Page 53 of Caging Darling (The Lost Girl #3)

CHAPTER 53

B efore I have a chance to answer, in the shadows of the garden another shadow appears. It writhes through the tall grass, slipping through the soft petals of roses before taking shape before us. Hips sway, swathed in darkness, long hair formed of tendrils of ink.

I’d recognize her anywhere, even without the voice that haunts my childhood memories. The moment where my Mate was turned against me, the trajectory of my life nudged off course.

“Hello, darling,” she says.

I open my mouth to answer, but Astor steps between us. “Hello,” he answers back.

My mouth goes dry. Darling . She wasn’t speaking to me.

“You’ve kept me waiting,” she says, tapping her wrist as if there’s a wristwatch there. As if a Fate would need such a menial thing.

“Astor,” I breathe, “what did you do?”

Astor shakes his head softly, silencing me, but less with a command and more of a firm request.

“Astor?” My words choke me, securing a noose around my airway from the inside.

“Your Mate is a difficult man to find,” says the Middle Sister, swaying as she steps across the stone path toward us. The Nomad and Peter part ways for her, Peter rigid as Tink continues to struggle against his blade.

“Why would she want to find you?” I ask, dread writhing in my gut.

“You can speak to me directly, my dear,” says the Sister. “Unless you’re afraid, that is. Unless they’ve taken your voice, too. Unless you need permission.”

Bones rattled, I sidestep from behind Astor to face my nightmare.

She’s just as she was the night I caught Peter communing with her, bowing naked before her. The night I’d seen the Mating Mark on Peter’s back, when I’d learned the depths of what a slave he was to the Middle Sister.

I know he’s been in contact with her since that night. She’s the one who provides us with our targets. And he’s been begging her to bring John back.

A thrill races through me at the thought, but I stifle it. This Fate is not one to make bargains with.

“You said you went to the Eldest Sister,” I say sideways toward Astor. “You lied.”

He shakes his head. “Not a lie. I did go to the Eldest Sister initially.”

“I can confirm that,” says the Nomad, not taking his eyes off the Fate roaming toward us. “What this one’s doing here… Well, I’ll be needing a swift explanation for that.”

“Oh, hello there,” the Middle Sister croons to the Nomad. “I almost didn’t notice you over there. I see you’re still playing your little game of hide and seek.”

Tink tenses, but there’s the wildness of confusion in her eyes.

What is happening?

The Sister extends a dark, draped hand toward Astor, her sleeve falling like an upside sail, dragging through the grass. He doesn’t take it.

“What are you waiting for? A bargain is a bargain, need I remind you?”

Astor swallows. “Give me a moment to explain to her.”

The Fate tsks. “I’ve waited long enough. I shan’t wait any longer.”

“Life will be much more pleasant for you if you do,” says Astor through a sharp grin. The Fate, to her credit, takes his threat seriously and drops her hand.

“Very well. Though I doubt an explanation will be of much use to the girl.”

Astor stares at her with such bite that the Fate backs away.

When he turns to me, he takes my hand in his, fumbling with his hook so that it’s gentle and cold against my fingers.

“When I went to the Eldest Sister and she showed me my tapestry, there was more to the story than I told you.”

I feel like a child with the way my lip begins to quiver.

“Darling, listen to me.” He cups my ear with his hook, grits his teeth when he realizes what he’s done, and goes for the other ear with his hand instead. “I didn’t lie to you.”

“Tell me what exactly you left out, and I’ll be the one to determine that,” I say, my voice warbling.

A glimmer of pride hints at the sheen in his eyes. “You’re growing bold.”

I fight the urge to wrap my chest in my arms. I glance at Peter, worried he’ll ruin this. Attack Astor and take him away from me, but Peter’s eyes are on the Middle Sister, begging her silently not to force him into whatever submission he senses coming his way.

“Tell me everything,” I say.

Astor nods apologetically. “I’ll hold nothing back. My tapestry was woven according to a pattern. One that had been woven before, for my father, for my father’s father. Darling, do you know the story of the Sisters?”

I nod. “I used to tell it to my brothers. To the Lost Boys.”

