Page 13 of Caging Darling (The Lost Girl #3)

CHAPTER 13

I ’m drenched by the time Peter gets me back to the inn.

It rained on our way home, masking the fact that I was sweating.

I’d hid the signs of my meltdown well enough before I left the bathroom. My eyes had been bloodshot from crying, but all I had to do was tell Peter I was feeling ill, and he hadn’t asked questions.

He’d carried me back the entire way. Up the stairs. Into the bathroom. He’d helped me strip out of my clothes, his gaze lingering on my form. When I’d asked for privacy to bathe, he’d protested, but eventually conceded.

I’d considered drowning myself in the tub, but only as a fantasy. I still have Michael to think about, and I won’t be the second sibling to leave him.

So I’d watched the water in the tub slosh around me, and I’d thought of the ocean. The one that stretches out further and further between me and Astor.

I would cry more, but my tears are all spent. When I finish, my skin is a deep pink from the water I’d asked Peter to prepare as steaming as possible. I’d thought I could sear away my pain.

When I’m done, I face the cold, dank air, dry myself, and slip into my evening clothes. They’re silk, probably stolen from nearby. Maybe a tailor’s. Maybe an aristocrat’s house. I don’t really care, either way.

Not coming. He’s not coming. He’s never been coming.

These words are the anthem matching the sound of my footsteps as I pad back into the room and offer Peter what must look like a pitiful smile.

“Feeling any better?” He’s perched on the edge of the bed, back rigid, wings tucked behind him. Ears perked. Like he’s been listening to me the entire time I’ve been in the washroom.

Like he’s been prepared to launch himself in at any signs or sounds that I might be drowning myself.

“Some,” I say weakly, which is true.

Though I still feel like death, the pain has settled from a piercing jolt to more of a stable ache. I’ll carry it with me always. Like a joint that flares up at the first signs of a cold front or an oncoming storm.

I run my hands through my wet hair, pulling the top half of it back with a blue ribbon Peter left on top of my folded clothes. He seems to like blue. I wonder if it has anything to do with my eyes.

As I pull my hair back, Peter watches, his face pensive. He looks boyish again, abashed but slightly hopeful.

“What is it?” I ask.

“I was just wondering how,” he says, almost wistful.

I somehow manage to summon the energy to tilt my neck to the side in question.

“How you never managed to break the curse,” he explains.

Lead hardens in my gut. I laugh softly. “Well, that’s easy. No one wanted me.”

Something about what I said makes Peter wince. “But how, Wendy Darling, is that possible?”

The lead in my gut begins to melt.

It’s a silly thought, the idea that Peter can’t see the truth. “No one wants a girl mated to another man.”

Peter lets out a laugh that almost sounds desperate. “I do. Wendy Darling, I’m afraid I’d want you if you were mated to every man in the world but myself.”

My smile is softer than I mean it. For once, I feel pity for Peter. “That’s the Mating Mark’s fault, I’m afraid. You wouldn’t feel it so strongly if it weren’t for that.”

I know that for a fact now. The Mating Mark has been the only thing ever to make a man think I’m worth keeping. Ironic, since it’s the same thing that kept them all away all these years.

Peter shakes his head, still staring at me intently. His blue eyes are glazed over, not with a greedy hunger that I’m used to seeing from him when he wants me, but a quiet desperation. A feeling of already having played the rest of his hand and this being his last card.

“I want you so badly. It’s as if I’ve been three days without water every day for the past year.”

I swallow, uncomfortable, though I can’t quite place why. “Again, that’s the Mating Mark.” I’m so tired, I just want to crawl into bed.

But Peter shakes his head, knitting his brow. “No, Wendy Darling. I don’t think it is.”

“What do you mean?”

“I…” Peter frowns, closes his mouth, like he’s working himself up to admit something he’s never told anyone. “I researched it. After Astor transferred the Mark over to me. I could feel myself going crazy, being apart from you. Especially knowing that he still had a fragment of the Mark. Still had some claim over you.”

My stomach goes hollow at the mention of the claim I severed.

“I grew jealous, hated him for no reason. Wendy Darling, it didn’t seem possible that anyone would give you away. I couldn’t fathom it. I just knew Astor had tricked me somehow. That he was planning on taking you away from me at some point. That there was some other reason he transferred the Mark over besides his relationship with Iaso. I just couldn’t imagine what that would be.”

