“Who are you?” I ask the man who stands at my side, while we stand in a waterfall. The water falls around us, but doesn’t touch us. I can’t look at him, only feel him standing next to me. There’s a relief to being here, the pain in my arms is gone. There’s no pain, only silence as we sit next to each other.

“The Sea God, the one who blessed you,” the man whispers gently.

“My mark is no blessing,” I whisper back, feeling the urge to keep my voice quiet.

“You feel that now, my child, but not forever. Time is drifting and time will make -,” he starts what I’m sure would have been a long sentence, but I interrupt him.

“Stop with the riddles of how everything is fine and let me look at you!” I demand, and he laughs, a soothing laugh that makes me want to calm down.

“Riddles are what will save you. That and love,” he says, and I watch as a gap in the waterfall appears, a bright light making it impossible to see what’s on the other side.

“Love?” I ask as I stare at the light.

“The love of pirates,” the Sea God whispers, and then the light shines brighter and brighter until I can’t see or feel him anymore. I feel only soothing water as it runs over my body, and it feels like it could wash away any of my pain and worry if I chose to just stay here.

“You can stay, be something more and watch time.”

“Can I leave?” I whisper back into the water towards the bright light.

“Never,” he whispers. Then a feeling of love spreads through my body, and my mind fills with images of my pirates and our time together. Hunter. Ryland. Dante. Chaz. Jacob. Zack.

“I choose them,” I whisper back, and even though I cannot see the Sea God, I feel his deep disappointment and longing. I just choose to ignore it.

“I can’t reach her,” I hear a female voice say, but I struggle to open my eyes as a haze spreads over my mind. I try to reach out to the voice, but all I can see is the water, and then it all suddenly stops. The water disappears from my mind, from my thought, and then there’s pain, a shooting pain in my arms that I can’t help but cry out to. My eyes feel crusted together, from my tears I suspect, as I try to blink them open, feeling the cold stone floor I’m lying on. It smells awful in here, a mixture of rotting and damp, mixed in with dust. When I crack my eyes open, the first thing I see is the burning fire on the other side of the bars. The fire, the burning, and the king as he stared at me fills my mind and makes me sharply close my eyes again as I try to push the memory away. The pleasure in his dark eyes sticks with me no matter how many times I try to force myself to forget it, to put it behind me and move on. I try everything, but it doesn’t work. It just stays in my head and floats around like a distant dream. But it’s no dream, it’s a nightmare, a terrible nightmare filled with evil and fire.

“Everly, you have to pull her to you and help her. She will die otherwise. Those burns are bad, and they will become infected,” I hear a man’s voice in the distance. The voice is gruff and yet, I know it.

“I can’t get her!” Everly shouts back and her voice makes me open my eyes. I need to see if it’s her, my childhood best friend, my only friend. Yet, part of me doesn’t want to see her here, because I know what it means if she is. I blink them open to see a small hand desperately reaching for me.

“Everly?” I whisper in shock when I see her blonde hair, but the rest of her face is hidden in the shadows of the bars and darkness of the room.

“Cassy, you’re awake,” Everly says in relief, and her hand reaches closer, still stretching as far as she can. I hold in a scream as I reach for her hand and a sharp pain shoots through my arm.

“I’m going to pull you to me, but I need you to move closer,” Everly softly orders me, her words slow and kind.

“How are you here?” I ask, holding in the tears that threaten to fall when I see her lean down to my level for me to see her face. It’s messy, covered in dirt, but it doesn’t matter to me. I missed her so much. I take my time to look her over; her very thin frame and the hollowness of her cheeks takes away from her natural beauty, but her eyes still blaze that bright blue they always have. There is still some part of my friend Everly there, but it’s hidden. I have the feeling she isn’t the same friend I left on Onaya. She is older and life has done something to her. I guess I’m not the same person I was when we last spoke, either. Life has taken its toll on me, but not in the same way. I have a reason to fight, a reason to pull myself off this floor and try to get to Everly. I have my pirates, and for them, I can’t just stay on this floor and die.

I am stronger than this. Stronger than him.

“The king came to the island after you escaped. He took us, because he knew we kept you safe. He knew everything, and we couldn’t fight him,” Everly tells me quietly, her voice catching slightly.

“Us?” I ask.

“Cassandra, get to your friend so she can heal your arms,” I hear my father say from somewhere behind Everly.

