Page 4 of Caging Darling (The Lost Girl #3)

CHAPTER 4

“ T hat’s it?” I stare at the smattering of faerie dust on Peter’s fingertip. It’s half of what he normally gives me. I don’t have the self-control to wait for a response before I grab his finger and press it to my mouth. A flicker of pleasure buzzes through me, but it flickers all the same. A flame that knows it’s on its last bit of wick and is conserving itself, toiling to last just a few seconds longer.

I stare up at Peter, who’s watching me quietly, noting the manner in which my eyes change as the dust trembles through me. We’re in his room, which is tidy for once. Shirtless in the dim lighting, he looks like the heroes of old. Strip him of color, and he could be one of the marble statues in my parents’ manor. There’s a small mark in the shape of a hand underneath his right ribcage. When I’d asked about it, he’d said it was a birthmark, but I know better. I know a bargain when I see one, though it’s small enough I can’t say for sure whether it’s new or if I simply hadn’t noticed it until I moved into his room.

Usually Peter would pull me into his lap or hold me as we lay under the covers, but with the slim dose he offered me just now, there’s no danger of me floating away.

I’m parched, and have only gotten enough water to wet my tongue. Now that the initial hit has dulled, I’m thirstier than ever.

“That wasn’t enough. My head.” I rub at my temple for emphasis, noting the stabbing ache there.

“You can have more tomorrow,” he says, gently. Softly. Like he cares for me. Like he’s not withholding the only thing keeping me from walking barefoot into the sea until it swallows me whole.

“Peter. Peter, please,” I say, fully aware that my voice is coming out in a grating whine. I sound like a child who wants to stay up past her bedtime. I step in, folding myself into his chest. His breathing quickens at my nearness. “Please, it hurts.”

“Wendy Darling, I know. I know it hurts, but you’ll get more tomorrow.”

Tears stream down my cheeks, and they’re not feigned. Panic ripples through me. It feels as if the air I’m breathing is contaminated, insufficient. Missing whatever element it contains that keeps me alive. When the tears hit Peter’s chest, he tenses. A warm hand finds my jaw, strokes my Mating Mark as he tilts my chin to look at him.

“It will be better soon, Wendy Darling. You have to trust me.” He slips his hand back to the base of my skull, right above my neck. Panic seizes me, his fingers much too close to my precious secret.

“Why are you hurting me?” I cry, tearing myself away from him. Peter’s blue eyes glow with sorrow as he wrinkles his brow.

He truly can’t stand it—seeing me in pain. I grasp at the hair on my scalp, tugging at it like I can somehow rip out the aching in my skull. “You did this to me. You wanted to hurt me, didn’t you? That’s why you gave me the faerie dust to begin with. You gave it to me so you could take it away. Because you hate me; you always have.”

Peter takes a step forward, reaches out his hand. “Wendy Darling.”

“I should have known. Should have seen it,” I mutter, pacing. “You haunted me when I was a child. Got a rise out of frightening me. Terrified me for years. You’ve only ever wanted to torture me. Why do you like torturing me? What did I ever do to you?”

I hate you, I want to say, but can’t. That’s not choosing Peter, I suppose.

He’s standing, arm still outstretched, heaving. He looks as if I’ve slapped him across the face. But then his hand goes to his side, to the pouch of faerie dust. Hope surges in my chest, sparkling wine bubbling over. I can taste the honeysuckle flavor on my tongue.

But then Peter’s expression shifts, turns hard. It’s a look I’m familiar with. A jealousy that strikes deeper than any urge Peter has to make me happy.

“Peter?”

He stares at me, at my mouth. “You never look at me that way.”

Panic supplants the hope in my chest, plants a lump in my throat. “Of course I do. I love you. You’re my Mate.”

Peter’s face goes blank. “You can have more tomorrow.”

I run my hand against his bedside table. Feel the swell of the wood against my fingertips. As I do, I examine every object in the room other than my Mate: the cot he moved in here for Michael after John died, Michael’s toy chest, stuffed with toys Peter’s stolen on his excursions to the point that the lid remains eternally askew.

Peter’s room used to be a mess, a treasure trove of sorts, of trophies he’s brought back from his excursions. But many of them were breakable, delicate teacups that Michael might have stepped on and cut his feet, baubles he might have accidentally swallowed.

Those are all gone now, the room cleaned to make it habitable for my brother.

The stinging sensation in my blood remains, but when Peter draws near and places his hands on my shoulders, it shifts. My anger toward him is just as potent, but there’s a tension to it I can’t break. An edge to my irritation that tastes so similar to lust, I don’t know how to distinguish them.

Peter turns my cheek to face him. I’m met with a hunger in his eyes that can only match mine. An insatiable greed for one another.

Someone knocks on the door, and the tension snaps.

“Yes?” Peter’s voice is gravelly, irritated, and he doesn’t take his eyes off of me.

Victor opens the door, a fidgeting Michael tossed over his shoulder. Victor’s dark eyes flit between me and Peter. I instinctively take a step back, but my thighs hit the bedside table. Red blotches appear on Victor’s neck, but he nods his head toward Michael. “He’s asking for his mother,” he says.

Peter watches me carefully, but after a moment, his shoulders go lax, his usually carefree demeanor returned. “You should tend to your brother.”

For the third night this week, I wake outside the Den.

The wind howls about me, chilling my bones through Peter’s oversized shirt. If only my sleepwalking self would remember to grab a coat on the way out of the Den, that would be lovely.

