Page 24 of Caging Darling (The Lost Girl #3)

CHAPTER 24

P eter takes me flying. We’re back to this again. To the one magical moment in our relationship. The moment Peter so desperately wishes to relive, he’s managed to beat it to death.

To my relief, he’s taken me to the opposite side of the island from where Tink and Michael are currently waiting for me. When he’d first scooped me into his arms and launched us skyward, I’d been sure he’d fly us somewhere they’d be spotted.

But even Peter can’t see my loved ones from here.

“Ask it,” says Peter, whispering in my ear as the stars twirl around us, my feet with nowhere to land.

My heart crawls up my throat. “Ask what?”

“Do you not remember?”

I do. He wants me to ask him to drop me. He wants to hear it come forth from my lips like a plea, like the first night we danced in the stars. When I gladly took the faerie dust to my lips, not knowing where it would take me. Not caring.

I go to ask him, just so that we can get this over with and I can go back to Michael and Tink, but when I attempt to say the words, they seem stuck in my throat.

“Wendy Darling?”

“I can’t—I can’t seem to get them out,” I say, confused.

The truth hits me before I can take the words back.

Peter laughs, and it’s so casual, it cuts through me. “Is this part of the bargain, then? Part of choosing me? Because I told you I wanted you to stay safe above all else?”

No. No, no, no. “I guess so,” I breathe with a smile. “But at the end of the day, I think the fact that you kept me safe is worth it, don’t you?”

Peter smirks. “What fun is being safe?”

I know he’s just playing his game. My counterfeit Mate is flighty, and this is just another instance of him waffling based on whatever emotion he’s experiencing in the moment, but the panic of it makes my skin crawl.

He leans over and whispers in my ear, his breath a warm fog. “I changed my mind, Wendy Darling. I don’t want us to be safe. I want us to go back to how things used to be. Before Astor took you. I want us to go back to being dangerous and loving every second of it. I want us to go back to living every moment with each other like it’s our last.”

And just like that, the terms change. My heart cracks.

Michael’s voice runs through my head. Wendy Darling’s sleeping .

I’m not sleeping anymore. I’m fully awake, but I can’t move. It’s like a nightmare that won’t leave you alone, even once you’ve wrenched yourself from sleep. One that immobilizes you, spoiling the relief of waking up.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” I ask.

Peter smiles. “You wouldn’t really hurt yourself, would you? You wouldn’t leave Michael. Earlier, you just wanted to scare me. That’s why you waited to jump until I was close enough to see you.”

My heart aches. He glimpses the truth in my face before I can hide it.

“Don’t you miss how things used to be, Wendy? I just want you here, with me. And you haven’t been here, with me, in a very long time.”

I stare at him. He wants what he can’t have. What he can’t command. But he’s slipping back into the Peter I used to know. The seductive fae who won my heart for the first time on false pretenses. The man who drove me into an insane obsession by being unpredictable. By keeping me running to catch up, too out of breath to consider whether it was from his charm or whiplash.

“You used to like it, Wendy Darling,” he whispers, trailing his mouth down my ear and to the crest of my jaw, where my Mating Mark is. “You used to like the danger. It used to drive you crazy. That’s how he got his claws in you, isn’t it? Well, Wendy Darling, believe me, I can be dangerous too.”

Peter drops me.

When it’s done, I keep hoping he’ll take it back. That now that I’m done flying with him in the sky, he’ll tell me it was just for a moment, while he could keep an eye on me, and that he really does want me to do anything in my power to keep myself safe.

When he doesn’t, when he returns us to the Den, I realize why.

It’s because he thinks that me keeping myself safe means distancing myself from him.

We fall asleep together in bed, Peter so high from the faerie dust that he doesn’t stir when I slip outside our room and outside of the Den into the forest.

I run. Tink and Michael should be long gone by now, but maybe I haven’t missed Victor’s boat.

I spend the entire run to the ocean thinking. Plotting. Desperately trying to find a way to work around his words.

Peter wants me here with him.

I can’t figure a way around it.

I can’t leave.

I was so close. But I can’t leave.

When I get to the beach, I’m appalled to find Tink is still there, though Victor and the Lost Boys are nowhere in sight. There must be no emotion left on my expression by the time I get to the ocean, because while Tink runs up to me and looks ready to shake me for taking so long, she stops directly in front of me, fear widening her eyes.

She doesn’t have to hand me the tiles. Her face says enough.

“I’m not coming,” I say, staring off beyond my friend and across the beach, searching for my brother. I find him picking up seashells along the beach.

Tink practically slams a tile into my hand. “NO.”

Tears well in my eyes, but they don’t sting this time. I can’t feel a thing. “I’m not coming. I can’t come.”

“BOYS GONE. SAFE.”

My emotions splinter in my chest, relief that the Lost Boys are safe and out of Neverland allowing me to breathe, the realization that I’ll never see my brother again after tonight clamping my lungs closed again.

Tink shakes her head, her cheeks reddening. She grabs at her throat, at her mouth, frustration overcoming her usual poise.

“Tink,” I say, my voice dead. “I need you to go. I need you to take Michael with you.”

Tink stops grasping at her throat. She goes eerily still as she stares at me. Like she can’t believe what she’s hearing.

