Page 33 of Caging Darling (The Lost Girl #3)

CHAPTER 33

T he Nomad’s quarters are decadent. As he’s the captain of this fleet, I was expecting his room to look more like Astor’s. Practical elegance, maps, and carefully crafted furniture. The Nomad’s rooms are less practical and more showy. There are ornate tapestries hanging from the walls, though in the candlelight, I can’t make out the patterns.

After I change into my nightwear, I stand around awkwardly.

“Waiting for me to tell you what to do?” asks the Nomad, rolling up his night sleeves.

“I…” I bite my lip. I hate that after all this time, all I’ve been through, this is still the case.

“You can take the bed if you wish,” says the Nomad, “just know that I also intend to sleep in it once I’m done with business for the night.”

I shrug. “I’ll take the floor, then.”

The Nomad peers at me keenly. “Are you sure?”

“I don’t mind.” I don’t bother telling him that sleeping on the floor by myself sounds like a luxury compared to sleeping in a bed with Peter.

“As you wish,” says the Nomad, sounding skeptical but otherwise unbothered by the situation. He’s not exactly a gentleman, but I probably shouldn’t expect as much from a crime lord. As it is, I’m just thankful that I am obviously not his type.

When he leaves for his office, I try to make myself a pallet on the floor, but the floorboards are lumpy and poke through the many layers of blankets I have stacked. I toss and turn, trying to figure out whether it’s actually worth it to sleep in the same bed as the Nomad. I don’t think it’s likely that he’ll touch me, and his bed is huge…

There’s a rattling at the locked door from where the Nomad locked me in.

I swallow all thoughts of getting in bed. I might have been brave enough to do it while the Nomad was away, letting him come in to me curled up under the blankets and fast asleep, but I certainly won’t climb into bed while he’s in the room and can mock me about it.

When the door opens with a creak, I pretend to be asleep, too emotionally exhausted to deal with conversing with the Nomad anymore.

Footsteps pad over toward me. I suppose he’s checking on me. How thoughtful of him.

“Please explain to me why you’re on the floor, Darling.”

My heart careens into my throat. My eyes fly open, and I find not the Nomad looming over me, but Nolan Astor.

My instant reaction is to bring the blanket over my chest, though my nightgown is modest. There’s a flicker of amusement in Astor’s eyes that incites a fury inside me I’m not sure I can contain.

“Get out,” I say.

“Get up,” he says.

The words land like a dagger in my heart and twist. How many nights have I spent over the last two years reliving that moment in Astor’s room, wishing I’d been brave enough to get back up after he pushed me to the floor? How many times have I wondered if things would have been different between us had I gotten back up and fought him, had I shown him more than a simpering little girl, weakened into resignation by her parents’ schemes?

“No.” That he told me to stand up and now I can’t do it without seeming like I’m obeying him gets under my skin. I am fully aware of how petulant I’m coming across, but I roll back over and yank the blanket over my head in defiance.

Astor chuckles, and the sound is so sweet, something I’ve craved for so long it pricks my heart, stabbing me underneath my ribcage.

“If that’s how you want it, then.” He steps over me and my bundle of blankets before crouching, placing his elbows on his knees. There’s a moment when the fingers on his right hand flex, like he out of habit intends to interlock his hands. But of course, there’s no match to his hand, just the glassy hook, so his hand just lingers in the air, grasping at nothing before he shrugs and places it back on his knee.

Still not used to it, then.

“Hello,” he says, his green eyes burning through me as he examines my face. There’s a slight eagerness in the way the corners of his eyes lift. Like he’s actually glad to see me. Like he thinks there’s the possibility of anything good between us. Like he didn’t try to kill me the last time I saw him. Like I didn’t take his hand.

Like I wouldn’t have gladly forgotten all of that if he’d simply come for me.

“Won’t the Nomad kill you or something for breaking into his room?” I ask.

“You sound so hopeful,” he says, stroking his hook contemplatively.

I can’t help myself. My gaze follows the course of his fingertips, and I examine the hook more thoroughly, taking note of its glassy sheen, wondering what it’s made of.

He flicks it at me, gently scraping it down my nose, with just enough pressure so that it doesn’t hurt, just tickles.

I swat him away. “Looks as if it would shatter easily.”

He smirks. “Initially, when the Nomad had one of his expert forgers craft it for me from some mineral they called aether, I thought the same thing. Does that mean our thoughts are aligned for once?”

“I can think of a number of occasions we’ve been thinking the same thing.” The words come out of my mouth without my permission, and Astor’s brow rises in question.

And now I’m wondering if he’s remembering that night in the crow’s nest of his ship. The night he would have kissed me had I not pulled away.

Yet another moment where I can’t help but think my life would be different now if it weren’t for my compulsive hesitation.

Thinking of the crow’s nest has me wondering where his ship is. I feel like I would have noticed it if it were docked with the other ships in the Gathers. What if something’s happened?

“Charlie?” I ask, my chest tightening.

“Off on an excursion for the Nomad,” says Astor. “Along with Maddox and the others.” He must glimpse my relief in the way I exhale deeply, because he says, “Charlie will be glad to see you when she gets back. It’s been—she’s been worried.”

He blinks, and my throat tightens.

“Are you—” Astor reaches out with his hook, pulling the blanket away from my body. “Did he hurt you?”

