Page 18 of Caging Darling (The Lost Girl #3)

CHAPTER 18

T ink leads me by the hand to the cliffs, John following behind, though the further we get from the cave, the more blurred his edges become.

I don’t want to think about that. About why Astor’s wraith was able to follow me into another realm, his edges just as inky, when my brother, who’s never been anything less than faithful to me, couldn’t get to me.

It’s because you wanted to see him, is what John said.

Even after all Astor’s done to crush me, all of the pain John endured on my behalf, the evidence has spoken. My wayward heart has shown where its loyalties lie.

My mind is in a blur as Tink leads me by the hand through the forest, the stars twirling through the pine canopy above. When we reach the cliffs, Tink places two tiles in my hand.

“UP. AROUND?”

I frown, staring into her eyes. For the first time tonight, I find myself wondering why she can’t speak. It hits me, the selfishness of it. How self-absorbed I must be not to have considered it until now.

If Tink cares anything at all about my impudence, she doesn’t show it. Her impatience gleams through her eyes, and she taps on both tiles, cueing me to choose.

I glance at the towering cliff before me. A year and a half ago, when I first arrived in Neverland, I could scale it not with ease, but without fear of falling.

I’d been stronger then. Which isn’t saying much. Now, as I stare down at my limbs, gone spindly and thin from a year of disuse, of months lying in bed, chained down in Peter’s arms to keep me from floating away in my faerie dust highs, I realize I couldn’t climb if I wanted to.

Blinking away tears, realizing that bit of comfort, that joy of climbing, has been taken away from me—that I let it be taken—I place a tile in Tink’s palm.

She frowns at it, but she does as I ask and takes us another way.

There’s a path up to the storehouse that winds around the backside of the cliffs. John explains how he cut through the brush over a period of weeks when he was trying to find a way to get us off the island. Apparently, he’d hoped there would be faerie dust up here, but Peter had already emptied it out.

“If we’re not going for the faerie dust, what are we going to…”

Neither answers my question, I guess, because the realization dawns on my face. The screaming I’d heard the night I met the night stalker by the storehouse…it had been a wraith.

By the time we reach the storehouse, my legs are wobbling, the combined effort of my grief and exertion. It’s misty up here, a fog blowing in from the ocean, obscuring the star-littered sky, the wind howling.

A bloodcurdling scream rends through the fog.

Ahead of me, Tink stills. Her trembling hand finds her throat, strokes it kindly. I stop as well, but she flicks her head toward the tree line and bids me to follow.

Pine needles scrape at my cheeks as I peek out toward the storehouse. There are three wraiths gathered by the structure, one weeping silently on her knees as the other two—a man and a woman—stand over her.

“They took her voice,” John explains. “Peter lured her here, because the Sister needed something to anchor Neverland so it wouldn’t collapse.”

Pain rattles through me. “That’s not all that surprising,” is all I say to Tink.

She glances at the bargain on the inside of my elbow and nods her head knowingly.

“You’ll want to get close for this one,” says John’s wraith, nudging me forward.

I don’t want to go anywhere close to the wraith of the Sister. Not after what I saw the night I falsely learned Peter was my Mate.

A chill snakes up my skin, but I venture forward all the same. Even as I reach them, the way Peter speaks protectively over Tink causes thorns to stick in my belly. I’m not sure if it’s jealousy, prodded on by my Mating Mark, or if it just reminds me of the possessiveness with which he talks of me, and I can’t quite separate myself from my anger at looking at Tink and seeing myself as the one with my knees in the dirt, voice stripped.

Images of my night with Peter in that cramped inn room flood my mind, reminding me of his tender touch. The way he treated me like his queen.

My thought or—I look at the bargain on my elbow—its thought? I graze my cheek. Or does that one belong to you?

I don’t know the difference anymore, but when I reach Tink, the scene before me reverses, Tink floating upward to a standing position, the Sister leaning over and whispering something in her ear.

“I know you believed he loved you,” the Sister says. “But did you know that his skin writhes every time you touch him? Did you know that when he leaves your bed, it’s to empty his stomach of disgust?”

Tink’s wraith stares up at her, but I can’t tell because of her lack of features whether she’s shaking in fear or rage. Tink—the real Tink—walks up behind the apparition, her hands fisted, but she’s not shaking. Not anymore.

“Did you know,” the Sister asks, “how powerful that Mating Mark is on his back? I’m sure it was romantic for you, wasn’t it? Him claiming he could resist it because of the strength of his love for you. But Mates can’t resist each other. Can’t deny each other.”

Pain pierces me as the memory of confessing my love to Astor assaults my mind.

I’m the one Mate who’s resistible, it seems.

“You think he’s good, but there’s a wickedness in him, born of the intensity with which he craves his Mate. He can’t have her now, of course. She’s only a child. How does it feel, my dear, to be less desirable than a child?”

Tink’s shaking, and the Tink behind her looks solemnly, not at herself, but at me. In remembering this awful night, all she can think of is the pain I must be experiencing in hearing this.

Nausea coils through me.

“She almost died once, you know, not long ago,” says the Sister. “He came to me, begging me to spare her life. But that decision wasn’t for me to make. But your lover, he can be so convincing. He even had his own plan. His own idea for how to save her.”

No.

“He told me of a friend of his, one with healing powers. He said she could heal the girl. That he’d seen her bring back children from near-death.”