“He loved her. More than he could ever love me. It’s not any more complicated than that.”

Peter runs his hand through his hair. “I can see that now.”

It’s wild how much that stings—hearing him confirm a truth I already knew.

“But don’t you see?” He scoots to the edge of the bed now, letting his feet hit the floor while he sits upright. “It affected me—being Mated to you—more than it ever did him.”

My heart stops inside my chest. “Didn’t stop you from trading me away on the beach.”

Peter shakes his head. “The Sister’s curse made the pull of the Mating Mark easier to set aside. As much as I felt a tug toward you, it was more of a deep pressure and less of a cut. But when Iaso broke the curse, it’s like that scar spewed open again. What I’ve never been able to understand…” Peter says, looking up at me again. His eyes really are beautiful. I find myself shifting back and forth on my feet. “…is how he ever, feeling like I felt, let you go. Wendy, I…” He stands from the bed, and it creaks at the shifting of weight. When he approaches, I don’t obey the urge to step back.

He’s close now, and he traces my Mating Mark on my cheek with the pad of his thumb, tracing it down to the curve of my jaw. “I love you so much, it aches. I want you so fiercely, it feels as if I’m being torn limb from limb. But every time I want you, every time I desire you, I remember… I was in so much pain the night Iaso broke the curse. Every evil I’d ever committed at the Sister’s hand came flooding back over me all at once.”

I remember Renslow, slaying him. How I imagine I’ll feel when I actually allow myself to process that.

“I love you,” he says, “and I know that it’s because of you, who you are.”

“How do you know it’s not just the Mating Mark talking?” I ask.

“Because, Wendy Darling,” says Peter, his eyes looking so boyish, so bright. So sad. “If it were only the Mating Mark, you would love me back.”

My heart skips. “I do love you,” I say, because that’s what the bargain wants me to say. “I choose you.”

Peter shakes his head. “Only because I was in so much pain, so foolish, that I forced you to. But it’s not you, not really. You know how I know that?”

I swallow, shaking my head. His gaze becomes fixated on my Mark as he strokes it. It should be a terrifying thought, that someone as possessive as Peter suspects me of not loving him back. But his touch is so tender, I get the sense he would never hurt me, no matter how much I hurt him.

“Because when I rescued you from Astor and we got back to Neverland, you wanted to leave. I couldn’t have done that. Not without ripping a hole in my soul.”

I think of how it felt when Astor took me away from Neverland, the gash in my chest at leaving Peter.

“You would have healed,” I say, more kindly than I expect. It’s not that I don’t expect it from the bargain, but I truly mean the sympathy I infuse there.

Peter shakes his head. “It’s not just that. You fell in love with him. While you were away.”

“I don’t want to talk about him. I don’t want to think about him.”

Peter frowns. “But you do.”

My heart stills in my chest, fear lancing through me this time. I might not fear Peter knowing my feelings for him waver, but jealousy is a dangerous friend of Peter’s, whispering violence into his ear.

But Peter doesn’t shake me. Doesn’t grip me so hard it hurts. Instead, he strokes my hair out of my forehead, runs his hands back across my skull until he comes to the ribbon where I’ve tied it half-back, then he tugs on it gently, letting the rest of my hair fall.

“Do you know how I feel about other women?” Peter whispers. “It’s not that I haven’t considered it. Wanting someone who wants me back. But anytime I consider it, you know what it feels like? There was a red-headed woman who approached me while we were at the club. She ran her hand down my arm while you were in the washroom. Do you know how it felt to be touched by another woman?”

I shake my head, heart pounding against my chest.

“Like being clawed with talons of venom. Like I could squirm out of my skin. It feels like your teeth being set on edge by water that’s too cold. If it’s not you, Wendy Darling, I’m repulsed.”