“I know he’s not your responsibility,” I say, the words slicing at the lump now developing in the back of my mouth. “But I can’t take care of him. I can’t keep him safe. Can’t keep him here.” The tears are coming now, and I can’t tell if they’re for myself or for Michael. “Please, I know it’s a lot to ask. I know he’ll need more supervision than another child might. But if you could just take care of Michael; he trusts you. Even if it’s just until you can find him a home. Maybe a family who has another child like him. A family who will understand. I know I can’t ask that of you, but I don’t… Please…”

My voice is strained, and the bulge in my throat gets tighter.

Tink places another tile in my hand. “YOU COME.”

I wince. “I want to. So badly. I can’t explain why,” I say, “but I have to stay. Please. Please, just don’t argue with me about it.” I’m afraid that if I stand out here much longer, watching Michael pick up seashells, I might change my mind. Let Tink stay here with me.

But then I’ll die here, when my two years runs out, and Michael will be all alone with his brother’s killer.

Even now, the bargain on the back of my neck is whispering to me. Reminding me why it’s better for Tink to stay. Why I should convince her not to go, then tell Peter of my bargain. Peter, who can take her to the Nomad, fulfill my end of the bargain.

The compulsion grows stronger day by day as the end of my bargain draws nearer.

But it’s still far enough away to resist.

I tell my bargain that I’ll inform Peter about it later tonight. That he’ll be able to find Tink even if she’s in another realm.

That assuages it some.

I’m not sure how long it will last.

“Tink.” I grab her hand and place it on the back of my neck. When she pulls it away, paint is smeared across her fingers. She frowns, then gently turns me around to look at my bargain in the moonlight. Behind me, she gasps, then shoves me away. Not hard enough to make me fall, but hard enough for me to know there will not be an embrace.

I turn back around. Face the betrayal in her eyes. I don’t know what the symbol is on my neck, but it must have something to do with the Nomad, or something else that scares Tink. She backs away from me.

“Please don’t hold it against Michael,” is all I can manage to say. “Please. Please, just take him and go.”

Tink’s lip trembles, and she bites it. Like she’s forcing it to keep still. I turn and walk across the beach until I get to Michel. I ruffle his hair as I crouch before him. He doesn’t look at me. He just keeps organizing his seashells, sorting the perfect ones from the broken ones.

“Your friend Tink is going to take you on an adventure,” I say, praying he understands. “She’s going to take care of you, and you’re going to have so much fun.”

“Wendy Darling is going on an adventure.”

Again, my stomach cramps. “I’ll go on the adventure too. In my mind, I promise. I’ll use my imagination to be with you every day.”

Michael says nothing. Anger spikes within me, that my sweet brother can’t tell me how he’s feeling. That I can’t even be sure that he understands I’m saying goodbye.

My brother stops sorting the seashells. With one hand, he takes a perfect seashell, pink and unbroken. With the other, he takes a shard.

Quietly, he places the shard in my hand. It reminds me of Tink’s tiles, and my heart shatters.

“I’m heartbroken too, buddy,” I say. When I wrap him in a hug, he lets me bury my face into his hair, grimy and sweaty and smelling of sea salt. I promise myself to hold on to that smell forever.

Then I take Michael by the hand and lead him to the boat. Tink’s already dragged it to the water’s edge by the time we reach it. She jumps over the side and settles herself in, then extends her arms.

I squeeze my brother one last time before I hoist him into the boat.

Tink watches me the entire time. There are tears in her eyes, angry ones she tries to blink away. The betrayal seeps off of her, but she reaches into her pouch all the same and hands me two tiles.

“MICHAEL SAFE.”

“Thank you,” I whisper, hugging my chest tightly.

When I push them further into the water, Michael is singing.

“Wendy Darling’s waking up.”

I watch the waters for what feels like hours, even after they disappear from view behind the boulder. Anxiety wells within me, that perhaps they didn’t make it to the warping, that perhaps the wraith was wrong, and Peter was right, and the warping is only one-way.

And I realize I’ll never know. I’ll just have to believe they’re safe. I don’t think I’m capable of anything else.

But then the boat floats out from behind the boulder, empty and straying without anyone to guide it. The waves carry it to shore, depositing it in front of me. As I trace my hands over the slick wet hull, my attention catches on something glinting at the bottom of the boat. I pluck out a dagger. Examine it in the moonlight.

Hope, desperate and wild, surges within me, and I shift the dagger into my left hand. My fingers tremble at the hilt as I rest it over the crook of my right elbow. Pain stings at the fold of skin as the edge of the blade breaks through the outermost layer of my flesh. Teeth gritted, I will myself to press harder. Will myself to make the cut.

I picture the pig corpses Maddox used to train me on. Strength summoned, I raise the blade and drive it downward.

It stops just above my already bleeding skin, but there’s nothing around to cause the blade to cease ripping through the air but my own cowardice.

I try again, just for my body to stop itself a hair above my arm.

Again, I raise the blade. Thrust it downward. Again and again and again.

Until finally I drop the tear-stained dagger, my bargain as intact as it’s ever been.

Eventually, I collapse into the sand, unable to hold myself up any longer.

Completely and utterly alone.