I don’t wait to see if he surfaces. I take off down the closest dock, hoping I’ll find our boat at the end. But I only make it a few steps before a set of cold hands grabs me. The coin slips toward the slits in my gloves as I try in vain to wrench free.
“Captain knew you’d come for the gold.”
I turn to find the man with the two Xs carved on his forehead, the one I’d run into at the beginning of the fight. Judging by the look of him, he didn’t fare too well. Dried blood crusts beneath his split lip, and his nose points farther to the left than it did earlier.
“He’ll reward me nicely for bringing him your skull.” He tightens his grip. “He’s eager to know if it’s as gold as the rest of you.” His teeth glint yellow when he grins.
In the darkness, I think I can make out our tiny boat tied on the next dock over. I try to pull free again, to make it back over there, but the man’s expecting my attempt. He pulls me closer and produces a knife. The blade is short and rusted, and several kinks in the metal indicate how well used it is. He holds it close to my face.
“It won’t hurt much.” His foul breath washes over me. “Captain’s trained us to cut heads off just how he likes them.” He totters slightly backward.
He’s drunk, and I see a chance.
I fake pulling backward, and then when he’s not anticipating it, I crash back into him. He tumbles to the side and careens over, dragging me along with him. He lets go of me midair in an attempt to break his own fall.
Instinctively, I put my hands down. I crash into the ground next to him with a cry. Pain shoots across my knuckles. The coin clatters across the dock until it skids to a stop on the edge.
I crawl toward it, but the man grabs my leg and pulls me back. I try to kick him away. He only pulls harder until I’m flat on my stomach.
“Let her go,” a voice calls.
Thipps rushes forward from where he must’ve been guarding the boat. He’s got one of the oars. He swings it, connecting with the man’s middle.
The man collapses with a grunt.
I grab the coin as Thipps drops the oar and scrambles toward me.
He helps me to my feet, not even hesitating to reach out to me despite my skin. “Are you all right?” His face shows genuine concern.
I open my mouth to thank him.
But surprise flashes across Thipps’s face, and a small gasp escapes his lips. He collapses forward, knocking into me. I barely catch him as we fall into a heap.
Behind him, the man with the two Xs looms, his knife now dripping blood.
“No.” I focus on Thipps. I cling to him, forcing him to look at me. “No, Thipps.”
He clutches my shoulder. “Tell Phipps . . .” He coughs up blood. “Tell him . . .” His eyes lose focus on my face, and his hand slips from my shoulder. He goes still. Blood pools on the dock around his back. It drips through the boards and into the ocean.
“No,” I say again.
I search his face, watch his chest for any sign of movement, for any sign he’s still alive. A weight settles heavily in my stomach.
“No.” I clutch at his shirt.
“Thipps,” I plead.
But his eyes stare blankly ahead.
I shake my head as uneven breaths rip from my chest.
This can’t be happening.
Another man has died because of me. For me.
My eyes fall on the pirate standing before me. He points his knife at me. “The Captain’ll be even happier when I bring back two skulls.”
The man kicks Thipps’s body to the side. It rolls toward the edge of the dock, opening the pathway between us. Then, he lunges toward me.
I duck out of the way of the knife speeding toward me. He swings again. I clench the coin tighter in my palm to keep it safe.
That’s when I feel it.
The whole world goes cold. The smoky air in my lungs is replaced by metallic breath. A wave of gold sweeps through me. My vision fades and then snaps back.
Breathe, I command myself. If I breathe I know I haven’t turned into a golden statue. My heart speeds up, which means it’s still beating. When the gold hits my heart, I inhale sharply, praying my pulse doesn’t stop entirely. But when the gold slides through the chambers, there’s something different about the sensation. There’s no feeling of worms wriggling beneath my skin. My skin doesn’t even itch.
I feel powerful.
Everything around me has slowed down. The knife crashes toward me, but the gold shooting through my body is faster. I catch the pirate’s wrists, and as soon as my skin touches his through the cuts in my gloves, gold rushes over his entire body, hardening him in place.
