“Hmm.”
A slow clap sounds from up ahead. I manage to pry my head off Zadyn long enough to glimpse the Pirate King leaning against an evergreen tree, a smug smirk on her face.
“Bra-fucking-vo. I really didn’t think you were going to make it.”
My stomach gurgles.
“Puhmedown,” I slur, struggling against Zadyn’s chest.
“What?” He glances down at me, still breathless.
“Down!”
He lowers me to the ground, and I squirm away just in time to puke my guts up.
“Hey. Hey, you’re okay.” He holds my hair back as I retch on the forest floor. My vision almost instantly sharpens, and my senses return. I glare up at the feline pirate towering above me.
“What the fuck did you do to me?”
“The Dwellers have a taste for powerful blood. So I poisoned yours.”
She shrugs as if she just told me it was Tuesday.
“What the fuck?!” I screech, fighting back another wave of nausea.
“Oh, relax, I didn’t give you enough to kill you. Honestly, that was mild compared to the cocktail I slipped you and your friends to dampen your magic.”
“You poisoned me and fucking left me to die!” I seethe, black tar still dripping from my face and clothes.
“Self-preservation,” she explains with an unnerving level of nonchalance. “Oh, don’t pout. You’d do the same.”
“No. I would not.”
Rolling her azure eyes, she says, “You’ll get over it. You’re alive, aren’t you? Lover boy over there is quite the hero.” I want to smack her when she tosses him a wink. “Besides, you should be thanking me.”
“Really. Why is that?”
“I just provided you with a very valuable lesson. Never trust a pirate.”
She spins and sashays away. I glare at the back of her head as Zadyn helps me back to the ship.
Kai straightens when he sees me clomping up the ramp still covered in black-tar, Valley Dweller vomit. “What in hell happened to you?”
“Don’t ask.”
The Pirate King’s poison takes an hour to exit my system. An hour in which I can barely lift my head from the bucket. Zadyn coaches me through it despite my futile efforts begging him to look away, and let me suffer my hideous fate alone.
Once there is nothing left in me but my soul, he guides me into the bath, then back into bed where I sleep like the dead.
49
SERENA
I’m pulled from a thick, groggy sleep by a clash of boisterous voices singing shanties from above deck. My muscles feel wrung out as I stretch through my fingertips, pushing back the thin blanket and scanning the empty cabin.
The last of the sun slips away as I pad onto the deck to find my friends lodged smack dab in the middle of a private revelry. Clanking pewter mugs, burly bodies joined at the shoulders swaying back and forth, happy shouts ringing through the open air.
My eyes find Zadyn almost immediately on one of the small upper-decks. He turns as if sensing my presence, leaping over the low rail to cut through the raucous sailors.