“Father?” I ask, now remembering the voice from before. My father is here. The king must know everything about my life now.

“Just do it…please,” he asks me. The desperation in his voice is something I have never heard from my strong father. Throughout all the years and all the terrible things he did, he had never spoken to me like he just did. My father was always strong, stubborn like me, and yet this place has somehow taken that from him. Or was it me being here? His only daughter he thought he saved?

“I will,” I promise him, and then force myself to move. I pull myself up, screaming from the pain when I have to use a hand to get on my knees. My arms seem to hurt even more when I move them. I don’t even want to look at my burns as I use my knees to crawl towards Everly, who murmurs words of encouragement for every little step. When I get to the bars, she grabs my hand and gently pulls my arm through the bars while I cradle the other one.

“You can’t heal this, Ev,” I say, finally getting the courage to look at my arms. My skin is red and blistered from my wrists to my elbow, and there are horrible-looking black bits of skin. My clothes have burnt into my skin and the black bits have yellow pus coming out of them. I know these burns are bad enough to cause an infection that I will die from. There is no way to avoid it, except I don’t want to die, not yet. It’s funny how I didn’t used to mind the idea of dying, I had almost accepted it, but one ship full of pirates has given me something I want to live for.

“Do you trust me?” Everly asks me. I look up to her, seeing her blue eyes that remind me so much of Dante’s blue eyes that, for some reason, it gives me a tiny bit of relief. There’s comfort in just being around her, a memory of home, when it’s hard to think of anything other than pain.

“Yes,” I tell her, and I watch as she reaches into the front of her top and pulls out a small red pouch. She opens the pouch and inside is green powder. I watch in hope and shock as she picks a little bit up, sprinkles it all over the burns, and it instantly feels better. I rest my head on the bars, sighing as the cold powder relieves my arm.

“The other one,” Everly asks as she lets go of my healed arm. We swap arms slowly and she sprinkles the same powder on that arm. When both arms are not hurting so much, I look at them. I gently pull bits of clothing away and move the dust into the cracks where they were. Where the burns were visible before is now just raised skin with a green tint to it. It’s not pretty, but it doesn’t hurt. I can’t be upset about how bad my arms look when I’m so relieved that the pain is gone. My shirt falls off me, leaving me topless, and I hold a hand against my chest.

“Any good at fixing shirts?” I ask her, and she laughs.

“I have a small vest under this shirt I’m wearing, so you can have it,” Everly says, and seconds later, she pushes a blue top through the bars. I pull it over my head, seeing that it rolls all the way down to my wrists and hides the marks on my arms. It has laces in the middle and I quickly do them up before looking over at Everly. I keep my gaze locked on Everly as she moves closer and hugs me through the bars. I hold her arms tightly.

“How did you have that powder?” I ask her quietly.

“Not all the guards support the king. I can’t say much more, but I’ve had the powder for a while just in case things go bad in the games. I had to use some of it on a bite on my leg, and I’ve been keeping the rest safe,” she says. I look around at my little cage. I see a drain in the corner, which must be for going to the toilet based on the awful smell, but there is little else in here. I can’t bring myself to look at the fire near the door of the cage. Even the light and heat from it makes me take a deep breath and try to focus on Everly again.

“Games?” I ask her. She pulls away a little and I watch as she nods a head in the direction of her cage door. Huddled in the corner is Miss Drone, unlike I’ve ever seen her, and she isn’t awake. Her hair is burnt off the one side of her head and her shirt has clearly been burnt in places. There is blood all over her clothes and her right leg has green lines all over it, suggesting Everly has been healing her. I never had a relationship with Miss Drone, because she stayed professional and cold the whole time she looked after me, but she helped me escape. She kept me a secret and I know she believes in my kind. I would never wish the injuries she has on anyone, and I wish I could help her in some way. I look back at Everly’s tear-filled eyes as she shakes her head, and I know that she must not be in a good condition. I don’t want to know what goes on in these games, I have a feeling it’s nothing good.

“Miss Drone?” I whisper, my words echoing around the room ever so slightly.

“Mother isn’t well. The powder doesn’t work on injuries we cannot see and the game was -,” she stops talking. Her breath catches and I feel her shiver in fear. I move as close as I can to the bars, holding her hands tightly and wishing I could take away her memories. I wish I didn’t have to ask about what the games are, but I need to know everything.