I blink, hardly able to believe what I’m hearing. “Peter, that can’t be?—”

He places his finger on my lips, stilling me underneath his touch. “I will hate myself every day for the rest of my existence for what I did to you in chaining you to me. Let it be some consolation that I’m imprisoned with you, in a cage of my own making. Know that every moment you don’t love me, every time I see you glancing toward those accursed stars, waiting for him to come for you, every time I’m holding you in my arms and you whisper his name in the middle of the night, let it be a comfort that I am rotting from the inside out, too. Know that on every mission I’ve been on, I’ve scoured the seers for information on how to break the bargain I held you to. My knees have bruised on the ground in front of the Sister, begging for her to find a way to end it, to let you free of the hold I have over you. Because I am dying. You, my love, are killing me.” He lets out the sharpest of exhales. “And you know what’s ironic?”

I swallow in answer.

“There’s a part of me that doesn’t mind you killing me, so long as it’s your hands against my throat. So long as there’s a part of you that enjoys touching me.”

Something trickles through me. A heat that’s less warm, and more like a wick smoldering. And I’m not sure where the fire started, who kindled it. If it was a campfire put out, but carelessly, a gush of wind picking at the dying embers, bringing them back to life.

There’s a moment of between. When it’s clear the ember will either swell or wither away. A moment that’s just me and Peter in this cramped room, our only communication labored breaths.

“Peter?” I ask.

He closes his eyes at the sound of his name on my lips. “Yes.” Not a question. An answer for anything I might ask of him. The blank check I gave him in our bargain, extended back to me.

“Do you want to be wanted?” I whisper.

He places his head against my forehead, and when his skin touches mine, he nods, eyes still closed.

I breathe. “Me too.”

I’m woken the next morning by a dull headache.

I lie in Peter’s arms, as I’ve done so many mornings before. He’d wanted me to keep my clothes off, but after it was over and he’d fallen asleep, I’d crawled out of bed and put them back on before slipping back into his arms.

I stare at the clock on the other side of the room. It’s ticking.

I’m struck with the sensation of having imagined this happening differently. For one, there was the version of me who wanted to wait until there was a ring on the man’s finger, to make sure he wouldn’t discard me just like all the other men in my life had.

But Peter’s not leaving. Not because he loves me, but because he’s obsessed with me, and it would hurt too much.

Peter’s not leaving, I repeat over and over in my head. Peter’s not leaving, and I deserve some pittance of pleasure in this prison in which I’m shackled.

Astor would be disappointed in me. I’d like to see that, I think. Since I awoke, I’ve been compiling a list of what I might say to him should he ever find out.

It’s a fantasy, I know. Astor and I will never interact again, and all of these conversations will remain in my head. I’ll never get to hear the rage spike in his tone when he thinks Peter abused me without my consent. I’ll never get to smile at him, oh so demurely, and tell him that Peter didn’t make me do anything.

That I chose this all on my own.

I’ll never get to see the shock on his face. I go back and forth about whether he would smirk and say, “Well done, Darling,” or if he would lose his capability to speak. If he’d trawl his gaze over my body and wonder where Peter touched me and wish it had been him instead.

Peter stirs beside me, pulling me tighter into his embrace. He nuzzles his mouth to my neck, planting kisses at the divots of my Mating Mark.

Something burns in my belly. It’s not desire.

Once he awakens more fully, he tugs at the sleeves of my nightgown that I donned in the middle of the night. “Where’d this come from?”

“Must have been sleepwalking and put it on,” I say, teasingly, though where the energy for my voice comes from, I have no idea.

“I don’t mind,” says Peter. “All the better for me to take off again.”

He snakes his fingers down my back, to the buttons on the back of the nightgown. I squirm. Where his touch lit a fire in me in the night, in the day, I feel exposed, taken, even with all my clothes on.

“Wendy Darling?”

“I have to go to the bathroom,” I explain, then extract myself from the bed.

It’s not until Peter leaves to pick up a few supplies for the boys before we return to Neverland that I plant myself on the floor and cry.

It’s not that I’ve ever felt virginal. Not since the time I knew what that meant. Not with my mother’s handpicked suitors taking advantage of my body in so many ways, I’d almost forgotten I’d never actually slept with a man before.

Still.

It shouldn’t bother me as much as it does, pluck at the back of my mind. The memory of Peter’s hands running down my back shouldn’t feel like spiders crawling over the ridges of my spine, but it does.

For a year, I’ve been waiting for this to happen. Eventually, I mean. There’s been a part of me that’s always expected the weight of my bargain to grow too heavy, the pull of the Mating Mark too strong to resist.

