Page 26 of Caging Darling (The Lost Girl #3)

CHAPTER 26

“ C ome again to tempt me into an affair, Darling?”

I let my satchel slip off my shoulders. It thuds as it hits the sandy ground of the dark cave. I doused my lantern as soon as I arrived. Even the moon isn’t out tonight, leaving the cave pitch-black.

My eyes will adjust, unfortunately, thanks to the glowing, swirling lights in the sky outside, but for now, I can’t see a thing.

Just how I like it.

I brought a bottle of faerie wine, for when my eyes try to adjust. There’s no more faerie dust on Neverland. Hasn’t been since Tink left. So now I just have to settle with what Peter lets me bring back from the manors of our victims.

I allow myself one bottle a month.

“We’re not having an affair,” I say.

He tsks, and I don’t have to see him to envision the way his ivy green eyes sparkle. “Are we not?”

“An affair would break my bargain. You and I, we’re simply?—”

“Friends?” I don’t miss the amusement in his voice. “I doubt that very much.”

I slump to the ground and allow my head to rest against the stone wall. “And why is that?”

“Can two people be friends when one hates the other?”

I clear my throat, and after a moment of silence say, “It couldn’t really be an affair, anyway. That would require me being married.”

“Are you or are you not married to the winged boy? I forget.”

I snort, twisting the emerald ring around my finger. “So does he. We’ve been playing the part for so long, sometimes I wonder if he’s simply forgotten he never actually married me.”

“I doubt that.”

“Well, he’s quite skilled at believing whatever he finds most convenient to believe,” I say.

“You wouldn’t know anything about that.” The voice is tinged with teasing, but there’s no missing the layer of concern underneath. The hint of judgment he just can’t seem to help himself from.

I roll my eyes, forcing myself to sit up straighter. “I assure you, I don’t believe in anything pleasant anymore.”

“Yet you keep coming to see me.”

I take a swig of the faerie wine, reveling in the bitterness that paints the back of my throat. “Technically, I can’t see you.”

“Only because you choose not to. Only because seeing me would make it more difficult to pretend.”

I roll my head to the side, toward where his voice originates. “There’s little here that brings me pleasure. Forgive me if I have to pretend it up.”

“Pretend something long enough, and you might find yourself loving something that isn’t real.”

I splash a bit of my wine into the darkness, but I smile all the same. Not my mother’s smile—the beautiful, perfected smile. No, there’s more of a curl to my smile, I imagine. Like the corner of a parchment that’s been held over the tip of a burning candle a second too long. “I don’t love you.”

“Of course you don’t. I’m not him.”

“I don’t love him, either.”

“Mm.”

I close my eyes, aware that this is about the time they’ll have adjusted. I don’t want to see, so I take another drink. A warm buzz settles at my jaw, reverberating against the bone.

“How was your trip?” he asks.

“Fine.”

There’s laughter in his voice. “Did you bring back a souvenir?”

I smile, settling my head into the sand and pointing haphazardly to where I think I left my satchel in the sand. “Always do.”

“It’s disturbing, really. Taking mementos of your victims. Never would have pegged you for a serial murderer, Darling. But I suppose it is the timid ones you have to watch out for.”

“I’m not the one who kills them,” I say. “Usually. Besides, it doesn’t count as being a serial murderer if you’re working for someone else.”

“Like this doesn’t count as an affair.”

“Exactly.”

His voice is closer now, though there was no rustling of the sand to indicate it. “Because you and I are friends?”

My lips twitch. I try my best to remain still. Let him get close. It hurts not to reach out to feel him when my hands want nothing more. “Something like that.”

“Darling.” The wind sneaks into the cave, brushing up against my cheek. One more swig of wine, and it might feel warm enough to be his breath on my skin.

“Don’t call me that,” I whisper.

“But you like it when I do.”

My heart hammers against my chest. He’s so close now, near enough that his voice might as well be originating in my skull. The wind whirls through the cave again, frigid and chilling my bones.

He pauses, though he lingers. “You’re freezing. You didn’t bring a coat.”

“I don’t need one.”

“Darling.”

“I said not to call me that.”

“Yet you want me to draw closer. To whisper in your ear.”

“It’s the least you could do, really.”

“You’re shivering.”

I offer him a cruel smile. “Don’t be so vain.”

“You should go back. Get a coat.”

“I don’t want to go back.”

