Page 43 of Caging Darling (The Lost Girl #3)

CHAPTER 43

“ W hat is wrong with you?”

Astor’s question hangs from my ribs, compressing my lungs.

Astor paces back and forth in the hallway two down from the Nomad’s office. We forged our way here in silence, not having to communicate our need to get out of earshot of the others, even with the door closed behind us. As we wound through the halls, the thuds of Astor’s boots had become more and more pronounced until we reached an abandoned alcove behind the kitchen staff’s quarters.

Now there’s disappointment lining the wrinkles at the corner of his eyes. For a moment, he looks crazed, all the guilt at Peter’s accusation wiped from his face. But then he stops and runs his fingers through his hair, taking a steadying breath. “I didn’t mean it that way. I just don’t understand. Why—why do you hate yourself so much? Why do you think so little of yourself that you stay with him? I keep thinking there has to be some explanation. Some reason. He’s keeping you chained, holding Michael hostage, some reason you won’t leave him. But then you stand there and defend him.” He turns back toward me, waiting for a response. When I don’t have one, his eyes widen in disbelief. “You’re infuriating, you know,” he says, pacing toward me.

He approaches me until my back hits the wall, until there’s nowhere left to go to escape him.

Not that I want to escape. Not that I wouldn’t let him tie me up and steal me and take me with him to the ends of the earth.

I fight against the chains at my throat that keep me from telling him it’s not real. That my love for Peter isn’t real. That it’s not my words, but magic. That I’m more of a prisoner than he even knows.

But I can’t even show him my bargain. Peter’s made sure of that. It’s covered by my gloves that reach all the way up to my elbows, choking me without ever reaching my throat.

“I know,” is all I can manage to say. “I know.”

“Then why don’t you do something about it?” he asks. “Why don’t you leave him? Where’s the woman who used to climb towers? The woman who sliced off my hand? Where did she go? You were just starting to fight back. Why did you stop?”

Because I’ve been fighting for so long, I just haven’t managed to win. Because no matter how hard I struggle, it doesn’t matter when my opponent is always going to be stronger.

Tears roll down my cheek, but I can’t find a truth to speak that isn’t betraying Peter, can’t find words to make their way around the bargain.

“Just say…say something,” he says, heaving. He props his hook against the wall, and it digs into the board. He’s trembling so hard, part of me wonders if he’s going to yank the board out by accident.

The glassy hook is so near to my face, his other hand, so close to scraping my cheek.

Please see, I beg him with my eyes. Please see me. Please notice that I’m rotting in this prison.

“The least you could do is insult me,” he says, scanning my face with his eyes. “Is that what this is about? Are you trying to punish me? That’s what kissing the Nomad was about, wasn’t it? Because you wanted me to hurt like I hurt you? Well, that’s fine, Darling. I’ll accept that. I’ll take your lashing. Just don’t…why are you killing yourself in the process? Why do you not…”

He chokes on his words, pressing his forehead against mine and shutting his eyes. “How can you not see what I see when I look at you? How can you not recognize your life as something to be protected, valued, fought for? Believe me, Darling, I understand why you won’t choose me. I blew my shot long ago. But why him? Why him, when you could have a life of peace? Do you want so badly to be desired? Because if that’s what you want, what you need…”

He’s breathing heavily now, his breaths sharp, warm against my face. My head is swimming with the headiness of his nearness.

It’s sad, but I think I could stay like this forever, suspended in the longing. Even if Nolan Astor never laid his lips on mine, I think it would be enough, just to feel his hand tense against the board close to my face, just to feel his desire for me coming off of him in waves.

“I choose Peter,” I whisper.

He winces, and when he opens his eyes, he moves backward, pushing himself off the wall and placing distance between us.

“Why?” he asks, pain streaking his beautiful features. “Is it the Mark?” He strokes my cheek, then thinks better of touching me and withdraws his hand. “Did I do this to you, too?”

I don’t know what to say, so I say nothing.

“He killed your brother, Wendy.”

Astor waits for my response, and when it becomes clear that I have no answer, he takes a step back, surrender in his step. “Goodbye, Darling,” he says.

Giving up on me.

No. No, no, no. Please don’t walk away. Please, why can’t you see I’m trapped? I scream at him in my head, fight with the words to push them out, but they won’t obey me.

When he’s halfway down the hallway, I say the only thing I can manage, just to make him pause. Just to keep him here in this hallway with me a moment longer. “I choose Peter.”

Astor stops, then looks over his shoulder. “Are we rubbing it in now, Darling, pouring salt in the wound? Or are you worried I didn’t hear you the first time?”

“I choose Peter,” I say again.