I thought that when Peter finally took me, it would be no different from the night in the Carlisles’ manor. Except I wouldn’t be able to scream. Wouldn’t be able to tell him no.

When he first called in my bargain, shortly after John died, I used to have dreams about that moment. I’d dream I was locked in my body, that my limbs had gone stiff, that I couldn’t move under Peter’s touch. That I’d open my mouth to cry out, but no voice would come out.

That Peter didn’t notice.

He took me anyway, as if he were being kind, sweet. As if he’d forgotten I couldn’t move.

That’s what I always expected sleeping with Peter would be like. But last night, it had been me who initiated. I might be bound to my Mate, but I’d adorned my shackles like golden bracelets, placed my chained hands over Peter’s head, snagged him by the neck, and pulled him in.

I’d always thought Peter bedding me would be wholly his choice. In some ways, it had been mine. And I don’t know how to process that. I don’t know how to be relieved that he didn’t take what wasn’t his by force, while also…

There’s a prick in my heart, one that’s been lodged there ever since Peter fell asleep, arms around me last night. But now that he’s no longer near, it’s as if it’s dug itself deeper into my flesh. Or perhaps I simply don’t have the comfort of lying in his arms to distract me.

I thought I didn’t have any left, but tears once more sting at my eyes.

“Darling?”

I crane my neck behind me and find not Peter, but Astor’s wraith. He’s sitting on the bed, cross-legged. It’s a ridiculous position, one that the real Astor would never take up because of how boyish it looks. But Astor wouldn’t choose to be anywhere near me, either. He certainly wouldn’t follow me from another realm.

“What are you doing here?” I sniffle between sobs.

“I heard you crying,” is all he offers by way of answer.

My heart gives the most painful stutter. I stare at him, try to imagine the Nolan Astor I know, try to imagine his features within the shadows. But it’s been a year, and I’ve forgotten all but the basics of what he looks like. Ivy green eyes. Sharp angles. I can’t quite make my mind conjure anything else.

“You’re much gentler than the real Astor.”

The wraith cocks his head, just ever so slightly, but he doesn’t explain.

I don’t know why the words start spilling out of my mouth. Maybe it’s because that’s what always seemed to happen with the real Astor, and I can’t help myself around him. Maybe I really am this lonely.

“I slept with Peter last night.” Where I would imagine the real Astor to go rigid, the wraith version only taps his finger against his knee.

“Did he make you?”

I frown, hug my arms against my chest, and stroke the bargain in the crook of my arm with my fingers. It’s the shape of a chain, the middle notch only binding when Peter called in his side of the bargain.

“I don’t think so,” I say. “But…” I bite my lip, trying to come up with the words to describe it.

My lip quivers, and that’s when the tears truly come, not just in trickles, but what feels like a torrent. “Last night, it felt like my choice. It felt like I was the one manipulating him. But now that he’s gone and the Mating Mark or the bargain or whatever’s messing with my mind has dulled, I don’t… It doesn’t feel like it was me, even though I know it was. I can run it back through my head and tell you exactly what I was feeling, why I did it. I was so hurt about you not coming for me, and I just wanted to be wanted. To enjoy something. And to hurt you, I think. It seems like it was me, but…”

The wraith tilts his head to the side. “But what?”

I stroke the bargain at the crook of my elbow. The Mating Mark at the notch of my jaw. “But I guess I’ll never know, will I? Because I don’t know where I stop and these begin. I don’t know how much is me anymore.”

Usually, the crying helps. Cleanses me of some of the pain, provides me a new perspective that perhaps things aren’t quite so bad as I originally thought.

Usually.

“Do you think it was me?” I ask, my voice trembling with trepidation.

“I’m afraid that’s not a question anyone else can answer for you, Darling.”

“I know,” I say, biting my lip. “But in your gut, you have to have an opinion.”

For a moment, Astor’s wraith says nothing. I turn toward him, as if I’ll somehow be able to glimpse an answer in his expression. As if he’s real and here with me and not made of shadow.

“You shouldn’t rely on something like me to help you discern what’s real and what’s not.”

“Well, it’s not as if I can rely on myself for that, now can I?”

The shadow of the wraith’s jaw moves, but before he can speak, footsteps sound in the hall.

By the time Peter returns, Astor’s wraith is gone.