Frozen by [email protected]

Author:[email protected]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Published: 2013-04-28T16:00:00+00:00

24

“You all right?” Wes asked, walking

slowly toward Nat, keeping his balance as the ship lurched starboard. “He didn’t—hurt you—did he?” “No,” she said bitterly. “Don’t worry, I’d never let him touch me.”

“The boys only know what they’ve seen on the nets. I could toss them overboard now, but they’re the only crew I’ve got,” he said. “I’m sorry I can’t do more than promise I’ll make damn certain they keep them away from you for the rest of the trip.”

She shook her head. “How long have you known about me?” she asked, her fingers shaking a little as she zipped up her jacket, making sure the stone was hidden underneath many layers once more.

Wes gazed to the ceiling. “I didn’t know, but I suspected.”

“You didn’t care? You don’t think you’ll—catch it? And rot?” She pulled her jacket closed, zipped it to her neck.

“No,” he said softly. “That whole thing is bunk anyway. You can’t catch the mark. Either you’re born with it or you’re not, right? It’s not a disease.”

She was still shaking from the heat and the fire—she could have killed Daran. Worse, she wanted to kill him, wanted nothing more than to set him ablaze, and she felt the shame then, of being who she was, a monster. She didn’t say anything about the stone, although he knew about it, that was clear. So why hadn’t he tried to take it from her like Daran had?

“That’s why your friend—Mrs. A tried to get you out of the country, wasn’t it? Because you were marked.”

Nat raised her green-gold eyes to his dark ones. “I was three years old when I understood people were afraid of me.” She told Wes about playing in the neighbor’s apartment that day; Mrs. Allen sometimes left her there when she went to work. Nat didn’t like the boy she was meant to play with—he was older and mean, pinching her when no one was looking, making sure she never got the cookie she wanted—telling her she had to stand in the corner for a myriad of trivial infractions. She was scared of him, and one day he told his mother a bald-faced lie, that she had been the one who had thrown the ball through the window and let the cold in. Then when his mother left the room Nat pushed him. She hadn’t laid a hand on him, but she had pushed him with her mind— slammed him across the room, so that he hit his head on the wall and he crumpled to the carpet, wailing.

“She did it! She did it!” he’d screamed.

“I didn’t touch him!” she’d yelled in her defense.

“Did she push you?” his mother demanded.

“No,” David had said. “But she did it.” He’d looked at her with those mean black eyes. “She’s one of them.”

After that, Nat was no longer welcome in their home, and when Mrs. Allen found out what had happened, the old lady began planning their escape.

“Don’t let anyone see this, ever,” the old woman had said, motioning to the mark just below Nat’s collarbone.

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