Page 34 of Caging Darling (The Lost Girl #3)

CHAPTER 34

“ W hat do you mean, you have no idea where she is?”

The Nomad is in a set of silk robes and matching silk night pants, pacing back and forth across the floor at my feet. I’m still curled up on my pallet in the floor, my back and limbs aching from where the uneven floorboards of the ship jabbed into my joints all night. Not that I would have slept, anyway.

I was too busy replaying every moment, every word, every touch of the conversation between me and Astor.

“I already told you. Tink left through a warping in Neverland. I’ve no idea where it dropped her off. For all we know, she might not even be in this realm.”

The thought makes me ill, but not nearly as much as the first time I considered the fact that Michael might be so far away, in a realm I can never reach.

“Yes, I’m aware of what you told me. Information doesn’t flit from my mind quite so easily. But you mean to tell me that you never had a conversation with her as to where she might go if she left Neverland?”

I stroke the floorboard next to me, feeling the lump of wood against my skin, wondering if a splinter will scrape against my finger. “Communicating with Tink was difficult.”

“Really? By the way you seek to protect her, I would have thought the two of you were friends.”

I sit up, stretching out my back muscles as I interlock my fingers in front of me. “We are. Were.” I pause. Does Tink want anything to do with me now that she knows that I made a bargain with a man she clearly fears? Has ten months been long enough for her to forgive my betrayal?

Not that it matters. Even if she does forgive me, she won’t once I betray her again. It won’t matter that I can’t help myself.

People who can help themselves, people with control over their own impulses, have so little empathy for those who can’t and don’t. And why should they?

“When I say Tink was difficult to communicate with, I’m not talking about her personality. Though she can be a bit prickly until you get to know her.”

The Nomad’s lip twitches. “Do you always draw out explanations?”

A smile tugs at the corners of my mouth. “I’m told I have a tendency to meander.”

The Nomad taps his foot against the floor, crossing his arms.

“When the Sister crafted Neverland, she had to find a way to bind it. So she used Tink’s voice.”

The Nomad’s foot goes still. I wait for him to respond, but he simply waits, his face a stone, so I continue. “Tink can’t speak. Not verbally, at least. She can write, but not in any language I recognize. My brother John befriended her while I was away. You see, our younger brother, Michael, has always had difficulty expressing himself, so when he was little?—”

“Wendy Darling,” the Nomad says through a slick but emotionless grin. “This meandering you speak of. I believe you’re doing it again.”

“Right.” I pull the blanket to my chest, tucking my knees into myself. “She uses a set of communication tiles John made for her. They’re fairly effective, but there were plenty of conversations I would have liked to have with her that she simply didn’t have the words for.”

“Mm,” says the Nomad, pressing his lips together in a firm line.

I arch a brow at him. “What? You’re not feeling compassion for the faerie you wish to kidnap and exploit, are you?”

The Nomad stares at me for a moment. “There’s no financial reason for me to wish for the faerie to be unable to speak. I might be considered cruel by many, but I’m not unnecessarily so.”

“The Sister deemed taking her voice necessary,” I say grimly.

“And your brother John? What compelled him to attempt to provide her with one?”

“Common decency?” I scoff.

“I didn’t mean to offend,” says the Nomad. “Especially when speaking of the dead.”

I bristle. “How did you know that?”

“Astor keeps me informed, though he didn’t know how it happened.”

“I found him hanging from a tree with a noose around his neck,” I say.

The Nomad pauses. “And did he tie that noose himself?”

I stare at him blankly. “I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about that.”

Sensing I’m done with this subject, the Nomad crosses the room toward the trunk at the end of his bed. He sits atop it, then looks off toward the far wall. Most people’s eyes would be glazed over, but not his. His are as keen and sharp as ever. Plotting.

“If you’re lying to me regarding not knowing Tink’s location, you’ll regret it, you know,” he finally says, breaking the silence.

“I’m not afraid of you,” I say.

The Nomad cuts his eyes toward me. “That’s because you don’t feel as you should.”

I wish he was wrong. I wish the reason I don’t fear him is because I’m brave. But he’s right. I simply don’t feel much except for a weariness so heavy, I welcome anything that would allow me the permission to put it down. Even if I’d be putting it down forever.

“Are you blaming me for turning it off?”

The Nomad shakes his head. “No. No, sometimes turning it off is the only way to survive.”

“Still, your threats do little good.”

The Nomad hunches over, placing his hands on his knees so that his elbows crane outward. “I’m not threatening you. I’m simply informing you that if you fail to hand over Tink’s whereabouts, whether that’s by choice or ignorance, you’re not going to like the alternative.”

I’m not in the mood to feel fear, so I say, dryly, “The anticipation is killing me.”

The Nomad snorts. “Do you know what folly is, Wendy Darling?”

“Are you about to try to boil it down to one thing?”

“Folly is taking a hatchet to the forest and hacking away at the brush when a trail has already been forged.”

My mouth goes dry. “You think someone would have already tracked Tink down.”

“She’s a valuable commodity. Not to mention with those wings of hers, it’s not as if she would have been able to hide easily.”

My mind whirls, panic bubbling inside me as I picture a band of traffickers grabbing my friend, leaving Michael playing in a corner, unattended and uncared for.

I feel as if I’m going to be sick.

“If someone took her, wouldn’t that make it even more difficult for us to track her down?” I ask.

I expect the Nomad’s eyes to glint, but they don’t. “Not necessarily. Prizes like your faerie friend have a tendency to find themselves in the pocket of the highest bidder.”

“And who’s the highest bidder?”

The Nomad pushes his hands against his knees and stands, then glances at my Mating Mark. “Who do we know who has an affinity for collecting interesting women as pets? Or should I say—muses?”