Heart Thief - Ker Dukey Page 0,5
behind me to see my bedroom door closed and the harbor is clear, I bite my lip and climb out. A rush of adrenaline spikes through my blood as we head off running toward the tree line hand in hand. The wind is bitter tonight and bites at the flesh of my skin.
Once the canopy of trees hides us, we slow to a walk.
“Have you thought about your plans tomorrow?” He shoves his hands into his pockets.
Rolling my eyes, I kick some leaves gathered by the tree stump that’s been our meeting place for the last two years. “I don’t want to go.” I frown.
Thoughts of Megan’s cleansing tomorrow sends dread through me.
She, like Clara, dreamed of more and crept onto one of the boats leaving for supplies. She was caught, imprisoned for a year, and now she’s being forced into a cleanse. My father speaks of the evil of the outside world yet inflicts his own form on the women here.
“I was talking about your birthday.” Eli frowns.
“You know I hate celebrating my birthday.” I shrug. Images of my sister flutter through my thoughts, bringing the usual ache that accompanies the memories.
“She wouldn’t want you not to celebrate. All she ever wanted was for you to live.”
“And what is living?” I pull a leaf from the branch hanging overhead, tearing it into pieces. Circling this island day in and day out. Listening to words read from a book manipulated to benefit my father and the men who are just like him. I look down at my plain gray dress, irritation flaring inside me. I want color in my life, to pick my own clothes and wear them however I please.
“Marrying me. Together, we can rule this place. Your father is ready to train you. He wants you to take his place as the head of our people. It worries him that he didn’t have a son to take over his rule. He wants you to marry someone devoted, willing to carry on his legacy of ruling our people.”
“Our people? You mean the island? People aren’t possessions, Eli.” I fold my arms over my chest, facing him. His dark eyes look like soggy mud in this light.
“And since when do you understand so much about what he wants?”
I feel betrayed by his need to get close to my father to become one in the inner circle.
“Don’t be like this. You get I have the ambition to lead one day.”
“Don’t you want to see what’s out there?” I ask, sighing.
Grabbing my arm, he scowls, looking at me like I just said the earth is flat.
“Mona, you’re not serious? You recognize what’s out there: evil. The killer who took Clara from us.”
Flashes of Clara’s coffin fire into my mind like bullets from a gun. Wounding, scaring. Clara snuck away that night like many before it. She must have had a destination. Someone or somewhere she was running to. Was it them who killed her, or just a random monster? Is that what it’s like out there—death and murderers waiting at every turn?
My father forced me to see her body. Her skin had turned an awful shade of blue. She didn’t look real, like a marble model of her former self. There was a slit cut into her skin from chest to groin. They stole her heart directly from her chest. I will never find peace with the information that she was being butchered while I slept. I will never be free of that image—or that her heart was never found, never returned to us.
“Did your mother ever speak of the outside world?”
He pushes away from me and turns to lean against a tree. “You know I don’t like to speak about her. It pains me that she wasn’t a true islander.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing.”
The waves lapping at the shore can be heard in the still of night. Like a siren’s call, I want to feel it on my feet.
“There must have been some good or Clara wouldn’t have kept going back. Do you not wonder?”
“No,” he snaps, and I jerk my head toward him. “I’m sorry,” he exhales. Coming over to me, he smooths a hand down my hair. “It’s just painful thinking about her slipping off to God knows where with God knows who and me not aware of it happening, not being able to stop her, to help her.”
I understand how he feels. I did know what she was doing, and I didn’t stop her. Granted, I was young, but