Unfortunately, there was still one prisoner on board.
I covered my mouth with my tunic and checked on our father. He was imprisoned in a metal mesh cage in a room beneath the stairs. We wouldn’t have discovered him at all except for the trail of blood that led to a hidden door. The lock on his cage was too strong to break.
Father hadn’t moved. Aside from the shallow rise and fall of his chest, he looked like a corpse, battered and bruised.
Griffin touched my sleeve lightly. Until we could find a way to get Father out, it was best to let him rest.
Up on the deck, we filled our lungs with the fresh salt breeze. The last of the heavy dark clouds had flown away to the north, and the late-summer sun was searing through the wisps that remained. In the bright light, the events of the past three days seemed like a nightmare from which we’d finally awoken. But it had been real, all right.
Four days before, a storm had caught the Guardians by surprise. They’d sent us to the hurricane shelter on Roanoke Island. When we’d emerged the following day, we’d discovered that our colony was on fire. Pirates had kidnapped our families too. Only five of us were left: me and Griffin, my friends Alice and Rose, and Rose’s younger brother, Dennis. Finally, the pirates had come after us, which enabled us to slip aboard their abandoned ship.
Somehow we’d survived. It should’ve been something to celebrate. But as I looked around me now, I felt nothing but panic.
The four Guardians were sprawled across the deck like a school of dead fish washed ashore at high tide. Having been cooped up for days, they should have been stretching. But only Kyte was well enough to move. The others lay still, heads turned toward the sun. Their faces were gaunt, lips chapped.
Rose bustled around the deck, handing out water canisters. She pointed to the stern, where we’d tethered our sailboats the night before. “I got the bags from the sailboat holds,” she said breathlessly. “The boats were ruined, so I cut them free. But the bags are fine.”
Her clothes hung slick against her. Her long blond braid flopped against her back. Of all of us, she’d been most desperate to rescue her parents—not just for herself, but also for Dennis. Now that they were reunited, she looked tired and relieved. Watching them, I wondered how things would change from now on. Rose and I had felt closer than ever on Roanoke, but it was no secret that her parents disliked me.
I rummaged through the bags and removed the remaining water canisters. Along with a little medicine, it was all we’d been able to bring with us from Roanoke Island. There’d been clothes and fruit and metal implements too, but we hadn’t been able to carry it all. That would have to wait until the Guardians were strong enough to return. If they got strong enough.
Alice sidled up. She was the same age as Rose, but taller, with unkempt black hair and a perpetually suspicious expression. “It could be worse,” she muttered, looking around the deck at the motionless Guardians.
“How?” I asked.
“Well, we didn’t find any dead bodies,” she said with typical directness. “Your father, my parents, Rose’s parents . . . they’re all here. Ananias and Eleanor too.”
As if he’d heard his name, my older brother staggered toward us. Ananias rubbed his legs, trying to get the muscles moving again. Apart from his soiled clothes and bruises on his arms, he looked mostly unharmed. The look on his face showed that he was as relieved to see us as we were to see him.
“What’s wrong with everyone?” I asked him quietly.
He looked around as if he wasn’t entirely sure. “They’re dehydrated. The pirates wouldn’t give them food or water.”
“Them?”
He lowered his voice to a whisper. “They kept us separate from the Guardians at first—me and Eleanor. Locked us in one of the cabins with blankets and water and food.”
He tilted his head to the left, where Alice’s sister, Eleanor, sat alone a few yards away. Ananias and Eleanor were usually inseparable, so it was alarming to see them apart. Not as alarming as the bruises that ran along both her arms, though. They were yellow-brown, not purple or red, which meant that she’d been beaten a few days before, when everything started.
“What happened, Ananias?” I asked gently.
“The pirates kept asking us questions,” he said. “Stuff about a seer and a solution. Maybe they figured we’d give in quicker than the Guardians, but we didn’t know what they were talking about. So they hurt her. In the end, they threw us in the hold as well.”
It was killing him that they’d hurt Eleanor instead of him, and that he’d been unable to stop it. He’d feel even worse once he discovered that it was Dare who had made sure he wasn’t harmed. An unwanted gift from the uncle he didn’t even know he had.
Ananias stared at his hands. “I wanted to use my element to escape. I thought . . . maybe if I created fire, I could burn a hole through the side of the ship, and escape through it. But we were below the waterline. I’d have flooded the hold and drowned us. Either that, or suffocated everyone with smoke.” The words came out fast, as if he was protesting his innocence.
“What exactly did they say about a solution?” I asked.
Nearby, Kyte coughed loudly. “What does it matter? The solution is make-believe.”
“You’ve heard of it?” murmured Ananias, incredulous.
“People have talked about a cure for the Plague ever since it started. Doesn’t mean there is one.”
“Dare believed it,” I reminded him.
“Dare was a delusional tyrant. Anyway, Rose tells me he’s dead. Drowned, she says.” Kyte pointed to Roanoke Island, only two hundred yards to the east, and choked out a single laugh. “With him gone, none of the pirates will be stupid enough to believe in this folly anymore.”
Alice, who was inspecting the massive sails for damage, spoke up: “We can’t take that chance.” She waved her arm across the deck. “You all need time to recover. And while you do, we need to stay away from this place. They still have guns. Remember?”
“No! If we leave this place, our elements will fade.”
Everyone fell silent. Even Kyte must have realized the enormity of what he was saying, because his hands shook as he swigged from his canister.
“What do you mean, fade?” I asked.
“Don’t pretend you didn’t notice what happened to you on Roanoke. How everyone’s elements are more powerful there.” He wiped his mouth with a dirty sleeve. “You leave this place, you risk losing your element completely.”
“What element would that be? The one you’ve kept from me my whole life?”
Rose raised her hand. “Please! Can we all calm down?”
“Calm down?” repeated Alice. “We’re next to an island that’s crawling with pirates. The same pirates who kidnapped our families and tried to kill us. How can we be calm?”
“I’m just saying . . . let’s talk it through. Be reasonable.”
“Reasonable like your father, you mean?” Alice sneered. “What do you think of that, Thomas? Your dear Rose thinks her father is reasonable.”
I wished she hadn’t said that. She was just trying to get a rise out of Kyte, but at our expense, not hers. Sure enough, Kyte’s eyes flashed from Rose to me, simmering with anger.
Alice flashed a triumphant smile. “You should be happy, Kyte. You’ve done everything in your power to get Thomas and Rose together.”
His eyes came to rest on me. “I’ve done nothing of the sort,” he growled.
“Please, Father,” began Rose, “try to understand—”
“Stay out of this! You have nothing to say.”