Page 12 of Caging Darling (The Lost Girl #3)

CHAPTER 12

M y heart falls through my chest.

Astor. He’s here. In Chora. I can’t decipher if I’m elated or crushed. Ready to fly or bury myself in the ground so that he can’t find me. I glance at myself in the mirror. My now-spindly form. The way my cheeks have gone sallow, pale.

I don’t want to be seen like this.

“You know Captain Astor?”

The two women turn slowly, as if they’d noted that I was here but had considered me too wasted to comprehend their conversation.

“Missed them by a week, I’m afraid,” says the blonde one as the other sighs condescendingly.

“I get the feeling she already knows Astor,” the red-headed woman says, cutting her gaze over me, coming up looking unimpressed. She must see the way I deflate at the news that he was just here and I missed him, because she says, “He’s good in bed, isn’t he? A pity he left so soon.”

This time, when my heart plummets, it has nothing to do with Astor’s location.

I fumble for words, but none come out. The woman cocks her head, giving me a face much too pitying to be genuine. “Oh dear. Were you under the impression that you were the only one?”

The blonde girl frowns, a look of actual pity on her face. Like she knows the feeling.

“No,” I mutter. “No, I just…”

“It’s alright, dear,” says the red-head. “We’ve all been there,” she says in a way that implies she has not. That she emerged from the womb wise to the ways of the world and embraced them with open arms.

Tears sting at my lower eyelids. Images of Astor in bed with this woman spring to the forefront of my mind, blinding me to the present, to this dingy bathroom and these curious women and this awful place.

She’s beautiful, the woman standing before me. I’d thought so before I knew Astor had taken her to bed. But now, I see nothing but the difference between her and me. The way her hips and bust swell where mine are narrow. Her stark cheekbones to my generic face. Her green eyes, a sharp match to his.

The luscious hair that’s only a shade darker than his wife’s.

She’s just his type.

My stomach hollows out, but I do my best to keep from sobbing. Not only do I not wish to cry my eyes out in front of these women, there’s more information I need.

“It’s just that he said he was departing for Jolpa in a fortnight,” I say.

My bait lands, and the red-headed woman snaps her teeth around it. She places her hand on her hip and laughs, a high-pitched sound that’s somehow both grating and beautiful. “Is that what he told you? Oh, he really didn’t want you following him, did he? He’s on his way to Kruschi.”

Kruschi. Which is on the far end of the sea from Estelle. The opposite direction of the warping that leads to Neverland.

Astor is getting as far away from me as he can.

I wince before I can hold it in, and the red-headed woman descends like a viper. She comes toward me and tucks my hair behind my ear, still cocking her head. “My, my, you look as if you’re going to be sick. It’s alright, dear. Just be thankful you got one night with him. A notch in your bedpost. A brilliant story to tell. When else are you going to be able to brag about bedding the most famous pirate in the world? And now that he’s got that hook…” She whistles, and I feel as if I’m going to be sick.

“A hook?”

She mistakes my horror, my guilt, for ineptitude.

“A difficult thing not to notice,” she says, looking as if I’ve handed her the fodder for my own pyre. “Oh, did you really bed him, or are you just making up stories to make yourself feel better? Dreams, dear, are for when we’re sleeping. Not for when we’re awake.” She brushes the corners of my eyes, where lines are already beginning to set in from my faerie dust usage. “Though I suppose you addicts never seem to know the difference, do you?”

“Serida,” the blonde girl says. “Let’s get back to dancing.” Her voice is guilt-ridden, but not enough to stand up for me any more than that.

I can’t blame her. I’m just as much of a coward.

“Fine, I’m bored anyway,” says the red-headed woman, Serida. She scratches my cheek with her long red nail before turning and whisking away, her hips swaying in her black dress as she leaves.

I feel sick. Feel as though I might vomit. I turn back to the latrine, but nothing comes out.

Again, images of Astor dancing with that woman, setting eyes on her, seeing her like he once saw Iaso, taking her hand and leading her upstairs to one of the many rooms fit to serve such occasions, taking her to the bed and…

I try to stop the images from flooding my mind, but I have no barrier against them.

It hurts.

He’s not coming for me. Astor’s not coming for me.

The thought squeezes my lungs until there’s no air left in them, drains my muscles of all their strength until I can hardly stand. I stumble backward and my back hits the cold stone wall of the bathroom.

It’s slick with mildew, smells of it too, and I slide myself down the stone. At my bottom, the floor is moist with a substance I don’t want to think about. It seeps through my beautiful dress, staining it.

I don’t care.

Because he’s not coming.

Was he ever coming?

I gasp, the thought too painful, too piercing to consider.

So I don’t. I won’t. I won’t entertain that thought. It’s too painful. And I can’t…

I can’t live like this. Not forever.

There’s a reason he can’t get into Neverland. I rock back and forth, hugging my knees as I make it all make sense. He tried to get to me. He must have. He wouldn’t have abandoned me to Peter like that. Not after what he witnessed Peter’s shadow self do in the Carlisles’ library. He wouldn’t, he just wouldn’t…

Again, the beautiful red-headed woman flashes before my vision. I squint my eyes shut, like that will banish the memories, purge my chest of the stinging poison swelling up within it.

