Firebrand

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It was hard not to feel as though the world was ending. I stared at my tattered clothes, touched my bloodied lip, and winced from the pain of opening my mouth. I’d been able to block everything out as long as we were fighting for survival. I’d even relaxed for a moment at the thought that we had won. Now I wasn’t sure what winning meant.

Below me, the ship, still at anchor, tilted gently from side to side. Light filtered through the bank of windows that ran along one side of the cabin. After the night’s hurricane, everything seemed still. But the sense of foreboding that had consumed us for three long days was very much alive.

We. Go, signed my deaf younger brother, Griffin. He looked as ragged as I felt, with disheveled hair and cuts across his face and arms. Beneath the grime, though, he seemed more alive than ever. They. Find. Us, he added.

I understood him well enough. This was no ordinary cabin. It belonged to Dare, the pirate captain who’d kidnapped our families and destroyed our remote Hatteras Island colony a few days earlier. And we’d just discovered that he was our uncle. His cabin had been locked all night, but now it was mysteriously open. Until we could explain everything, Griffin was right: We couldn’t afford for our colony’s Guardians to find us here.

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