Slowly, he turns his entire body to face me. Takes a step toward me in the hallway.

“Darling, tell me if you love Peter.”

“I choose Peter,” I say again, as deliberately as I can manage.

Astor cocks his head to the side. “And if you had what you wanted, if there was nothing else influencing you?”

“I choose Peter,” I say.

His footsteps are hard and soft at the same time. Hesitant as the wheels and cogs turn in his head. When he reaches me, he stares into my eyes. “Is Peter making you say these things? Has he cursed you, compelled you somehow?”

“I choose Peter,” I say again, my voice so close to death, it’s trembling.

Astor’s forehead wrinkles. In a blink, he’s grabbed my arm—no, not my arm—my glove. With a flourish of his hook, he rips it down the seam, too precise to mark my skin.

It falls away, flitting to the floor, revealing the three-link chain in the crook of my elbow.

Astor stares at it. Where I expect to glimpse anger, there’s only blankness. I wonder if this is what Astor looks like when he’s going back in time, recounting every interaction with me since arriving in the Gathers, reframing them through the holes of these three links.

He takes his hand and glides his thumb over the bargain. The chain. “I take it you weren’t allowed to tell me about this.”

When I don’t answer, that’s answer enough.

There’s something simmering in Astor’s face. Anger, rage at the realization of how I’ve been caged, but something else, too.

When he turns his neck to face me, his ivy green eyes are alight with desire. Longing. Hope.

“What all are you not allowed to do?”

I don’t answer.

“Alright then. Tell me exactly what you’re allowed to do.”

For the first time in a long while, hope springs up within me as well. The loopholes I’ve all but memorized spring up in my mind. “I can talk to you. Converse with you. I can…well, I can insult you.”

He laughs wryly.

“I can work with you, like when we’re searching for Tink.”

Astor swallows. “Are you allowed to feel? Are your feelings your own?”

“I can feel whatever I like. It’s the choices I make with those feelings that…” My bargain stops me. “I choose Peter, always.”

Astor stares at me. “But what others do—that, you’re not held accountable for?”

“What others do isn’t up to me. I can’t control the choices others make for me.”

He reaches out, his hand trembling as he wipes a loose strand of hair from my cheek and tucks it behind my ear, letting his fingers graze the bone behind my ear on the way down.

“That’s why the Nomad was able to kiss you,” he says.

That’s not exactly correct. The Nomad was able to kiss me because he threatened Peter’s life, so choosing Peter meant pleasing the Nomad. But I can’t seem to make my mouth form those words.

Astor searches my mouth like he’s expecting an answer. “I’m off, aren’t I?”

I nod.

“But, if someone were to kiss you, you wouldn’t be held accountable for that, according to the terms of this bargain?”

“I’m only accountable for the choices I actively make,” I say.

Astor’s breathing goes heavy again, his eyes scanning my mouth like he’s staring at something he lost and never expected to find again. His hand trembles against my skull, his fingers still tangled in my hair, his thumb still stroking my jaw. His pupils are dilated, decisions spinning out of control in his mind.

“Darling,” he says, his voice the rasp of a nighttime wind.

“Yes?” I breathe.

“Promise you won’t kiss me back.”

I shudder. “I promise.”

And then, Nolan Astor pushes me up against the wall and steals the very breath from my lungs. His warm lips find mine, and they part way for his kiss, though I have to remind myself not to react.

He shakes his head, speaking through kisses. “None of that, Darling. You need to be still.”

Obeying is not all that difficult. I go limp in his arms, the shock of his kiss so profound, the muscles in my legs go weak. He hooks his fingers around my hair, tugging at it slightly. I welcome the pressure, the gentle sting that reminds me of the pull between the two of us.

When he places his hook behind my back and draws me into him, a gentle warmth crawls over my skin.

It’s when he traces my Mark with his lips, finding the crook of my jaw, that I almost let out a sigh.

“None of that, Darling,” he whispers, though there’s a gentle teasing in his tone. A thrill in his voice, just knowing he’s tempting a reaction out of me.

When he presses a kiss to the Mating Mark, a shock barrels through me, one I’m sure by the way his breath hitches that we both feel.

I don’t move. Don’t choose. I wriggle my way through the loopholes of Peter’s bargain and die in the pleasure of Astor’s lips on my skin.

“I have wanted to do this for…so…long,” says Astor.

I want to ask him since when. To tell me the exact moment he first thought me desirable. But I don’t. I stay quiet, relish the feel of him holding me.

A moment later, he stops, and it’s as if the breath has been taken from my lungs, stolen away, and I’m never to feel its comfort again. I panic, grasping for the moment never to end, but of course, I can’t do anything to keep him here with me.

