Page 10 of Caging Darling (The Lost Girl #3)

CHAPTER 10

I t doesn’t hit me what I’ve done until we reach the inn Peter booked for the night, and I drop the satchel on the bedside table.

It lands with a thump, its contents rolling around inside it.

I wonder how long it will take Renslow’s hand to rot. What to do with the hand now that I have it. These were things I hadn’t considered when I’d chopped it off.

Peter places his hand on my shoulder, for the first time in a long while not in a possessive way, but in a gesture that I sense is meant to be comforting.

He’s saying something, but I can’t hear him. All I can hear is the squelch of flesh and the gush of blood at Renslow’s throat. All I can see is the swollen nature of his daughter’s skin, the ticking of the clock as her life draws to a close.

I killed her only chance at life. Decided her fate for her.

Just like my parents had decided mine. Just like Astor had decided mine.

The contents of my belly slosh. I find breathing makes it worse, so I rush out of Peter’s grip and toward the small adjoining bathroom, and lose the contents of my stomach in the latrine.

When I’m done, I only feel empty, not relieved.

It’s not as though I haven’t killed before. I killed Victor’s father, before I knew who he was, to protect Peter. I wasn’t the one to lift the blade, but it was my idea to kill one of the Nomad’s men to get the passcode to the Gathers from his wraith. His blood is as much on my hands as it is Astor’s.

But I’ve never killed out of anger.

Not until now.

There’s something about it that sits differently in my stomach, on my conscience.

It’s not that I regret Renslow’s death. Logically, it was the only thing to be done. Rationally, I can convince myself that by ending his life, I saved twelve others.

Although…a gut-wrenching thought still raps at my skull. Without a surgeon to attend to their initial maladies, those twelve might be doomed anyway.

“Did he succeed? In the tapestries?” I ask Peter. “Did he succeed in getting Daisy the transplant she needed?”

“Those tapestries are irrelevant now, Wendy Darling,” says Peter.

But are they? Are the alternate versions of the future we burned because we were afraid of them irrelevant? Are they ever really finished, or do they play alongside us like ghosts, whispering what could have been?

“Please, just tell me,” I breathe, staring into the mirror in the bathroom. Staring into the blue-eyed, sallow-cheeked face of a killer.

“Yes, he succeeded,” says Peter. “Eventually.”

If there was anything left in my stomach, I’d still be craned over the side of the latrine. “So we traded the life of one child for the lives of twelve?”

Peter comes up behind me, wraps his arms around my waist, and presses his warm torso into my back.

“No, Renslow was the one who was going to make the trade. He decided that his daughter’s life was worth more than the lives of other children. We just kept him from making the switch.”

Daisy was never supposed to live.

I was never supposed to live. I can see it now in my reflection. In the shadows forming underneath my eyes. In my time in Neverland, I’ve practically faded into a ghost.

Into who I was supposed to be all along.

“What if the other children die? Without a surgeon to heal them, I mean.”

“That tapestry hasn’t been woven yet,” says Peter. “But now at least they have a chance. Their parents can take them somewhere else, to a neighboring city where the physician will do their best to heal them.”

“And if they all die anyway? Then we have thirteen dead children instead of twelve.”

“Let’s just believe they’ll live,” says Peter, combing his fingers through my hair.

I almost laugh. Because Peter actually has the capability of believing the palatable lies he kneads for himself.

Peter nuzzles his nose into my neck, then looks into the mirror, watching us. Two pairs of brilliant blue eyes stare back. One pair alive, the other simply existing.

“It was difficult for me, too, the first time,” he says.

Something twitches in my belly. Surprise, perhaps? Peter rarely admits weakness, much less the emotional sort.

“I thought the Sister had already taken away your pain by your first mission,” I say.

Peter stares at his reflection, as if by searching intently enough he can recover the version of himself that he was before the Sister stripped him of his dignity.

“Not for the first,” he says. There’s a finality in his words that makes my heart pound against my chest.

“Is that why she took it away? The ability to feel pain?” I’d thought it was just so that, should Peter ever need to end the Lost Boys, if their murderous tendencies shone forth, he wouldn’t be hindered by his love for them. I’d never considered there was another reason.

