Page 5 of Caging Darling (The Lost Girl #3)

CHAPTER 5

T he next day, Victor won’t let me take Michael to visit John’s grave. At least, not by myself.

It stings, that an adolescent doesn’t believe me capable of watching after my own brother. It stings even worse that he’s right.

Michael brought his toys, and now he’s playing with them over John’s grave. Gentle sunlight streaks over the tops of the trees into the clearing, casting a golden glow over the meadow.

“You think he knows who this is?” Victor asks, watching as Michael makes train noises with the set he carried with him and now rolls over the top of the gravestone.

I’d like to think he does. That he’s imagining playing with John right now. But Michael’s mind is still a mystery to me in so many ways. One I’d so love to crack, but have never been quite capable of grasping.

I don’t answer the question.

My head is pounding. Still. While I’m able to keep my wits about me slightly better than when Charlie and Astor cut me off from the faerie dust completely, irritability simmers within me, the headache never ceasing. It’s only dulled in the scant moments following my morning dose, which is dwindling by the day.

I keep hoping Peter will give up. The Mating Mark and my bargain are powerful, but neither competes with my aching for faerie dust. It’s all-consuming, and Peter notices. A few times, I thought he’d break. Miss the Wendy who’s obsessed with his presence enough to give me what I want.

But Peter isn’t satisfied as long as any bit of me belongs to anyone else. He wants it all. Every last drop of me.

“Did John ever mention Tink?” I ask Victor.

For a moment, the Lost Boy beside me freezes. Then turns toward me, slowly. Like if he can delay looking at me, he’ll have more time to come up with a response. That’s a yes, then.

“Why?” Victor asks.

“I saw her here. Last night. Visiting his grave.”

Confusion knits at Victor’s brow, the type that can’t be faked. He opens his mouth, then shuts it again.

“You know something.”

Victor sighs and runs his hands through his dark hair, which has grown to the point that it’s protruding over his pointed ears. “Not as much as I thought I did.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“John was looking for her. He thought she might know something about your disappearance.”

I blink, confused. But it could just be the headache. “Tink had nothing to do with Nol—me being taken from Neverland.”

“Well, we know that now. But John suspected that she might have been stalking Peter. That she might have seen something. So he went looking for her. That’s how I ended up staying back at the Den and watching Michael.”

I shift, because this part makes little sense to me. I’ve come to trust Victor during my time at Neverland, and it’s not as if I’m a better caregiver for Michael at the moment, but it seems odd that John would have left Michael in Victor’s care.

“He told me he hadn’t found her…” says Victor, staring at the gravestone as if the slab of onyx stone had been the one to lie to him. Hurt flashes across his face.

I guess John didn’t trust him as much as he’d thought.

“Did he start acting differently?” I ask.

Victor shrugs. “You knew John. It wasn’t as if he wore his feelings for everyone to see.”

The truth of that stings. How little I knew my brother compared with how well he could read me.

“She was weeping over his grave,” I say, voice far off, carried away by the impish breeze.

“Maybe they had a secret relationship he didn’t want anyone to know about,” says Victor. “I could see him being private about it.”

I bite my lip, unable to voice my feelings. Not when they sound so na?ve, petulant. Tink has attacked me more than once. My cheeks still burn at the memory of her claws. My lungs still spasm at the memory of Tink shoving my head underneath the waves just for the joy of watching me drown (though I can’t recall if I ever told John that bit). Still, it’s difficult for me to imagine John pardoning her attempts to hurt me. Could my brother have really cared for someone who hurt me?

The idea might bother me more if it at all felt plausible. No, something is off.

“She was weeping over his grave…” I say again.

Victor looks at me like I’ve finally lost it. Like he hasn’t noticed me slipping into my mental abyss until this very moment.

“Victor,” I ask, rubbing my hands over my thighs. “You said that before Simon’s death, he was acting strange. Paranoid. On edge.”

Victor nods. “Yeah. I wish I had figured it out at the time. That he was seeing and hearing things.”

“And what about John? Did he show any of the same signs as Simon?”

Victor scrunches his brow together, watching Michael as he sorts the train cars by color atop John’s grave. “He stopped eating the onions.”

I press my splayed palms into the earth where John’s body rests, and straighten my spine. “But his behavior, his demeanor, did they change at all?”

Victor stares at the gravestone, like he’s silently asking John to remind him. After a moment of contemplation, he slowly shakes his head. “No. No, he was the same.”

I rise, feeling the soft earth against my feet as I pace. “It never sat right with me—the idea that John would take his own life. Not when he held so much responsibility for Michael’s safety. Not when he’s always been so logical. Even if the wraiths tried to talk him into it, I can’t think of anything they might say that would make it seem rational to him.”

Victor frowns. “Winds, you saw the body. He?—”

“Hung himself, I know,” I snap. I can feel the wild frenzy building within me, tapping against my veins. “But what if he didn’t? What if?—”

I watch it over again in my mind’s eyes, Tink weeping silently over John’s grave, digging her claws into her chest until she drew blood.

Punishing herself.

“What if she did it?”