Astor withdraws, still keeping his arms on me, his gaze wild, frantic, though somehow still controlled. Like he’s searching for something.

“You have to choose Peter,” he says.

I nod, breathless.

“What if I tell you I’ll kill Peter?” he says.

“Then I’d have to do whatever you say,” I say back.

While this lights a fire in Astor’s eyes, he doesn’t act on it. He grits his teeth, thinking. “Tell me what you want, what you, Wendy Darling feel, or I’ll kill him.”

“You,” I say, the words rushing out of me faster than any the bargain ever compelled me to say. “I want you.”

His mouth crushes into mine again, this time with all the claiming I would have imagined from a kiss of Astor’s. With every kiss, it’s an exchange. You are mine, but I am just as much yours.

I’m still immobile, in his arms, and Astor, breathless, says, “Kiss me back. Kiss me back, or I’ll kill him.” Then quickly, he jolts backward, a lack of certainty on his face. “But only if you want to.”

“And you used to call me witless,” I say, throwing myself into him this time, taking what I’ve wanted for so, so very long.

We stay like that, tangled in each other’s arms. Astor lifts me up, and I wrap my arms around him, his fingers in my hair as he supports my weight against the wall.

This is what it is to fly. To soar, while still being tethered. Flying, yet secured in Astor’s embrace.

When I kiss Astor back, it’s as if every bit of myself I’ve always wound tight has been unleashed. In his arms, I am neither shy nor timid. I am not easily swayed. Here, in Astor’s arms, for the first time in my life, I find myself able to communicate exactly what I want.

After what feels like an eternity come to a close too quickly, Astor pulls back from the kiss and sets me down gently against the wall, though he has to prop himself against it. He’s breathing hard, and underneath his collar, the decay of his severed Mating Mark seems more intense than usual.

“Do you need to sit down?” I ask.

He lets out an almost pained sigh. “Please don’t make me feel as though I’m aged. It’s taken me enough time to work through the age difference as it is. But no, it’s not that. I just know I’m going to have a difficult time stopping if we do this much longer.”

My heart sinks. “You don’t want me.”

Astor’s voice goes hard. “Don’t ever let those words come out of your mouth again.”

I frown. “Then why not take me?”

His dark brow furrows. “You said a man wouldn’t touch you like that until there was a ring on his finger.”

I blink. Stunned. “But you know—” I can’t bring myself to talk about Peter. About what I’ve let him do to me over the past year. All the times he’s had me.

There’s a glimmer of pain that streaks across Astor’s face, and it makes me ache to know I’ve hurt him, too.

“It’s just that it’s a little too late for that. I’m not sure that matters anymore.”

Astor takes my chin in his hand. “You made a commitment to yourself, Darling. Just because someone else didn’t mind prying his way around it doesn’t mean I’ll have anything to do with assisting you in breaking it.”

“It wasn’t really made with you in mind,” I say with a nervous chuckle.

Astor looks at me with such adoration, I think I might explode. He brushes the hair from my cheek. “On the contrary, Darling. Commitments are made exactly for the moments we’re most tempted to break them.”

At the same time, irritation and overwhelming adoration swell in my heart for this man. “This is an inconvenient time for you to decide to be a gentleman,” I say.

“Darling, say you want me again, and I’ll make sure we have all the time in the world for me to be less than gentlemanly towards you.”

There’s something about his sincerity that gives me the courage to voice the truth.

“I did it to hurt you,” I whisper. “That’s why I slept with Peter. We were in Chora, and there was a woman there in a pub. Tall and beautiful. She had red hair…”

I watch for Astor’s eyes to flash with recognition, but his face is unreadable.

“She said you’d been through town. That you’d just left, but that before you’d gone, you and she had…” The words get caught in my throat, embarrassment sweeping over me.

Astor’s brows crease with confusion, then something like a memory lands on his face, and his eyes widen. “Oh.”

My heart sinks. The moment that had crushed me, he hadn’t even bothered to store in his memory.

Astor shakes his head. “I’m not sure what she told you, but she was drunker than any sailor I’ve ever met. She fawned all over me, wouldn’t leave me alone. Maddox, Charlie, and I were about to leave when the woman passed out on a table. There were a handful of men plotting…well, I won’t repeat their plans for her. So I paid the innkeeper for a room, carried her up the stairs, dumped her on the bed, and locked her in the room so the imbeciles downstairs wouldn’t touch her. Then we left.”

I blink, and I can’t decide if the flood of emotion in my gut is relief or regret.

“So I hurt you,” hurt myself , I don’t say aloud, “for no reason. All because, yet again, I believed a lie from the mouth of someone who cared nothing for me.”

“Darling,” says Astor. “Look at me.”

