and a table that used to have a porcelain basin, pitcher, and razor blade. And two chests against the wall.
“You will stay here until you’ve learned to behave.
Or until we have use for you,” Samuel tells me.
He doesn’t sound as bitter as Killian does.
His voice softened a bit when he spoke to me, his mouth down-turned, eyes dulling like he was looking at a puppy getting kicked.
He must know how sick I will be soon, how sick I will be until Peter comes to get me.
If he isn’t in time, I will truly be broken.
Not mentally. I don’t care about what they are doing to me.
I will keep fighting them with every step.
I will kill Captain Killian Tregear or die trying.
Because dying here out of longing for Peter would kill him.
It would kill Peter to know he wasn’t in time to save his fated mate.
I know how much he loves me, and I will do everything to ensure he doesn’t feel guilty about my death if I die.
Hours later, the sun is finally sinking into the ocean, painting the sky in orange and gold, reflecting off the water like swaying flames.
I try to swallow down the ball that has lodged itself in my throat like a lump of soggy bread.
But I can’t because my throat is aching, and the lump stays stuck.
My fingers drift to the glass, shivering at the cold touching my fingertips.
It’s been ages since I last saw the sun set.
I remember watching the sun set with my parents as a young boy.
In particular, with my mother when I was ten.
“See, James, how the sun looks like flames now?” Mother says softly, wiping my tears.
Father is mad because I knocked over the last pitcher of milk.
I didn’t mean to, but he didn’t listen to me.
I nod at her words. The sun is pretty when it sets, but I am too disappointed in myself, and in father for getting so mad, to enjoy it this time.
“The sun burns all the bad things that happened today, and tomorrow, you can start with a clean slate,” Mother continues.
I used to believe in that, back when I was a child, but I am ten now, I know better.
“Mother, I…” but I swallow the words, I don’t tell her that it is some silly superstition. I was about to, but I feel my sadness disappear. The lower the sun goes, the more the weight gets lifted from my chest. “Thank you,” I tell my mother instead.
“Father means well. He loves you. But money is tight, my love. Father thinks you’re too young to be burdened with that.
I don’t.” I sit a little straighter at mother’s words.
She trusts me with something this big. I am going to show her she was right to trust me.
I am going to show Father, he could have trusted me.
When the sun rises again in the morning, I will find something to make some money.
Something I can do after school. I am great at school, which is why mom and dad don’t want me to become an apprentice.
They feel I can become a scholar. But caring for them is more important.
I haven’t seen the sun setting since I moved to Silvermist, not with the colorless peaks obscuring the view.
Ever since that night with my mother, the sunset made me feel hopeful, made me have faith for the day ahead.
I am sure this is a sign that I will make it, that things will work out for me in the end.
My lips curl up and I feel endlessly more light and hopeful.
I am so engrossed in the vivid colors reflecting off the sea’s surface that I must have missed the sound of someone approaching.
Only when I hear scratching metal and heavy clicks as the lock to my upgraded cell is opened from the outside, do I realize what’s happening.
The heavy scent of grilled meat fills the room before the door creaks open.
Yet another new face carries a tray in. At least during this part of my captivity I will be fed.