Page 51 of Caging Darling (The Lost Girl #3)

CHAPTER 51

I await the end, but it never comes.

Something thuds, and the guard grunts in surprise. When I open my eyes, I find bright blue eyes before me, blinking back tears. Tink’s face is stretched with the strain of holding up the guard’s axe. He’s burly, but after a brief struggle, her faerie strength overcomes, and she manages to rip it from his hands.

Tink then rushes over to Lady Whittaker’s desk, discarding the axe behind it, and grabs one of the lady’s blank pieces of parchment as she snatches the quill from Lady Whittaker’s hand.

The lady recoils in offense, but doesn’t scold her.

Tink’s leaning over the side of the desk, so I can see her profile, the urgency in her expression as she scribbles frantically on the parchment. When she’s done, she shoves it in front of Lady Whittaker. The woman’s eyes scan the parchment, offset by her spectacles. She frowns multiple times as she reads through the note. Then appears to read it again as her eyes drift back to the top.

“You can’t be serious,” she says once she’s finally decided she hasn’t mistranslated the old language of the fae, preposterous as Tink’s message must be given the lady’s reaction.

Tink nods her head once. Succinctly.

The lady groans, but there’s less frustration there, and more a type of sorrow she can’t seem to express with tears.

“You have suffered too much already,” she says, taking Tink’s cheek in her wrinkled hand. For the first time, I realize I’m witnessing what’s become, at least for the lady, the relationship she might have shared with a daughter.

Tink stares at her, but she’s not ignoring the woman. Just offering her a fierce acknowledgment. The older woman sighs and closes her eyes, pinching her brow as if to stave off a headache.

“Alred,” she finally says, “let the girl go.”

The foot on my back releases me, but I’m hesitant to stand up.

“Get up,” says the lady, sounding frustrated.

I do as she says, brushing myself off. When I glance at Tink, her face is impassive. I can’t read it.

“Tink informs me that you’re compelled by a fae bargain to turn her in,” says Lady Whittaker.

I glance at Tink, shame filling my cheeks, but she’s not looking at me. I wish she would, that there were some way to communicate that I did this for her. That I knew Lady Whittaker would never turn her over, and that she’d also ensure my compulsion was no longer a problem.

“She thinks you were trying to use me just now,” says the Lady. “Thinks you were manipulating me into killing you, so you wouldn’t have to go through with a bargain you’d made. Is that the case?”

My heart lifts, and I catch the smallest twitch on Tink’s lips. It’s enough.

“I couldn’t admit to that even if it were the case,” I say.

Tink scribbles something on a sheet of paper.

“She’s asking how much time you have left,” says Lady Whittaker.

This will escape from my tongue. “Tonight’s it.”

Tink’s exertion-flushed cheeks drain of color. She snatches the parchment and scribbles so hard the parchment tears and she has to grab a new one to start.

The lady’s face falls as she reads it. “Are you sure, my dear?”

Tink nods, then writes something else.

“I don’t take well to be ordered about in my own home,” says the lady, but Tink grabs a tile from her pocket and pushes it her way. “Well, now that you’ve said please…” The lady pushes herself from her desk. “Alred,” she says, “leave these two be.”

The guard startles. “But, my lady.”

“Enough,” she says, to which the guard sheepishly follows her out the door.

A moment later, and Tink has glided across the room. She crouches before me as she unties the ropes binding my wrists.

“Please,” I whisper, though I can’t bring myself to finish the sentence, to ask her to leave them on. Panic fills me as I remember the pouch of rushweed in my pocket. The one the Nomad supplied me with should I be forced to face Tink alone.

I look up and find Tink, determination twisting the muscles of her forehead as she tugs and the bonds fall loose and thud against the floor.

I start to cry. “Please, you don’t know what you’re doing.”

I kick and flail, but I only have a moment of resistance in me before I find myself working with Tink and not against her, assisting her in pulling me up.

My feet hit the cold marble floor of the office with a thud of finality, knocking the wind out of me. “Run,” I want to whisper to her, but can’t.

That was it. Tricking Lady Whittaker into ending me was all I had. It had worked, since it technically had been a plan to get Tink to the Nomad. A bad plan, but a plan nonetheless. Without it, I have nothing, no resistance. No barrier between me and betraying my friend.

I reach my hand into my pocket. Feel the pouch of rushweed against my shaking fingertips.

My legs are wobbling, but I stand all the same. There are tears in my eyes, but my mouth is already fighting for the words to convince Tink to come with me. I could tell her I’ve come to warn her that the Nomad is coming for her, that I know the way out to avoid him.

I’ve clamped my hand over my mouth and am biting into my palm to keep from doing it, sobbing into my hand, when Tink kneels on the floor next to me and presses something into my palm.

“I KNOW.”

Tears wring from my eyes as I gaze into her beautiful blue stare. The stare that my brother adored.

“Tink, I can’t control myself,” I say, pulling my hand from the open pouch of rushweed, its powder coating my fingertips.

She just closes my hand over the tiles and squeezes, ignoring my rising other hand.

“You deserve such a better life,” I say. “What you’ve done for Michael…”

She squeezes my hand so hard the tiles cut into my palm. “I KNOW.”

I shake my head. “I don’t understand. Why don’t you run?”

Why don’t you fight back?

Her lips twitch into a pained smile, and she fishes another tile from her belt. “TOGETHER.”

I gag, the idea of handing Tink over to the Nomad, shoving her into a cage, like I’ve been caged the past two years, making me sick.

But I don’t have the strength to resist her.

There’s sweat on her brow as she glances at the rushweed on my fingertips.

“Please. You see. You can see.”

She nods, breathing out slightly. “I GO.” Then shrugs. “IF NO, YOU DIE.”

My heart wilts. “Would that be so awful at this point?”

Tink smiles and closes my fingers over my fist, pushing my hand full of rushweed gently away from her. “TO ME YES.” But then her smile turns conspiratorial. She plucks another several tiles from her belt. “GIVE IN FIRST. THEN FIGHT. TOGETHER.”

“You want to kill the Nomad,” I say. “After I’ve handed you over?”

She nods, tapping her finger against the back of my neck.

“But if you go now, you could save yourself.”

Tink shakes her head. “I SAVE BOTH.”

I nod, and while I have a horrible feeling about this, Tink won’t be dissuaded.

And then there’s that dreadful hope welling up within me.

That maybe there is a way to save us both. A happiness that’s within my grasp.

Because Tink has given me an idea.

We conspire for a while, Tink pushing tiles across the floor to me, me having to ask plenty of questions and wait for confirmation to figure out if I’ve gotten it right.

But once we’ve decided on a plan, we stand to go.

“Thank you,” I say. She turns around to face me. “For all you’ve done. For Michael. For me. I know it’s for John, and I can’t tell you how much it means to me that you would do all of this for him. That he was so well loved in his last few months.”

My throat is closing up, and it hurts, thinking about how I wasn’t there for him. “I’m just so grateful that he got to leave this world knowing…”

Tink grabs my shoulder, squeezing, stopping me. The tiles that find their way into my hand are still warm from her touch. “FOR YOU.”

Tears well in my eyes.

It hits me that I never considered this as an option, because I never would have thought Tink would do something like this for me. Put her freedom on the line to save my life.

In my mind, there’s never any working together. I’d spend all day plotting with my enemies, but never my friends.

Because up until this moment, I haven’t really believed in them.

Charlie knows that about me. That’s why she’d written the letters. Not as a way to process her thoughts, but as evidence when I returned that I was loved. That I’d always been loved. Always wanted.

I take Tink’s hand on my shoulder and squeeze it. “Together,” I whisper.