When I do, through blurry eyes, he says, “I drove you into his arms. Left you vulnerable. Don’t you ever worry about hurting me.”

All at once, the reality of our situation catches up to me.

“He’ll never…I’ll always choose him…” I say. Because Peter will never let me go. My heart sinks, all the exhilaration of kissing Astor draining from my body while simultaneously making me ache for more. To spend what’s left of our time together until I’ve no currency left.

“We’ll find a way,” says Astor. “Threatening Peter’s life seemed to work for the Nomad.”

I shake my head. “That’s because he can’t kill the Nomad without killing me. It’s the only reason he tolerates him.”

“If you’re worried about Peter killing me, that’s not going to happen,” says Astor. He says it with such certainty, I’m tempted to believe him.

“He killed John,” I whisper. “Because he was frightened of what John had discovered.”

It hits me then that Astor doesn’t know. Doesn’t know it was Peter’s idea to hand Iaso over to the Sister.

“Nolan, there’s something you need to know.” I tug at his shirt collar, and for a moment, as I look into his face, the words die on my lips. There’s a fear that if I tell him, he’ll do something drastic.

But no, Astor isn’t Peter. Astor thinks before he acts.

“It was Peter’s idea to kill Iaso. He’s the one who told the Sister about her when I fell sick.”

Astor’s face blanches. “Why would he—” But the realization must hit him a moment later, because he says, “He wanted me to hate you.” There’s something gut-wrenching about the way his face falls, and he steps backward, resting his hand on the wall to steady himself. He blinks rapidly, and I fear he might faint from the realization and the illness reaping havoc on his body.

“Astor?” I ask.

His vision comes back into focus. “He knew me so well. Knew my inclination to anger, to revenge. He never stopped to consider whether I would forgive you, because what he knew of me, he didn’t think me capable of it.”

“It’s not your fault,” I say.

He shakes his head. “You can say that all you want, my love, but it doesn’t make it true.

“I thought… I thought he loved her, too,” Astor says, and I can see the way his mind is sifting through the past, combing through the memories to figure out which of them were truly a version of Peter who loved Iaso, and at what point he changed.

If he ever changed at all.

“I did this to him,” he says. “The Mark was never his to bear. He was never strong enough. Never had the impulse control.”

His leg is shaking now.

“Astor, he’s not going to let me go,” I whisper. “He doesn’t care what he has to do to keep me. I know you don’t want to believe it, but he’ll kill you.”

“I’d happily die for you.”

Even the thought of such a fate crushes the air from my lungs. “Please, Astor. Don’t leave me again. Not like that. I’d rather you walk out on me, sail away on your ship. I’d rather you leave me behind. Just to know that you were safe would be enough.”

He shakes his head, furrowing his brow. “If you think I could leave you after…” His gaze dances across my mouth, the lips he just kissed. “I’m not leaving you again, Darling.”

My heart floats and sinks at the same time as I take my hand to my Mate’s cheek and stroke it. “It might not be up to you.”

He shakes his head. “There has to be a way…” But as he searches through options, I watch his face fall with frustration.

“We’ll find a way,” he says, and every time he says it, I believe him less and less.

And suddenly, the passion, the fulfilled longing for his love I’d felt only moments ago seems a thing of the distant past. No truer than the dreams I had of Astor coming for me on Neverland, stealing me away from Peter and confessing his love for me. I watch my future play out before my eyes, chained to Peter’s bed as I cling to the memory of my Mate.

But if Peter has his way, he’ll have me questioning whether this moment, this kiss, was ever real at all.

And Peter always gets his way.

“Darling.” Astor leans in to kiss me again, but I tense, placing a hand on his collarbone to keep him at a distance. My hand is trembling, and I know that all he’d have to do would be to brush it away, and I’d give in. But that’s not Astor’s way.

“We’re tempting Fate,” I say. “It’s a wonder we haven’t been caught already. It’ll kill me if he hurts you, Astor.”

Pain splays across his face, but it’s not directed at me. Maybe it’s at himself for a decision he made at fifteen, maybe it’s at Peter for treating me the way he does, or maybe it’s at Fate itself for keeping us apart, for not fighting for that other version of our future a little harder.

He sighs, closing his eyes. “I want you to know, Darling, that if it were only my life in the balance, I would take you into my arms and make sure you never forgot this moment.”

“But you don’t know what Peter might do to me if he catches us,” I say, numbly.

Astor winces, and he backs away.

“I’ll help you fulfill your bargain to the Nomad,” he says, and it’s as if he’s silently telling me it’s not time for goodbyes. Not yet.

I don’t have the heart to tell him that I have no intention of letting that happen.