Page 29 of Caging Darling (The Lost Girl #3)

CHAPTER 29

“ I don’t care that your master requires a passcode.”

“Sir, with all due respect, ain’t nobody getting into the Gathers without a?—”

The man standing before us guarding the dock goes still as Peter’s shadowy tendrils snake from his back and secure themselves around the man’s throat.

“Tell your master,” says Peter, as the man gargles, the woman next to him taking a step back from the scene, “that I have a master of my own. And that she will not be pleased if I don’t deliver.”

It’s a bluff, but the woman on deck with the other guard runs off toward the ship in the center of the Gathers. The Nomad’s ship.

Tears prick my eyes as I stare at it in the distance. The Gathers has moved docking sites since the last time I visited. While before it was stationed off the coast of Zereth, they’ve since drifted west, closer to Kruschi. The waters here are just as black as Zereth’s, shadows cast down by a nearby cliff.

“You don’t have to kill him,” I say to Peter, still choking the Nomad’s guard.

He ignores me, and I watch as the man falls to his knees onto the deck, Peter’s hand unfaltering from his throat. I recognize him from when I was last here with Astor. He had led us all the way to the Nomad’s ship.

I suppose if he’d killed me then, he wouldn’t be dying, the breath slowly being squeezed from his lungs.

Mercy is such a strange, horrible thing, for which the Fates have no tolerance.

Still. “Peter, please.”

But Peter isn’t listening to me. And there’s nothing I can do as the light leaves the man’s eyes.

When the woman returns, it’s with orders to bring us to the Nomad. She doesn’t comment on the corpse of her friend, but tears glimmer in her eyes as she leads us the entire way.

When I came here with Astor, we both climbed the rope ladders between the boats until the man who just died thought I was shaking too hard to climb the last one. Only then did Astor carry me, and only after telling me he knew I could do it myself.

Peter doesn’t consider such things. He just wraps his arm around me and tucks me into his side, flying me at a distance as the woman directs us to the looming center ship.

“It wouldn’t be choosing me to tell anyone about that bargain of ours,” he whispers, stroking my hair. “But I imagine you already know that.”

Whatever force arbitrates the terms of our bargain must agree, because already I can feel the unspoken words being bound in my throat.

As the woman leads us below deck, Peter keeps his arm around me, claiming me. He pulls me extra close, slipping his hand to my hip whenever we pass a young male sailor in the hall.

I want to crawl out of my skin at the look in the men’s eyes. It’s not that they’re leering. It’s the realization that dawns on them.

She belongs to him. In his bed.

They get the message and steer clear of us in the hall.

I imagine I’m supposed to get the message, too.

When we arrive at the Nomad’s office, I find my legs trembling. The first thing I look for isn’t the Nomad himself, but the book of sketches displayed on the other end of the room. But I’m not really looking for the book. I’m looking for the object that will anchor me to the moment I realized Astor was my true Mate. To the feeling of his arm wrapping around me and moving my hand to close the pages. The press of his chest against my back.

When my eyes land on the leather sketchbook, the sight takes me back there, just for a moment.

I can even scent him, the pipe tobacco and teakwood traveling two years from the past to come and meet me.

“Wendy Darling,” says a voice. I snap my attention over to the desk, where the Nomad sits, looking up from scattered notes. “I was wondering when you would come to see me. Cutting it close, are we not?”

“And you are?” The Nomad examines Peter with a predatory gaze, one that is almost as possessive over me as Peter’s. He cocks his head to the side, grinning with teeth that might as well be razors for the way he appears as if he’s about the snap Peter’s head off.

Strange. I remember the Nomad being arrogant. Larger than life. Dangerous. But I don’t remember him claiming his territory when the other male in the room was Astor.

“Her Mate,” says Peter, pulling me closer into his side.

The Nomad’s smile appears more genuinely amused now. He glances back and forth between the two of us. “Your Mate has a sense of humor about him,” he says. “Does he enjoy calling the sun the moon as well?”

Peter takes a step forward, and the Nomad rises from his desk to meet him. Instant dislike taints the air between them, and I can’t decide from whom it bleeds more incessantly.

I expected Peter’s disdain for the Nomad, anger that another male would dare place a bargain upon my skin. But the Nomad’s ire is unexpected. The same male who was unruffled in Astor’s presence appears incensed by Peter.