“I…I fell apart after the first kill,” he says. “Most of the people I kill in this job, even if the crime they’re being executed for hasn’t been committed yet, they’ve still had a host of wicked things in their past that make it easier to dispose of them. That first kill…wasn’t like that. The victim to that point had been innocent.”

“What was the crime?” I breathe.

Peter squints his eyes. Opens his mouth like he’s about to tell me, then clamps it shut. “Does it matter?”

As we stare into the reflections of each other’s eyes, the emptiness in my chest would argue that it doesn’t. With Renslow’s blood staining my soul, with his daughter’s impending death my edict, I think I understand now why Peter couldn’t handle it. I think for the first time, I understand him.

“You’re not who I thought you were,” I whisper.

When he speaks, his voice is hoarse. “And is that a bad thing or…” Hesitantly, he slips his hand across my stomach, sliding it to the notch above my hips. A strange warmth chases the feeling, the pressure of his hand not quite soothing, but somehow masking the nausea at my belly. Like pressing on an aching muscle, replacing the pain with one that’s more bearable.

Maybe that’s what Peter is to me, what he’s been to me all along. Pain that’s more bearable than the alternative.

I sink into his chest, heaving now, and when he runs his other hand up my side, to my jaw, the crook of my Mating Mark, I examine the motion in the mirror. Watch as he traces my Mating Mark with his thumb. His blue eyes deepen a shade, his eyes fierce not just with pain, but longing.

“I love you, Wendy Darling,” he whispers.

For the first time since Astor, I believe it.

I don’t say it back, can’t bring myself to. I don’t know if I’ll ever let those words escape my lips, not with the anger that clings to my heart.

But there’s a part of me that knows if I said them, they’d be true.

When he tugs on my shoulder and turns me to face him, I don’t resist. I watch him watch me, feel his chest heave against mine as he takes me in.

He’s beautiful. His hair shines like copper. The way he’s let it grow out over his pointed ears gives him a boyish look, though once my gaze reaches his jaw, the strong cut of it banishes all thoughts of boyishness. His face is smooth, tinted the lightest of browns. When he stares down at me, my breath stops.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispers. “I’ve never wanted anything more than I’ve wanted you.”

“I’ve never wanted anything more than you, either.” The words are already out of my mouth before I recognize them for what they are—a lie.

It’s not the lie in them that sends a bolt of shock through me. It’s that the words came out genuine. As if at the moment I’d said them, I’d truly believed them to be true.

No.

Panic swells through me, starting with a pang in my ribcage, then smashing through the rest of me, my pulse stabbing against the smooth skin of my neck.

This has never happened before. I’ve fallen victim to the allure of our Mating Mark, the compulsion of the bargain. I’ve let them carry me along with them, allowed my limbs to go limp and my resistance to slip at their insistence.

But I’ve never believed them. I’ve never forgotten the truth of what was tugging at my emotions.

It’s the bargain. The Mating Mark. It’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real.

Peter’s leaning over me now, his hands gentle on my waist. Even knowing what I know, there’s a part of me that wants to go back to three seconds ago, when I believed myself in love with the man I’m stuck with.

Not real. It’s not real.

Why do I want it to be real?

“Peter,” I gasp, taking his hand at my waist and slipping my fingers through it. “Can you do something for me?”

He’s so desperate for me now, I wonder how far I could push him. But where I expect him to say “Anything,” he says, “What do you need from me, Wendy Darling?”

I untangle myself from him, noting the disappointment in his eyes, then tuck my hair behind my ear. “It’s been so long since I’ve been out. So long since I’ve felt like myself.”

His gaze drifts to my eyes, like he’s noting my pupils for the absence of faerie dust. He didn’t give me any before we left Neverland. Said I wouldn’t need it on the outside.

“Would you take me out?” I ask, biting my lip.

Peter’s mouth quirks into a sly smile, then he slips his hand over my cheek. “Are you asking me out on a date, Wendy Darling?”

My heart, against my good intentions, flutters.