“Ev?” I ask her.

“The games are horrible and happen every week. Someone always dies, at least one. The next one is in three days, and I know he is going to make a big deal out of it because you are here,” she whispers.

“What happens in the games? What happened to you?”

“I learnt to fight, I learnt what pain is, and if I didn’t have the guard who helps me, I would be dead, Cassandra.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” I reply.

“The games are always different. One time, he had his dragon hunt us. We were tied down in the maze and I had to listen as people burnt next to me. Another one was a long plank of wood over the cliff…,” she stops, clearing her throat and tilting her head, “he watched as we each led onto the plank and as we walked back. If you fell, no one would save you and the king’s laugh would be the last thing you would hear.”

“No…,” I say, looking down at the ground.

After a pause, I hear my father say, “Tell me how you got here.”

“I left Onaya on the boat, but I crashed into a pirate ship and they rescued me. They looked after me and offered me safe passage,” I tell my father and Everly.

“For what in return?” my father asks sharply, the disappointment in his tone making me wonder if he knows me at all. I would never offer any part of myself to live. I would rather jump into the sea and I hate that he doesn’t think I’m strong enough for that.

“Nothing. They are good men, good pirates,” I say with warmness in my tone.

“You love one of them?” Everly asks me quietly, and I shake my head. Not just one, but I don’t know how to tell her that. How will it even work if I get to be with them all again? Will they share me, let me love them all and never argue? I guess I never thought of the long-term way we would deal with a relationship between us all.

“It doesn’t matter. Pirates won’t face the king for her. We are doomed,” my father mutters, but I still hear him.

“We need to come up with a way to escape,” I say, and my father laughs.

“This is the king’s court, the nightmare court. No one escapes unless they die,” he says and then goes silent. “Here, I didn’t eat my food. Pass it to her, Everly,” my father says, shocking me. Everly lets go of my hand to crawl across the cage to the other side, almost out of my view, before crawling back and handing me some bread. I don’t even look at it for more than a second before ripping it up and eating it all. It isn’t a lot, but I feel like I haven’t eaten in days.

“Thank you, Father,” I say, but he doesn’t reply to me. Everly rests her head against the bars. Her hand slides into mine and squeezes. She doesn’t have to tell me how scared she is, I can just tell.

“We won’t die. I won’t let that happen,” I say and look at Everly, who just shakes her head. I know nothing I can say to her will give her hope. I don’t even have hope myself.

“Was there a girl brought in before me? Her name is Livvy,” I ask.

“No, sorry. No one was brought in until you,” Everly tells me, and I lean back against the bars as sickness fills my stomach. He wouldn’t have killed her, I have to believe that.

“I missed you,” I tell Everly gently after a long pause between us.

“And I missed you. I thought about you every day, begging that you were free and having a good life, so that even if I died in here, it would be worth it,” she replies and looks over at me. “You look stronger, I can see it in your eyes. Tell me about these pirates and your life. I need something to have good dreams about,” she says.

“You look older, and sadder,” I tell her gently.

“You remember the handsome man I was in love with, who I still love?” she whispers, her eyes filling with tears once more.

“Yes, I remember you with him,” I say, thinking back to the dark-haired man I saw her dancing with at the party where I was seen for the first time. That party changed everything. I could never forget it.

“When the king came, he took your father first and found out that mother was coming to the house…so the guards came for us. Perry, he tried to fight against the guards to save me and my mother, but they killed him in front of me -,” she whispers, sobbing at the end so much it’s hard to understand her.

“Everly…I am so sorry,” I tell her, and she shakes her head.

“I will avenge him, Cassy. I will make his death right,” she says, and I don’t disbelieve her when her tear-filled eyes meet mine. The fun, full-of-life Everly I grew up with seems to be missing and there are shadows in her eyes now, shadows I wish I could erase. She is my best friend, like a sister to me, and I hate to see her like this. But then, I could never get over losing someone I love, I don’t know how to. I look over at Everly, to the cage where my father is, and finally to Miss Drone. The king put me in here with them for a reason. He kept them alive for a reason: to torment me.

“I will help you, always,” I reply.

“Now tell me about the pirates. I want to know everything,” Everly asks me, and I tell her everything I can about the only men who give me hope.