The man’s face is frozen in a sneer. His covered eyes reflect the moonlight, taking on a milky appearance. I could almost imagine I’m looking into his soul if I were sure he still had one.
I hug my arms to my chest to try and replace some of the warmth the gold seems to have stolen from me. But it isn’t helping. I feel colder than ever before, like I’ll never be warm again.
I can’t even wrap my mind around what I’ve done. Did I have another choice? Does it matter if I did? I can’t change what I did now. But that doesn’t stop the bile creeping up my throat.
I look away, and I spot Thipps’s limp form lying motionless on the dock.
I crawl toward him and roll him onto his back. “Please,” I whisper. But it’s no use—he’s gone. Tears prick at the corners of my eyes and slide down my cheeks.
I know I should move. I should look for Aris, but absorbing the gold has left me cold and exhausted.
I bury my head in my hands.
A voice cuts through the night.
“Did you do this?” Royce stands there staring at the statue of my attacker. Rhat gapes from behind him.
I don’t answer. I clench my jaw and stare at him.
Rhat notices Thipps and rushes forward.
“Thipps.” Rhat grabs Thipps’s shoulders, and Thipps’s head sags lifelessly backward. Rhat gently lowers the body back down, and his eyes turn to Royce, confirming the worst.
I scramble away from them until I’m on the end of the dock.
Royce steps closer. “What happened?”
“He died saving me.” I nearly choke on the words.
Royce pauses a few feet in front of me. He’s on one side of the golden statue and Rhat is on the other, blocking my escape.
I take a step back, assessing if I can somehow make a swim for it, but I tumble on a loose board. Royce moves like he means to help, but I hold out my arm to stop him.
“Stay back,” I shout. I wish Aris was here. But he’s not, and I’m alone. And now Royce must have guessed what I can do, has had every horrible suspicion about me confirmed because of that gleaming statue. I know he’ll lock me up now, keep me prisoner, his to turn things to gold until it kills me. That’s the type of thing Uncle Pheus has worried about since I was seven.
“Are you all right?” Royce asks cautiously. “He didn’t hurt you, did he?”
“Don’t touch me. I’ll turn you to gold if you come any closer.” I shove my hand out farther in what I hope is a menacing fashion. I don’t think I could actually bear absorbing gold again to fulfill that promise, but it’s the only thing I have to keep him at bay.
“Kora, you’re safe with me.” He holds up his arms in surrender.
“Safe?” I laugh. It’s a manic sound, but I can’t help it. “I won’t let you take me. I’ll never turn anything to gold for you, and I’ll never hand over my father’s gold to you.”
Royce sighs and runs his hand through his hair. “We can talk about that back on the ship. But we need to go before someone else finds us.”
“I’d rather take my chances on this island.”
His eyes don’t leave mine. “I can help you, Kora.” He holds his hand out to me.
I shake my head.
“I know you’re scared,” he says. “None of this is your fault.” He motions to Thipps’s body. “He died a hero, the way he wou
ld’ve wanted it. Don’t let his sacrifice go to waste. We’ve got to get out of here.” He stretches his hand out closer to me.
“There you are.” A breathless Aris runs up, and I nearly cry with joy, even when I see he has a busted lip and his eyes are crazed. He pushes past Royce and pulls me into a hug. “Are you all right? I’ve been searching everywhere for you. I heard the tavern keeper shouting he’d give a chest of jewels to the man who brought him the golden girl. I thought I’d lost you.”
I don’t even care that Royce and Rhat now know my secret. Aris’s arms around me have stopped me from going over the edge. Now that he’s here, I feel like I can breathe without gold weighing down my chest.
“What happened?” Aris asks, pulling away to stare down at me. “Did you get the coin?”
“He followed me from the tavern”—I nod toward the statue—“and he was going to kill me. During the struggle, I . . . I turned him to gold.” My voice is hoarse.