Astor narrows his brow. “Then you know that the Middle Sister was cursed by the Eldest.”

I nod, recalling the story. “The Eldest was so distraught that the Middle Sister had inadvertently caused the death of her lover, she wanted the Middle Sister to feel the same sort of pain. She—” I glance over to the Middle Sister, who is circling the flowers, trailing her shadowy hands through them as if she isn’t listening to us. As if she’s giving us privacy. “The Middle Sister was cursed to forever love a man who would love another. The Eldest Sister mated the Middle Sister’s lover to another woman.”

“But that wasn’t cruel enough, was it?” cackles the Middle Sister from across the garden.

I feel my face blanch.

“Quite clever if you ask me,” says the Nomad. “Her making you love every firstborn male from that line, mating each of them to someone else. You, forever in love, the object of your affection forever out of your reach.” I could snap the Nomad’s neck for the casualness with which he says it. But even then, he glances not at the Sister, but at me, pity written in his blue eyes. “Curses are cruel like that, I’m afraid.”

“You would know my pain,” says the Middle Sister to the Nomad. “I’m shocked you don’t have more sympathy for me.”

“You fail to make yourself palatable enough to be sympathized with, I’m afraid,” says the Nomad through his teeth. “Not like Wendy over here.”

At that, the Middle Sister recoils. That single move, that display of jealousy, comparison, is all I need to confirm the fear welling up within my heart.

“You’re his descendant,” I say to Astor, looking him in the face for any sign I should have detected before. “She loves you. That’s why the Eldest Sister mated us together. As part of her punishment for the Middle Sister. It had nothing to do with me.”

Astor shakes his head ever so slightly, a silent apology.

“You are one of many who have been blights on my immortal existence,” says the Middle Sister.

I think back through what Astor had told me about how our lives were supposed to be written. How we were supposed to meet in a better state, fall in love instantly. But something about that picture had been off, wrong.

I turn to Astor. “How was the first tapestry supposed to come about? You said the fact that you traded my Mating Mark away set everything off course, but that shouldn’t have impacted my illness. The plague would have still swept through Jolpa. I still would have fallen ill. How, in this other reality, had I not died at five?”

Astor doesn’t answer. Instead, the Nomad speaks. “Because our friend, the Sister over here, is the crafty sort.”

“Usually, I would have had no idea where my beloved’s Mate would be,” the Middle Sister says, “You see, my sister cursed me with the inability to read either my beloved’s tapestry, or his Mate’s. I had no way of tracking where either of you were. You could have been anywhere in the universe.

“But then I found Peter. And he had that awful Mating Mark on his back, which I recognized, but I felt no pull toward him, so I knew he wasn’t my Mate. Eventually, he told me the story of how he acquired it. How he ached for a girl across the sea.”

“You tricked me,” says Peter, to which no one in the entire courtyard responds.

“I told him I could protect you. Keep you for him until you were old enough to wed. He led me right to you. You were such a feeble child. Of course, part of my curse…” She stops, as if she’s said too much.

“She can’t harm either of us directly,” says Astor.

The Sister shivers, as if of all the components of the curse, the inability to lay a hand on me is the least bearable. “Thankfully, I didn’t have to. I knew the region you were in. All I had to do was cross the threads of a few drunk sailors nearby. Convince them to boil the sewage rats into their stew.”

I blanch. “You started the plague. You killed thousands of people, maimed thousands more, just to kill me? A child?”

The Sister shrugs. “It did not go as planned. Peter was enslaved to me by that point. Came begging for me to save you. At first, I thought myself unable to be convinced, but he made a deal with me. He’d figured out by then that the plague was my fault, that I wanted you dead. He’s clever, you know. You should have treated him better. Anyway, he reminded me it didn’t matter if I killed you off. My beloved was hardly bound to you, anyway. He loved another, and I would have to compete for her love more than I would yours. So Peter came up with a plan, in which I could rid my beloved of his love for both of you. Use Iaso’s blood to keep you alive, then he would detest you, and the wife would be out of the way.