Astor’s not mine. Not anymore. I released him from his Mating Mark. He was right. He never loved me the way I loved him, not truly. It was all the Mating magic, the Fates’ design.

But he cared for me. I know he cared for me. He hurt for me, didn’t he? When I told him what my parents had made me do growing up, it had angered him.

Another explanation occurs to me. His anger could have been not from pain on my behalf, but jealousy due to the Mating Mark.

No. No, no, no. He’d planned to kill me, trade my life for Iaso’s that night in the cave. In the end, he hadn’t been able to bring himself to do it. He’d wept into my shoulders, sobbing apologies.

It hadn’t mattered how much he wanted Iaso back. He couldn’t bring himself to part with me.

Or his Mark couldn’t, says a voice in the back of my mind. No. I won’t listen. I grit my teeth so hard, they make a squealing sound as I weep into my open palms.

“Darling, why are you crying?”

I snap my neck up, tears streaming down my face as I search for him. Astor. My Mate. My rightful Mate.

All I find are shadows.

One in particular takes form in front of me.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” I tell Astor’s wraith. “You’re supposed to be near the cave where he made you.”

He cocks his head, his bulky form kneeling in front of me to get to my level on the floor, elbows propped on his knees as he folds his shadowy hands in front of me. “It seems I may follow you wherever you go, Darling, so long as the faerie dust is out of your system.”

“Excellent,” I say, wiping my eyes. “Now wraiths can follow me around.” It’s the sort of thing I would have once asked Peter to explain to me. Now I’d rather just not know.

“You’ve yet to answer my question.”

“I don’t want to answer your questions,” I practically spit. “I don’t want to talk to you. I never want to see you again.”

“Now,” says the wraith, “what did my fae counterpart do this time?” There’s that familiar mocking in his voice, the one that sounds so much like the Astor I used to know. Before he’d shown me more of himself.

Or maybe the Astor in Neverland, the version I’d trapped in a cave, was the true Astor all along, my friend who almost kissed me in the crow’s nest the conjuration.

“You’re headed to Kruschi.”

“Ah.” There’s enough finality in that one word to drive a stake through my chest. “That’s not entirely encouraging, now is it?”

“No,” I say, incited by the wraith’s implication. “You’re wrong. There’s just something…” I push myself off the floor, pacing the bathroom as I run my sweaty palms through my hair. “There’s something we’re not seeing. Some reason he can’t get to me. He wouldn’t just…You wouldn’t just abandon me. You wouldn’t just…”

“Forget about you?” says the wraith, his tone impassive. Curious.

“I’m your Mate,” I say, turning to the wraith. While the tears had stopped momentarily during my tirade, they’re streaming again, and I don’t know how I’ll ever make them stop. “You can’t just forget about me. You can’t…”

The crunching of bone. The slicing of flesh. I cover my hand with my mouth, again unable to keep the sobs contained.

And then I think of every moment I’ve desired Peter. The one thought that’s kept me from giving myself to him completely. The hope that I could save that last part of myself for Astor.

My mind won’t stop watching him lead that red-headed woman up the stairs.

“What day is it?” I ask the wraith.

“How am I to know? My home is Neverland.”

“But you said you’ve been trying to talk to me since I got back to Neverland. How long have you been trying to reach me?”

The wraith looks at me. He’s still kneeling on the floor, keeping himself lower to me.

“Just tell me how long it’s been,” I practically beg.

“I began trying to contact you a year ago,” he says.

The words crash into my chest with the weight of a gavel.

“A year,” I breathe. “It’s been a year.”

No, I’ve been counting. It’s only been nine and a half months…

But how many days have I lost to faerie dust? How many days have I lost to Neverland?

A year.

A year since Astor betrayed me. A year since I severed our Mating Mark. A year trapped with Peter, languishing under his spell.

From Astor’s perspective, a year with the being who tried to rape me in the Carlisles’ manor.

And he’s been on the other side of the world.

“You don’t care,” I whisper. “You’re not coming. You were…” I hold on to the words just a moment longer, like if I can simply keep them close, they can remain untrue for just a few seconds longer. “You were never coming.”

There’s a story John used to tell about a man who fled battle. He hadn’t wanted to kill the soldier chasing him, had warned him to turn back alone, leave him in peace. But the man had refused to relent. So the fleeing man had taken the blunt pommel of his sword and sent it through the pursuing man’s gut.

He’d bled out, not even on the battlefield, with a man who hadn’t wanted to kill him standing over him.

Hadn’t wanted to, but that hadn’t stopped him from going through with it in the end.

It’s as if I can feel the pommel, not slicing through my organs. No, nothing so clean as that, but butchering them, bursting them. It hurts.

I grasp my stomach, like I need to keep my entrails from spilling out. My other hand grasps at the damp stone wall, as if that will steady me. My finger scrapes against a nail, and I gasp as it draws blood.

But nothing hurts like this.

He’s not coming, he’s not coming.

All those days I waited. Every glance I took toward the sky. Not coming.

Every time I scanned a crowd. Not coming.

He was never coming.