Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
“Shit!”
Sig curses behind me, but I don’t look back. As fast as my weak legs will take me, I sprint through the gap in the door, fueled by sheer willpower. The pattern I spent the last eight days memorizing repeats in my head. I know it forward and backward, and backward is what I need right now.
I follow it, counting the steps and rounding the turns. Sig’s footsteps pound behind me, but I have a few seconds head start. Hopefully, it will be enough.
“Cap!” she shouts, but I don’t let it break my focus.
I keep running.
Ten, eleven, twelve.
The suns blind me as I step through the opening above the stairs, causing me to pause. Green and purple spots cover my vision and I try to blink them away. The sudden brightness is disorienting after being in the dark for days, but I can’t let it stop me.
I lift my hand to block the light just enough to assess where I am and where to go from here.
Figures stand around the area, unmoving, and I can feel their eyes on me.
The scenery is completely foreign and I quickly try to make sense of it.
Every surface is wooden, as far as I can see.
The floor is the same familiar wood I just slept on for days, and the walls, the steps, the rails, are all the same.
A large, round pole juts up through the center of the floor, with… sails?
Am I on a ship?
That’s why we could never find them. The Castaways live on a ship, in the middle of the fucking water. We’ve spent all this time searching the land, and they aren’t even on it.
I don’t have time to figure out anything more. Sig is on my heels, and I can’t let her catch me. Sprinting straight for the rails that line the sides of the ship, I glance around for Fin, but he’s nowhere to be seen.
I warned him. I told him I might not be able to take him with me if I escaped, but I would come back for him and bring everyone else with me.
I can’t throw away this opportunity. I need to get off this ship. Now.
Lifting my foot to the top of the rail, I hoist myself up and stand, throwing my arms out to keep my balance as I stare down into the rolling water below.
My throat dries as I assess the risk of stepping off.
I still can’t swim, and the waves passing by the ship do not care about that at all.
I don’t have a choice. The only way to get off a ship is through the water.
Gods, please let me survive this.
Digging the toes of my boots into the rail, I leap into the air, only to be yanked backward sharply as powerful hands wrap around my waist and pull me in the opposite direction.
“Where,” Weston grunts, “the hell do you think you’re going?”
My back slams into his chest as his arms wrap around my middle. He pins me to his body and stumbles backward with the momentum.
“Let me go!” His arms tighten around me as I try to push them away.
“I don’t really feel like jumping in after you again,” he says, grunting from exertion. He fights against me as I kick and scratch at him, but he doesn’t let me budge. Despite being weak and exhausted, I am still holding my own, not making it easy for him to keep me here.
“You don’t need to follow. You could have just let me drown!”
“I’m still waiting for a ‘thank you’, princess.”
My elbow slams into his stomach, and he lets out a loud grunt, before lifting me and shifting his arms so they are pinning mine down to my sides, preventing me from hitting him again.
Movement catches my eye, and I remember we are not alone.
Castaways stand around the deck of the ship, some moving in close to watch us grapple with each other.
I feel like a spectacle. It’s worse than in the training rings at home.
“I told you already. You aren’t going to get one,” I grind out. I try to thrash, but his arms are too strong as they cinch tighter around me.
“You told Fin you’d be good,” he says, his grumble low and in my ear so only I can hear him.
The heel of my boot connects with his shin and he sucks in air.
Good. Hopefully that hurt.
“I lied!” I shout, throwing my head back into his shoulder, missing the face I was aiming for. If he thought I was going to lie down and comply simply because I told Fin I would, he doesn’t know me at all. I won’t stop fighting him until I am free.
He groans loudly, the frustration of my resistance clearly wearing on him. “Enough!” he yells and lets go of me. I fall straight down and my ass hits the floor, hard. A couple snickers sound from somewhere around us, and heat creeps into my cheeks.
“Ow!” I yell up at him, glaring as I scramble to my knees, my tailbone throbbing from the fall. “That fucking hurt!”
He squats in front of me, so he’s on the same level.
His gaze hardens as his eyes pin me down to this spot.
“If you want to act like a child, I’ll treat you like one.
You can either get it together, realize that your situation on this island has changed, and deal with it, or you can go back to that room. ”
“I didn’t ask to come out of it!” I bark at him.
“Well, I didn’t ask for you to starve yourself. I guess we all can’t have what we want.” He’s still yelling, no longer caring that what he says stays between us, and I feel exactly like he described, like a child being scolded.