The first time it happened, I woke near the grave of Victor’s father. I’d thought it was a side effect of the faerie dust, or perhaps a mixture of it and my grief. A psychological aftermath of my mental state. But then the back of my neck had burned, and I remembered.

That was the first time I’d known for sure I’ll see Astor again one day.

My body is hunting her, even when I’m not. The longer I go without fulfilling the Nomad’s bargain, the more often I wake in the middle of the night somewhere on the island.

When I’d made the deal with the Nomad for information on how to break Peter’s curse, he’d asked for Tink in exchange. At first, he’d demanded I deliver her within a year’s time, but I must have been feeling gutsy, because I’d asked for two years instead.

At nine months since striking the bargain, there’s still plenty of time, but the urges are growing stronger. I could tell Peter about the bargain, and he’d have it fulfilled before sunrise. But “choose me” wasn’t quite specific enough. I’ve learned the boundaries of the curse, what I can and can’t do. Can and can’t hide from him.

Omitting information is well within my rights. And there are some things I’d like to keep to myself as long as possible. My body. My bargains. Neither is worth very much, but each belongs to me. Only me. I think there’s a part of me that recognizes Peter will have them one day, and for now, I’d like to keep them for myself.

It’s easier, defying him when he’s not near. I keep thinking back to flying with him through the sky, remembering the desire for him that had burned so hot in the moment. Now, with Peter half an island away and the tug of the Mating Mark dulled, the thought just sends a chill through my bones.

It’s getting harder and harder, remembering what’s real and what’s not. What’s me and what’s not.

I’m just so tired.

I turn to trudge my way back to the Den, mind drifting when my surroundings finally catch my attention. I’m in a clearing. One I haven’t visited in months. My heart gives a lurch. There’s an onyx stone in the center of the clearing. If I were to approach, I’d find a familiar name carved into its facade, though the engraving is almost hidden now underneath the moss that’s crept up the side, crowning the stone in a lush green that’s vibrant even in the moonlight.

That’s not what caught my attention, though.

In the center of the clearing is a woman. No, a faerie, her butterfly-shaped wings the texture of a dragonfly’s, their veins glowing golden, though more faintly than I remember.

I wait for the terror to seize my limbs, but it doesn’t. Tink has tried to kill me multiple times, but fearing her would require caring what happens to me. Instead, I watch.

For a moment, I wonder if she’s desecrating John’s grave somehow. That should probably upset me, but it’s not as if he cares. As I watch, Tink kneels, sinking her bare knees into the soft earth. Her back rounds, her wings flittering as she grazes the gravestone with her long, tendril-like fingers.

She’s shaking.

It takes me a moment to recognize it for what it is—weeping. It’s unfamiliar, because she hardly makes a sound. But I can’t see how it could be anything else.

Unless she’s laughing. Which I suppose isn’t out of the question.

It’s strange, and I can’t imagine why Tink would weep over John. The idea is so absurd, I’m second-guessing whether this is the right grave. But no, I recognize the cut of the stone. This is the place we lowered his clammy body into the hungry earth.

What happened while I was away?

The question rattles inside my mind. It’s not the first time I’ve asked it. Not the first time I’ve wondered what could have possibly driven my brother—so rational, so protective—to suicide. Sure, the answer had always come back to the shadows. They’d talked Simon into slitting his own throat. Victor had told me as much when I returned to Neverland. My own wraith had talked me off the railing when I was traveling with Astor on the Iaso .

I don’t know what the wraiths said to Simon, but my wraith had used my insecurities against me. She’d not only listed all the reasons John and Michael were better off without me, she’d implied my existence endangered them.

But John—for the life of me, I haven’t been able to come up with anything the wraiths could have used to convince him to end his own life. Then again, watching Tink weep over his grave, I’m not sure I knew my brother as well as I’d thought.

Her cropped blonde hair shines in the moonlight, and I watch as she trails her fingers across her cheeks to wipe away the silent tears. Her mouth gapes, gropes, but if she’s screaming, I can’t hear her over the howling wind. Tink grasps at her chest, as if she would tear out her own heart if she only had the strength. When she pulls her hand away, her fingernails are coated with blood. Panicked, she wipes the blood on the drab sack she uses as a dress. Once she’s calmed herself, she rubs her thumb over the corner of the gravestone, like she’s running it across his chin, and my heart gives a painful, jealous lurch.

It’s a disgusting feeling, one I’ll loathe myself for later, but I hate watching her mourn over him.

I hate wondering if she visits his grave more than I do.

I close my eyes, aware that it’s my thinning supply of faerie dust talking, but that knowledge doesn’t help to dull the envy.

I should leave. This faerie wants me dead and has proven as much. But there’s that nagging question in the back of my mind again. Why did he do it? Why did John take his own life? Why did he leave Michael behind?

I step out into the clearing.

Tink’s head snaps in my direction, her blue eyes piercing even from several paces away. She bares her teeth, and at first I think she’ll cross the clearing and come for my throat. But then recognition flares in her eyes.

She wipes them, still wet, then pushes herself off the ground with one hand.

“You knew him,” I say, venturing toward her.

Tink takes a step back, though I’m nowhere close.

“Please, I just want to know why. Why he…” My voice trembles, and I can’t quite make myself finish the sentence.

Tink stares at me, scanning me like a doe ready to dash at the hunter’s next move.

“Please, just talk to me,” I whisper.

Tink tenses, then steps into the tree line and disappears.