“I thought happiness was finally knocking at my doorstep. Everything had fallen into place. Except I’d assumed, with the ease at which Peter had given up Astor’s two loves, he would give up the location of his friend. But Peter had made another bargain. Gone to my elder Sister without me knowing, and bargained that he would not disclose the location of my beloved to me. And yet again, on the cusp of my contentment, I had been thwarted.”

All it takes is the flash of surprise on Astor’s face, the way he glances at Peter.

“You didn’t know that part,” I whisper, thinking of the small imprint of a hand underneath Peter’s right ribcage. The bargain he tried to pass off as a birthmark.

Ever so slightly, still staring at Peter, Astor shakes his head.

Peter’s face is stone. He’s not looking at either of us. He could be ashamed or proud or sentimental, and neither of us would ever know.

“If Peter couldn’t tell you Astor’s location, how did you find us?” I ask.

The Sister stares—at least, I think she does—toward Astor. “Why, your Mate came to me.”

I instinctively look at Peter. But he’s hardly reacting. It only takes a moment for me to crane my head back toward Astor. I can hardly get the words out, so I just mouth, Why?

Astor’s face is streaked with apology, begging for me to understand. “I couldn’t let you be enslaved to him forever.”

My heart hammers in my chest. I grab at his, digging my fingernails into his shirt. “Astor, what did you do?”

He takes one hand in his and caresses it apologetically with his thumb. “When I learned of the spell Peter was keeping you under, I went to the Nomad. Asked him to summon a Fate yet again.”

“You can imagine my surprise when he informed me which Sister he’d like to summon,” says the Nomad, crossing his arms.

I shoot him a look full of vitriol. “Why would you do that?”

He shrugs unapologetically. “I don’t like to see you in invisible chains either, Darling.”

I find myself searching Astor’s body. When I don’t find what I’m looking for, I grasp at his shirt, unbuttoning it and dragging down the collar. I’m fairly sure I’m scratching him, but I don’t care.

There.

Right underneath his collarbone.

It’s hidden underneath the tattoos, but now that I know to look for it, I see it clearly.

A chain of ink, missing a single link.

Tears stream down my face. “What did you do?”

Astor sighs, gripping my hands.

“Oh, come now. Surely you’re clever enough to figure it out,” taunts the Sister.

I spit at her. It goes right through her, but she flinches all the same.

“Just a few more moments, Darling,” says Astor, looking at me like it will be the last time. “You’ll be free.”

“No. No, I don’t want to be free if…if…” The words get caught in my throat. As if saying them aloud will summon them into a true existence. “Just tell me,” I finally say. “Just tell me what you’re not saying. Say it aloud. I can’t bear imagining it any longer.”

Astor sighs. Places his forehead against mine. His skin is slightly weathered, and I can feel the wrinkles at his brow as he narrows his eyebrows and winces. “Peter is enslaved to the Sister. Other than revealing my location, he is at her command.”

I shake my head. “He’s resisted before. When she wanted him to kill the Lost Boys.”

Astor sighs. “No, he delayed until she changed her mind.”

“I don’t often enforce obedience. I find it distasteful,” says the Sister, as if she’s recounting a virtue.

“No, it’s not worth it…”

“Listen to me, Darling. She’s going to make him set you free.” Astor holds my face in his hands, and though I try to fight him, don’t want to look at him, he steers me into his gaze, and I find I’m unable to resist. “Do you understand? You’re going to be free. Free to take Michael and start a new life for yourself. You can go wherever you wish. Live the life you’ve always wanted. You can…you will find a man who loves you. A man who wants you. Who will settle down with you and give you children. I won’t have them, not with the chance of having a son.”

“I don’t want them. I don’t…” I gasp, unable to finish my sentence because of my bargain with Peter. I don’t want them if they’re not with you.

He shakes his head. “Yes, you do, Darling. I saw the look in your eyes when you asked if, in our alternate life, we were supposed to have children.”

I hate myself for wearing my feelings so carelessly. “I didn’t mean it.”

“Yes, you did, Darling. I can’t offer you your dreams.”

“Please, just cut my arm off,” I say, flinging myself at his belt for his sword, but he catches me against my chest. “Just cut it off. Then the bargain can’t have me. Then I’ll be free.”

“I’m not going to let you cut your arm off, Darling,” he says, stroking my hair.