“Perhaps you should open your eyes now,” he says, his voice dampened with sorrow.

“No.”

“Wendy.”

“No. You left me here. You let him…let him…” I can’t breathe, can’t think it. “The least you can do is let me keep my eyes closed. Let me… let me…”

The next time he speaks, his voice is withdrawn to the corner of the cave. It breaks the illusion, almost as much as opening my eyes would have. “Pretend? Did you ever consider that this was the sort of childish behavior that led him to leave you in the first place?”

Childish. The word is a barb in my side. A cramp in the middle of a long run. It stings of a conversation that wasn’t meant to be overheard, when Astor told Maddox I was too young for him. That I hadn’t yet learned how to be anything other than what I thought was expected of me.

“I doubt he’d find me so na?ve next time around.”

“Darling.”

“Yes?”

“I thought you’d said you’d given up hope of a next time around.”

The faerie wine swirls in my head, making me dizzy. Still, I refuse to open my eyes. “That’s not how I meant it.”

Silence. When it carries on for long enough to make me nervous, I open my eyes. Relief warms me when I find him on the other side of the cave, a shadow, but here.

And here is all I need from him.

He glides over to the satchel, the one that contains the severed hand I brought back. Usually I leave them behind or toss them into the Shifting Sea, but this one I’ll toss into the ocean later tonight. Maybe it’ll find its way to the warping Tink and Michael and the Lost Boys escaped through.

“You’re still trying to communicate with him. Even after all this time.”

“It makes Peter uncomfortable,” I say.

“But that’s not why you do it.”

“Must you spoil my fun?” I keep my voice light-hearted as I try to steer the conversation back to a place I’m more comfortable with.

The wraith pauses, watching over the satchel that he can’t unpack.

“We shouldn’t see one another.”

The statement slaps me open-palmed across the cheek, my Mating Mark stinging with its impact. I’m so shocked, I almost snort. “You really are stuck on this affair you’ve constructed in your mind, aren’t you? I assure you you’re not spoiling my innocence with your company alone.”

“No.” The wraith pauses. “But I’m spoiling you.”

I swing my hand to the side, forgetting the bottle I’m holding. Wine sloshes all over my front, staining Peter’s white shirt. “It’s adorable that you think I’m not already spoiled.”

“Darling, this isn’t a decision I’ve made in haste.”

Angst constricts my chest. I swallow another swig of wine. The cave wall is cold against my skull. “You have too much time by yourself to think. Trust me, I understand.”

“Have you told Peter about your bargain with the Nomad?”

I open my mouth. Struggle for the words. “I will.”

“Once it’s too late. You’ll tell him when it’s too late for him to do anything about it.”

My mouth clamps shut.

“You intend to die from the bargain.”

If I had any tears left, they’d well at my eyelids. As it is, I just feel as if my eyes have dried up, an unpleasant itchiness nagging at me.

“Nolan.”

“Don’t call me that.”

I push myself off the wall, my hands struggling for something to grip onto, a handhold to support myself. But the wall is slick, and between it and the wine, I stumble, barely catching myself on a boulder near me.

“I won’t be complicit in you refusing to live.”

“No. No, you can’t leave—” I pull on my hair, staggering toward him. “You can’t leave me. Not like you did?—”

“Darling.” He sounds so placating now. “That wasn’t me.”

“Fine. Fine, you’re not him. You’re not Astor, and you can claim you’re not real, but I can hear you, can’t I? I can talk to you? Please, I have no one to talk to.”

“I can’t stand by and watch you go through with this. I can’t consent. You understand, don’t you?”

When I don’t answer, he says, “Do you remember the night I was made?”

“Of course I remember. How could I not? Telling you what happened to me in my father’s parlor was agonizing. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here.”

The wraith shakes his head. “No, Darling. That’s not how it happened. That’s not how I happened.”

I frown. “You said that was the night I made you.”

“That was the night I was made. It just wasn’t your pain that made me.”

My breath catches. “It hurt him that badly? To hear what they did to me?”

The wraith begins to fade.

“ No ,” I scream. “You can’t tell me that. You can’t tell me that, then leave. You can’t leave me again.”

When he doesn’t answer, I quiet my voice. “You’re all I have. Please. You’re mine.”

The wraith turns, and for a moment, I think it will be enough. His form darkens. If only my eyes hadn’t adjusted, I could convince myself he was simply Astor standing in the shadows. “Oh, Darling. If only that were so.”