Still, he turns toward me, hands still splayed on his desk. “You’ve kept me waiting, Wendy Darling. I’m not particularly fond of waiting. Left a rather ill taste in my mouth the last time I did it.”

I remember the rumors about the Nomad. That he’s lived lifetimes, roamed the land of the dead. Is that the waiting he’s speaking of? When he was lurking on the other side of the veil, waiting to return to a fleshly form?

Chills snake up my arms, and from the way the Nomad’s gaze traces them, I get the sense they don’t go without him noticing.

“What are the terms of the bargain?” Peter asks.

The Nomad furrows his brow. “You traveled all this way and didn’t consider asking your Mate?”

Peter’s lip twitches, and the Nomad’s do too. If Peter admits I’m refusing to tell him, he’s admitting a flaw in our relationship, that I keep things from him.

It’s as good as admitting he’s not my Mate.

“Wendy Darling,” says the Nomad, watching for Peter’s instinctual flinch at the use of my name. “Do you wish to speak to me in private?”

My heart races, not with fear of the Nomad, but with hope. Better to be locked in the room alone with the Nomad than the man who already abuses me. But Peter scoffs. “Please, you made a bargain with her for a reason. I’m betting you want Wendy’s side fulfilled. Just tell me what the conditions are and I’ll get you what you want.”

The Nomad taps his quill against the side of the desk. It makes him look so much older than the skin he wears, the body that appears hardly a year my senior. His shaggy dust-brown hair hangs over his pointed ears, his blue eyes as icy as Peter’s.

In the end, the Nomad’s loyalty to me only extends so far. “I want the faerie that lives on your little island of a realm.” When I flinch, the Nomad grimaces, though it’s half-feigned. “Sorry, love. I’d rather we kept things between the two of us”—Peter shifts his feet at the wording, and the Nomad’s lip twitches—“but it appears you’ve had little intention of fulfilling your side of the bargain. Tell me, did you get what you wanted out of it?”

He glances at Peter like he’s dying to test it out, whether he feels pain.

Peter’s jaw ticks. “What do you want with her?”

I turn to face Peter, trying to decide whether he’s simply trying to stall, unwilling to admit that Tink slipped from his hands, or if there’s a part of his twisted soul that actually cares what the Nomad has planned for Tink.

The Nomad taps his long fingers together as he relaxes back into his leather seat and props his hands on his desk. “That’s not really any of your concern, now is it?”

“Wendy Darling is not only my concern, she is mine. And you branded what’s mine with a bargain. Of which she will die if she doesn’t fulfill it. So yes. My things. My concern.”

The Nomad’s blue eyes flick to me. “And how does your thing feel about being called as much?”

“Wendy’s not really in the position to answer questions at the moment,” says Peter.

“Is that so?” The Nomad leans forward, propping his elbows on his knees. “You’ve changed since I last laid eyes on you.” He scans me up and down. It’s not so much leering as it is assessing. While I’m used to men raking me with their vision, there’s nothing sensual in the Nomad’s assessment.

No, to him, I’m a means to an end, my body, withering from disuse on Neverland, a poor investment.

I open my mouth to tell him I won’t bring Tink to him, but nothing comes out. While there’s much I can do to get around having to fulfill the bargain, much I can do to postpone the urges to hunt down Tink, it’s more difficult to refuse directly.

The Nomad stares at both of us for a moment, that air of confidence still familiar on his face. When he moves his hand, Peter flinches, but the Nomad holds his palm up in a mocking surrender. “Just going for my bell,” he says, nodding toward a glinting silver bell on his desk. “No need to be so jumpy.”

Peter shifts on his feet, and the Nomad taps the top of the bell with an open palm and the bell rings out.

“This conversation is private,” says Peter.

The Nomad almost laughs. “This bargain is between me and your Mate.” He says the word Mate like one might a euphemism. “And as it stands, if I can’t trust you to control her enough to tell you about her bargain, which it seems she’s managed to keep from you for almost two years, I don’t know why I would entrust a mission of such importance to you.”

Peter takes a threatening step forward. “I assure you, Tink will be in your hands faster than you can blink.”

The Nomad blinks. Slowly, too. “If that’s so, surely you won’t mind a little company on your mission. You won’t have to suffer my own hired hand for all that long.”

As if on cue, there’s a knock on the door behind us.

“Enter,” says the Nomad, his smile sly.

The door creaks open, and footsteps soon follow. “You summoned me?” the stranger drawls.

Except the voice isn’t that of a stranger.