"Are you out of your mind?"
Werther stopped, grabbed Charlotte Pudding by the back of her collar, and turned her to face him.
"Are you talking to me? Big Mom must have spoiled you rotten. Have you forgotten the situation you're in?"
Charlotte Pudding's breathing quickened, and her heart began to race.
"I'm sorry! I wasn't talking to you. Ah—get your hand away from me!"
Charlotte Pudding's reaction wasn't because Werther had touched her chest. It was because of something far more terrifying.
Werther had set his thumb, index finger, and middle finger around her third eye, gripping the upper and lower lids of the eye on her forehead.
"I'll gouge out an eye to teach you a lesson."
"Please don't! I was wrong, I really was! If someone from the Three-Eye Tribe loses the eye on their forehead, they'll die. That eye is connected directly to my brain!"
Werther stopped. Though Charlotte Pudding's third eye was squeezed shut, that couldn't stop him. His fingers were already touching the fragile, faintly warm eyeball.
"Please. You need me to do something for you, don't you? I'll do anything you say. Just don't take my eye."
Tears ran down Werther's fingers. The Charlotte Family's thirty-fifth daughter finally understood what her sister had meant when she spoke of Werther, the Thunder Swordsman.
"Just this once. Next time, I'll kill you. Once you're dead, I can have someone else look for the Memo-Memo Fruit. One of my partners is an expert in that sort of thing."
Charlotte Pudding nodded rapidly through her tears.
"I'll do as you say. Whatever you want."
Pudding was genuinely afraid. The man hadn't been bluffing—he had meant to gouge out her eye. She had already felt it being pulled outward.
"Stupid Bird, come here."
The King of the Sky