I practically choke, slinking away from him. I jolt backward on the floor, hugging the blanket tighter. Realizing how childish I must look, I shed it and stand, my hands shaking. Slowly, Astor pushes himself off of his crouching position until he’s looming over me, though I keep a safe distance between us.

“Did Peter hurt me?” I laugh, and it’s the wry sort. It’s much too funny, because how am I to describe that with all Peter has done to crush me, to rip apart my family, that none of it hurts quite the same as Astor’s betrayal?

John’s death hurts. Aches. But I hate Peter for what he did. He’s at least afforded me that comfort.

I’m afforded no such comfort with Astor. The man who pretended to be my friend. The man who genuinely liked me, cared for my safety and growth, then decided I wasn’t worth sacrificing for in the end. Wasn’t even worth looking for.

“How dare you,” I say.

Astor cocks his head in question.

I take a sharp inhale because it’s the only thing keeping me from bursting into tears. Not the sad sort, the rage, crazed sort. “How dare you waltz in here and interrogate me about whether Peter hurt me?”

Astor’s face hardens. “Did he?”

My exhale should be telling. I wrap my arms around myself. “You tell me, Astor. What do you think? It’s been two years. Do you think Peter hurt me?”

There’s sorrow in Astor’s eyes, but he misunderstands my meaning. What I mean is that Peter has hurt me, that Astor should have known that from what he witnessed in the Carlisles’ library annex. Too late, I realize my bargain hasn’t allowed me to say it in the tone I meant. When I go back over the words, I realize they come out defensive, never painting Peter in an ill light.

I sound lovesick, brainwashed.

Astor’s jaw ticks. He swallows. “Do you love him?”

“Of course I do.” The words come out before I can stop them.

Choose me over him.

Astor reaches out with his right hand and strokes my cheek with his thumb, his skin tracing fire over my Mating Mark. He’s trembling. “Does this have anything to do with that?”

And then I remember.

I never told Astor about the bargain. I’d assumed he’d known. My mind has always placed him in my parents’ clock tower the night I struck the bargain with Peter. But, now that I replay the event, I realize the bargain was struck before Astor climbed up to the landing platform.

Even the bargain itself is difficult to see, tucked away in the crook of my elbow, most of the time covered by my sleeves or gloves, the rest of the time probably hidden by the way I often hug my torso.

My obsession with Peter, Astor still attributes to my Mating Mark.

I shouldn’t let myself be disappointed by this revelation.

When I don’t answer, he glances at my Mating Mark again running his thumb over it one more time. “I came here to apologize to you.”

“Well, it’s gone swimmingly so far,” I say.

He glances up at me. Opens his mouth. “I?—”

“I don’t care,” I say.

“Darling.”

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “I don’t need your apology. Don’t you get it? I’m with Peter now. I don’t care.”

It’s the furthest thing from the truth, but it’s what Peter’s bargain wants me to say, and I’m too angry with Astor to fight it. This wasn’t supposed to be how we were reunited. This wasn’t how his apology was supposed to go. In my mind, Astor is the same person who picked up my lost engagement ring. The man who dropped to his knee before me. But all of that was a show. A carefully devised plan to supplant Peter in my mind, an easy way to manipulate me into thinking Astor knows me better.

That’s the most agonizingly painful part—he does, and he uses that knowledge for nothing other than to destroy me.

“Please, just get out,” I say. “I’m already going to have to see you often enough as it is until this bargain with the Nomad sees itself through.”

“Are you happy?” he asks. “With him?”

His eyes trace my Mating Mark, as if that’s what makes me Peter’s slave forever.

“Happier than I’ve ever been in my life,” I say.

He pauses. “And if it’s not real?”

I stare at him. “Since when has a moment of happiness in my life been real?”

Astor tilts his head just slightly, almost but failing to hide his wince. With a deep breath, he releases my arm. It falls back to my side, limp.

“Is that why you didn’t tell Peter about your bargain with the Nomad?” says Astor.

My heart stops.

“You once told me you wake up every morning disappointed. Regretful that you didn’t simply die in your sleep, that you have to face another day.”

“Is that a question?” I say, my mouth going dry.

“Darling, why don’t you value your own life?”

“Because you do?” Sarcasm bleeds from my lips.

His throat bobs, the stubble at his jaw unshaven. “Answer my question. Were you trying to wait out the bargain until it killed you?”

When I don’t answer, he turns and slams his fist against the post of the Nomad’s bed. It cracks behind me. “Why don’t you value your own life? Why do you insist on not fighting?”

I blink, somehow unfazed.

Anger boils in me now, but it renders me mute. Everything in my head goes quiet except for the rage. There are so many retorts I’d like to spit back, but they flee my skull.

“If not for yourself,” he asks, “then why not for Michael? Why not for John?”

My skull rattles, needles piercing me from behind my eyes. “John’s dead.”

Astor blinks. He opens his mouth, then shuts it sharply. “How?”

I stare at him a long while. It’s not like me—or maybe I should say that it’s not like the person I used to be—but I choose my words carefully. Not to be diplomatic, not to make certain I don’t offend.

I find the words with the most serrated edges, and I pluck them from their sheath.

“I wasn’t there to protect him.”

Astor doesn’t look away in shame. He keeps his gaze fixed on me. “That would be my fault, then.” Then he does something I’m not prepared for, and steps toward me.

“You need to leave,” I say, before he can wrap me in his embrace.

His throat bobs, and he does.