It is humiliating.
He stands then, towering over me, his shadow falling over my face so I can see the seriousness etched into his. “Now, will you behave instead of throwing yourself to your death? I won’t let you put any of their lives at risk if they have to jump in and save you.”
He gestures to the people standing around us and it is the first time I really turn to look at them.
The Castaways.
The people I have spent weeks fearing and avoiding all stare as Weston belittles me in front of them.
And they all look…normal. They look nothing like the images I’d conjured up in my mind of feral criminals out to capture us.
They look just like me, like Mara and Dane, close to our ages, too.
The group is significantly older than the Voyagers, and Fin is by far the youngest one here, just as he was with us.
Everyone wears garments similar to mine, with longer sleeves and thicker pants, and now I understand why.
Living on the water is probably cooler than on the island.
When Dane brought me to the beach, the wind coming off the water was cold, especially after I was already soaked from the waves.
Now I understand why Sig wasn’t worried when I said I would be too hot.
“I take your silence as agreement,” Weston says, cutting into my thoughts. I bring my focus back and stand, crossing my arms, but refusing to look at him. Instead, I avert my eyes toward the feet of the people in front of me.
If I can’t get over the rail now, I’m going to have to come up with a new plan. Now is the time to bite my tongue and get through it.
“Everyone, this is Lennox,” Weston calls out over the deck.
He turns back, addressing me directly. “You already know Sig, and Fin. That’s Stassia and Jorn.
Over there are Auralie and Fern.” I look up to see who he points to, and each Castaway waves or acknowledges me when Weston says their name.
He keeps naming them off until everyone has been introduced.
“There are others. You’ll meet them when they return. ”
The group is much larger than I thought it would be. How has he gotten this many people to sympathize with him? After they were all Voyagers, searching for the same healing waters we are?
I stay silent, my eyes scanning over all their faces, but the show is over.
Everyone returns to whatever they were doing before I barged in from below.
I look down at the deck, just as Weston’s boots come into my view, lining up toe to toe with mine.
I crane my neck up to meet his gaze, hoping my expression is dripping with the hatred I feel for him, made so much worse by the recent humiliation.
He juts his chin toward me and crosses his arms over his chest. “And I’m the captain. You’ll obey my orders, princess. Understood?”
I feel like I am back in Blackwood, taking orders from my father, and I hate it.
Dawnlin was supposed to be a fresh start with a new family once I decided I wanted to stay.
But now, standing here on this ship, listening to this man bark orders at me, it’s the same bullshit I have been dealing with for twenty-one years, just from someone new.
Someone who has no right to order me around.
Someone who, despite the stupid nickname he insists on using, truly has no idea that I am the one that gives the orders.
“Understood, captain.” My voice drips with disdain, and I hope it wounds him, even just a little.
Neither of us break eye contact, and I have to bite my tongue to keep from yelling obscene things at him in the way I always wished I could to my father.
Sig steps up next to us, interrupting our stare down with her interjection. “Alright, well, if you aren’t going to jump ship now, how about I show you around?”
“Fine,” I say, finally breaking away from Weston’s glare to look at her. “Where do we start?” I’ll do anything, as long as it gets me away from him.
An older boy walks up to Weston and mumbles something to him before Weston nods and mumbles back. He turns to me and points to the floorboards.
“Your feet stay on the floor. That’s an order.” The low grumble is the same as it was back in the cave, and my stomach flutters at the memory.
Shall I disarm you again, princess?
I push away the feeling and focus back on my hatred for him. Dawnlin may feel like Blackwood now, but it isn’t. I’m not talking to my father. I’m not talking to a king. I’m talking to a man who thinks he is important, but is manipulating and controlling everyone around him.
There’s no hierarchy here, despite him calling himself the captain, so I don’t need to hold myself back like I would to my father. I can make my time here as difficult as possible, while still looking for every opportunity to get off this ship and back to Dane.
Weston may have trapped me here, but he will not win.
I look back at him over my shoulder and smile sweetly.
“Fuck you, Captain.”
A muscle in his jaw ticks before he strides away. The boy that spoke to him tries to hide a smile before he turns and follows.
“Ah,” Sig says loudly, reminding me she is still standing with me, ready to show me the ship. She chuckles softly and shakes her head. “This is going to be fun.”