“It’s all right,” Aris soothes.
But it’s not all right. I’m not all right.
“I killed him.” I gag on the words. Even if I turn him back, he could kill himself just like the guard did. No, he will kill himself just like the guard did. Because I sent him to an unimaginable place.
“You’re not a murderer. You’re a survivor.” Aris pulls back and looks at me. “You’re a survivor,” he repeats.
“Everything would’ve been fine if you hadn’t ruined the plan,” Royce says before I can reply.
Aris drops his arms and spins around. “I can’t help that they jumped me as soon as I set foot inside. Not all of us can pass for pirates. They probably saw my clothes and knew I was a nobleman. I told you it was a bad plan.”
Royce steps forward, matching Aris’s posture. “Or maybe they—”
“Others are coming,” Rhat interrupts. “We need to go.” He moves forward and gently hoists Thipps’s body over his shoulder.
But I can’t go back yet. “I can’t leave without the gold.”
Royce shoots Aris one more warning look before turning to look at the statue. “I’m not sure all of us together could carry him, and I’m not leaving Thipps behind.”
Boards creak farther down the dock as men run over the planks searching down the offshoots for where we might be hiding.
I take another breath. “I can change him back.” Not that it’ll do the man any good.
I don’t look at them as I say the words. Instead, I approach the man slowly, holding the now copper coin between my gloved fingers.
Before one of them can stop me, I press my exposed palm against the back of the man’s neck. He sputters to life, ramming his knife forward into empty air. Confusion rocks his face as his eyes dart over us.
“How’d you do that, you cursed witch?” he says, looking up. His eyes go wide when he sees us gathered around him, and his knife clatters to the dock.
Aris moves forward quickly with his sword drawn.
“Wait,” Royce says. “Don’t hurt him.”
Aris smashes the hilt of his sword into the man’s temple, sending him crashing into a heap next to his knife.
I drop the coin into my palm, and the gold passes through me back into the coin. I shiver.
“Do you want me to hold on to that?” Aris asks, nodding to the coin.
I release a sigh. It’s like he knows what I need before I even do. I nod and drop the coin into his hand.
Royce shoves past us with a grunt. He kneels over the man, turning him onto his back. “Didn’t you see the two Xs on his forehead?”
Aris inspects the hilt for blood before shoving it back into its sheath. “It’s a common branding for double-crossers.”
Royce sends him a look of disgust. “You don’t recognize him?”
“I’m not in the practice of keeping company with pirates,” Aris replies.
“They’ve got the fire out,” Rhat warns. “Men are coming this way.”
“He was on Captain Skulls’s crew,” Royce says. He has a faraway look in his eyes. “I’m sure of it.”
“It’s a common mark, Royce,” Aris says. I can tell he doesn’t want Royce to figure out that we already know Captain Skulls took the gold. “It probably just looks familiar. Let’s get back to the ship.”
“No,” Royce says. “That’s why I remember it. I couldn’t imagine Skulls would sink low enough to hire mutineers on his own crew.”
“If he was on Skulls’s crew, that’s all the more reason we should get out of here,” Aris says.
Voices filter down the dock, and I can make out shapes moving our direction.
“We need to go, Royce,” Aris says.
“We should have questioned him.” Royce turns on Aris.
Footfalls pound toward us.
“He would’ve attacked Kora if I hadn’t knocked him out,” Aris says. “Her safety is more important.”
“There’s the golden girl,” a voice calls out.
The words snap Royce out of whatever reverie he’s stuck in. He pounds his fists on the dock before leaping to his feet.
“Run,” Royce shouts. “Make for the longboat.”
It’s clear I picked the wrong dock. Royce crashes into Aris as we’re forced to backtrack and make our way to the next one over. I fight to keep my balance on the uneven boards as we skim over them, nearly stumbling over a barnacle-crusted anchor resting on the dock. My running has become as jagged as my breathing. I push my thoughts away and focus on moving forward.