Something in my brain clicks. It’s a lie. Iaso’s blood had never been powerful enough to save someone so close to death. Astor had told me as much. That’s why my parents had slit her throat, bleeding her dry to get enough blood to heal me.

“It was a secret between the two of them,” says the Sister. “She’d brought Peter back from near-death when they were children, but the power had awakened something in her, frightened her. So she’d asked him never to tell a soul.”

My mind goes numb.

The wraith Tink is crying now, silently, her chest and back shaking. The real Tink is crying too, but her tears are less violent. They slip down her cheeks as she watches nothing but me.

“He tracked down the woman, came to her as an old friend, telling her of a child who had fallen ill and needed her help. Though the healer shied away from working her magic on the deathly ill, fearful of waking that dark and terrible power within her, she made an exception for her friend.

“You see,” says the Sister, “I went to the mother of the girl. Made a bargain with her so that Peter, your lover, could have his Mate one day. He has been a dutiful servant to me, after all. But do you know what else he requested? It wasn’t enough for the girl to be healed. For a bargain to be struck, that would mean she belonged to him when she came of age. No, he had another request.

“He asked me to tell the parents that the woman’s blood wouldn’t be enough. He asked me to lie, so that they would bleed that woman dry.”

My heart stops in my chest. I’d known that the Sister had told my parents to kill Iaso in order to heal me. But the thought that her blood could have healed me without having to kill her, the thought that Peter…

“Why?” I breathe. “Why?”

The vision shifts as the Sister looks up from Tink and toward me, as if noticing I’m here for the first time, breaking out of her apparition. “Oh, come now, dear. You’ve gotten to be so much cleverer than that, haven’t you?”

I blink, because I can’t make sense of it. I turn to Peter’s wraith. “You were her friend. Since childhood. How could you want her dead? You were Astor’s friend. You had me. You had the majority of the Mark, and my parents’ bargain, too. Why would you want Iaso dead? It doesn’t make any…”

Tink comes up next to me and places her fingers through mine. I’m heaving, my mind whirling.

Iaso didn’t have to die. Iaso didn’t have to die. We both could have lived. And then Astor, Astor…

I gasp with a sharp inhale, spinning on Peter’s wraith. “Tell me why you did it,” I scream, and his wraith just cocks its head at me.

“Wendy Darling, you’re mine. My Darling little possession. You always have been.”

He approaches me, and Tink goes to stand between us, but I gently brush her aside with a touch to her shoulder. “It wasn’t enough, was it?” I say, stepping out from behind Tink. “Because you knew. You knew Astor still had part of the Mating Mark. You knew I didn’t belong to you, not completely, as long as he had that Mating Mark on him. But if you hated him so much, why not kill him? Get him out of the way? Why kill Iaso?”

Peter’s wraith actually recoils, though without seeing his expression, I can’t tell whether his offense is feigned. “You think I would kill my oldest friend?”

I squeeze my eyes shut. Search the darkness for why. Why Peter would kill Iaso.

Oh.

“You wanted Astor to hate me,” I say, the realization slapping me across the face. “You knew the only emotion as strong as the Mating Bond was hatred. So you ensured it was my fault that his wife was dead.”

Astor’s voice, from the night at the Carlisles’, rings in my head. When I look at you, do you know what I picture? I picture you sinking your teeth into my wife’s bleeding throat.

“You did that to him. To me.” I clutch my belly as if that will keep my trembling insides intact. “You made sure that the one man guaranteed to love me would be sick at the very sight of me. Would despise my touch. You made it so that every desire he ever had for me was tainted with guilt. You made it so that he couldn’t look at me, couldn’t think of me, without thinking of his wife.”

Peter’s wraith just stares at me.

“You ruined him for me. You did it on purpose. And Iaso’s life was simply the price you had to pay for getting what you wanted.”

Normally, I would feel as if I couldn’t breathe, but the anger is so real, so potent, I feel for the first time in a long time as if I’m alive.

The man standing before me isn’t Peter, it’s just a memory of him, taken from a place in time. I suppose that’s why I can hate him this freely.

The wraiths disappear, and it’s just me and Tink left. I spin around, searching the landing, but even John is gone. And though it was never truly John to begin with, I feel the ache in my heart at his sudden absence.

Tink approaches me and grabs my hand in her calloused one. I clutch it to my chest, as if her knuckles can expunge the rage growing there.

“He made it so he wouldn’t want me…” I say through heavier breaths. “He made him hate me…” Tears burn at my eyes. “And now…”

Tink pulls me into her, wrapping her arms around me. Even her papery wings brush against my skin, and I can feel the tattered bits.

It’s then that the anger within me drains, a passing gale I can’t ever hold onto long enough to do anything of import with.

“What does he do to your wings?” I ask.

Tink pulls away. Rifles through her tiles. But it takes a while, and it doesn’t seem she can find the words.

My heart aches for her. For the girl who was lured here, just so her voice could be taken. I could ask her why her voice, what was special about it, but something tells me the handful of tiles at her side won’t be able to express that either.

“I don’t think I can do it,” I say. “I’m sorry. I know you showed me this so I would leave him, but I can’t.” Tears well in my eyes.

Tink offers me a sad frown. Presses tiles to my hand. “I KNOW.”

So I descend the cliffs down the path marked by my dead brother, knowing what I know.

My feet, bound by the chains of my bargain, still lead me right back to Peter.