Victor stands, brushes the dirt off his pants, then approaches. I step back. “Winds, why would she do that? You just said she was weeping over his grave. If she loved him, why would she hurt?—”

The question appears to get caught in his throat as he stares at me. It happens in the span of a blink. The way his gaze rakes my Mating Mark. The bargain in the crook of my forearm.

“Loved ones don’t like it when you try to leave them, Victor,” I say. “They don’t like it when you don’t love them back.”

I’m not sure how I find myself on the beach. The onyx sand delves between my toes, wanting me to stay put, but I have to move. Have to pace. There’s an anxious energy building within me. Too much to contain. My body, my fragile bones and frame, can’t hold it all, and I feel as though I may burst. I can’t tell if it’s anger or grief or just the cravings, but I have to do something.

Anything.

I told Victor to take Michael back to the Den. He’d protested at first, said I didn’t look well. That I didn’t need to be wandering off on my own. But I’d reminded him that I’d bathed twice this week all by myself without drowning myself, and that if he thought I needed supervising out here, then perhaps he thought I needed supervising bathing, too. His cheeks had turned scarlet, and he’d led Michael to the Den, muttering something under his breath.

I try to tell myself it’s irrational—the idea that Tink killed John. There’s a part of me, deep down, that knows he took his own life. The part of me that saw the evidence with my own eyes. The part of me that knows how convincing the wraiths can be.

But I’m so very angry.

And if John killed himself, if he left me, then I have to direct that anger at him.

I can’t.

Besides, Victor agreed that John’s suicide made little sense. And Tink’s known to be obsessive. That’s why she came after me, isn’t it? Because she was so jealous of Peter’s attention over me, she thought she’d punish me for it.

There’s a story there, one that’s not so difficult to weave. If John found Tink, if he questioned her about my disappearance, it’s possible to see her misconstruing his attentiveness for affection.

And if she tried to pursue him, and he denied her…

If she took him from me…

My face flushes hot, and I can’t tell if it’s my rage or the windburn. I glance up at the sky. It’s daytime, and though I can’t see the stars, I know exactly where they are. Track them with a religious fervor.

The sky is gray today, overcast, but not with shadows.

No one is coming. But he has to come. He has to… The back of my neck stings.

“Where are you?” I whisper to the sky and to no one at all. “Why haven’t you come? You have to—” I rub at the back of my neck, the divots of the Nomad’s bargain aching now, begging me to find Tink. “Even if not for me.”

I stare up at the sky. I can’t even see the sun today through the hazy clouds. It’s as empty as my chest.

A thought knocks at the back of my mind. That perhaps bargains are, in fact, resistible. Perhaps the only reason I’m forced to bend underneath Peter’s bargain is because I’m too weak to resist.

Maybe Astor can resist. Maybe he’s just that much stronger than me. But even then, I’m fairly certain if the bargain isn’t fulfilled by the end of the term, we’ll both die. One doesn’t simply refuse to fulfill a fae bargain.

Unless your name is Nolan Astor. The man who would rather die than be controlled. The man who would rather die than risk suffering my presence.

“Is it because you’re angry with me?” I ask the howling wind. “Is that why you won’t come? Not even to save yourself?”

There’s another daydream I sometimes entertain. It’s less common than the others, but just as potent. Usually, when Astor comes to fulfill his bargain to the Nomad, I spit on him. Stare him down with as much vitriol as I can muster.

But sometimes? Sometimes I take his arm by the wrist, run my hand over the scar tissue where I severed his flesh and bone. Sometimes I tell him how desperately sorry I am. Sometimes I beg him to forgive me. Just as long as he’ll take me away from this wretched place.

The daydream diverges after that. There are times when I beg, and he takes my jaw in his hand and brings my mouth to his, and we’re lost in each other’s longing.

Other times, he laughs at me.

Neither of those scenarios is possible, of course. Not with Peter’s bargain binding my words under its spell.

“Do you hate me that much?” I whisper.

This time, even the wind doesn’t bother to answer.

Tears sting at my eyes, and I hardly have the energy to wipe them with the back of my hand. All of a sudden my limbs feel heavy, and I wonder if I’ll even have the strength to make it back to the Den. Back to my prison cell. The one my Mating Mark ensures I’ll enjoy. Or think I enjoy, but what’s the difference?

I stopped fighting my body’s relaxation into his, my heart’s flutter at his touch, long ago. But I’ve held onto the awareness that I exist separately from the Mark’s devotion. Even when I’m with Peter, I’ve kept that knowledge wound tightly in the back of my mind.

But it’s slipping away from me, little by little, each time Peter pulls me close. The temptation to lose myself in my Mark’s obsession with him is so strong, I don’t know how much longer I’ll even remember that the urge to love him is my Mark and not me.

I don’t even know who me is.

I knew. For just a moment. The night I told Peter I was leaving him. The first and only time in my life I knew who Wendy Darling was. But she’s been erased again. And I’d banish her from existence not to feel this way anymore.

Astor would be disappointed in me, I think.

He’ll have to get in line, because I’m disappointed, too.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper.

“Who, on this miserable excuse for a paradise, could you possibly be apologizing to, Darling?”