We make it to the beginning of the wrong dock I’d run down and rush past more lines of crates and piles of rope and ripped sails. The spot where our boat is tied comes into view.
Before we reach it, three men with swords step in front of us from behind the crates. We skid to a stop. I chance a glimpse behind us, but the men chasing us have caught up. The four of them slow their approach. The line of crates traps us on one side and the sea on the other.
We have nowhere left to run.
CHAPTER 17
Give us the girl,” one man says. He stands taller than all the others and wears a bandana atop his hair. Muscles bulge beneath his shirt. His other companions inch forward.
Aris moves me beside him so that the barrels are at my back and he, Rhat, and Royce form a sort of triangle cage around me. Rhat slowly rests Thipps’s body on the dock and draws his sword.
“It doesn’t have to be like this,” Royce says, but he too draws his sword and points it at the tall man.
“You’re outnumbered,” a skinny man with a long goatee says.
“For now,” Royce replies.
Then, all at once, everything erupts around me. Men charge from both sides. Swords clang. The skinny man with the goatee spots me through the melee and runs toward me. I grab the sword from Thipps’s belt. It’s a wide blade almost as long as my arm. It’s too heavy for me, and I’m not the only one who knows it.
The man smirks at me, crinkling up his goatee.
“Guess you can’t turn people to gold just by looking at them, can you?” he says. He licks his lips.
I lunge for him, but he sidesteps my blade easily.
I curse my skin for scaring away the fencing teacher I should’ve had.
He swings his sword at me, and it passes dangerously close to my face as I dive out of the way. I drop my sword and try to roll upright, but my elbow crashes into the dock and radiates pain. I roll straight toward the line of crates and come to a stop mere inches from one of the sharp, upturned edges of a rusted anchor.
My attacker saunters over and leans down above me. He smiles, displaying a row of yellow teeth. But before he can speak, something smashes into his head, knocking him aside. Behind him, the small man from the pub drops the wooden fragment he’s holding. “This one’s mine,” he says, stepping forward.
He pulls out a knife and motions for me to stand. The blade is thin, barely visible in the moonlight.
I swallow.
“Move,” he says, indicating the direction we’d come from.
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I slowly rise to my feet. As I do, I take measured breaths and scan the dock looking for help. But Aris and the others are still fighting other opponents. My sword is too far away for me to reach, and the anchor at my feet is way too heavy for me to lift.
The man is barely an arm’s length away. How quickly would he react if I took off? Because the last thing I want to do is go anywhere with him.
“Now,” he says. He jabs the knife closer to my stomach.
I’m still trying to think of a plan when Aris appears behind the man. My eyes must alert the tavern owner to his presence because he whips around, but he doesn’t get a word out before Aris runs him through.
“She won’t be going anywhere with you,” Aris says and rips out his sword.
The man grabs his stomach. He curls in on himself and staggers a few feet away. He stumbles to his knees before collapsing into the water with a splash.
I exhale, and then Aris is there, with his arms around me. I want to crumple against him, but we’re not safe here. So I don’t fight it when he pulls away.
“We’ve got the coin,” he says. “Let’s get out of here.” He tugs me toward the edge of the fight.
I pull back. “What about Hettie?”
“There’s no time. Keeping the gold safe is more important.” He yanks me forward once more.
I dig in my feet. How am I supposed to choose between abandoning my father and abandoning Hettie? Before I can explain this, the man with the goatee rises and lunges for Aris from behind. Aris staggers as the pirate crashes into him, releasing my hand and dropping his sword as he knocks into the crates, which rattle but don’t fall. Aris turns quickly and charges the man. He drives him backward toward the water. Toward where jagged poles from a collapsed boat slip jut upward like talons waiting to shut around their prey.
Before I can cry out, Aris and the man splash into the water.
My heart stops. I rush to the edge of the dock.
The body of the man with the goatee lies impaled on the nearest board.
I stumble back and cover my mouth.
Rhat appears at my side. “Where’s Aris?”
A Touch of Gold Page 14