“I don’t want it!” I scream. “I don’t care about my arm. You’ve lived without a limb…”

“It’s not about the arm, Darling,” he says, whispering into my ear. It shouldn’t calm me, but I’m weak and I let it. Let myself sink into his chest as he holds me. “I can’t give you the future you want. Darling, we’d be on the run, in hiding forever.”

“I can hide.”

“And Michael? Would you take him on the run with us?”

My words falter in my mouth. Michael’s happy here. I know he is. But it would kill me to leave him here, still. Not to be with him on his journey. I don’t want him growing up and having things to say, but always wondering why I’m not around to listen.

“There’s not another way,” says Astor. “Even if it weren’t for Michael. Did I ever tell you how my father died?”

I shake my head against his chest. It’s soaked from my tears and the salty taste makes me want to vomit.

“He died the same way as his father. And his father before him. She caught up to them eventually, and they ended their lives rather than be taken. Rather than defile their marriage vows and be unfaithful to their wives by going to be with her. Not that my mother or grandmother ever knew the reason.”

My stomach twists. “Is that what you’re going to do? Are you going to take your own life?”

He pauses, glances down at his chest. At first, I assume he’s looking at his bargain with the Sister, but then I realize he’s staring at the tattoos meant to cover the streaks from his illness. “Thankfully, that won’t be necessary.”

I’m not sure which is stronger, the nausea of what Astor will be forced to do for the rest of his existence, or the knowledge of how short the rest of his existence will be, given what he’s implying.

“I killed you,” I whisper. “When I cut off your Mating Mark, I sentenced you to death.”

Astor cups my chin in his warm hand. “A mercy, really.”

“No,” I choke. “No, you’re giving up. After accusing me of giving up on myself, of throwing away my life, now you’re doing the same thing.”

“For that, I truly am a hypocrite,” he says, grimacing.

“The things she’ll do to you…” I cry, like he’s not a grown man. Like he doesn’t understand exactly what kind of lair he’s walking into.

“Don’t worry yourself with the details. I’ll be fine. I’m rather tough, you know.”

I weep against his chest.

“I’ll think of you every moment of every day,” he whispers, his promise an anchor I’ll be stroking against my heart for the rest of my life. “And you know how I know I’ll be fine? Because I’ll know you’re free. And that you’re happy. And that you’re out there somewhere tending a garden with your husband, carrying a child on your chest as you hold his hand. It will be the most beautiful picture, and I’ll keep it in my head forever.”

“I can’t see that,” I say. “I can’t see that picture.”

“I know. But you won’t just see it. You’ll live it.”

“Please. Please, don’t leave me.”

Astor sighs. Pulls me tighter into his warm, sturdy chest. “Oh, that I could give you that.”

The Sister shifts impatiently beside us. “It’s time,” she says.

Astor turns to face her, still cupping my jaw in his hand. “You’ve yet to free her, last I checked.”

The Sister sighs, then glides over to Peter, still holding a blade to Tink’s throat.

“Let your little slave free,” says the Sister. “I’m growing weary of this extended goodbye.”

“Please,” begs Peter, so overcome with distress that he allows his hand to slip ever so slightly. He hardly seems to notice as Tink pounces on the opportunity to push his wrist away and free herself from his grasp, ridding herself of the bonds I’d tied loosely around her wrists for show. “Please, Wendy’s all I have.”

The Sister laughs as Tink stumbles away. When it becomes clear that his master doesn’t care, Peter grits his teeth and bears down. His very back bends with the weight of fighting off her compulsion. “It won’t be what you think,” he says. “It won’t satisfy you. Every day, you’ll look into his eyes and know he wants someone else. That you’re just filler.”

The Sister flinches, but she’s undeterred. “Peter, let the girl free.”

Peter stares at me with those beautiful blue eyes of his. “Is this really what you want?”

It’s somewhat shocking, the sincerity in his tone. Like he thinks there’s some other option. I don’t deign him an answer.

“You’re free, then,” he says, only resentment left in his voice.

The ink at the crook of my elbow burns. Stings. The bargain folds like the edges of burned paper, crinkles away like curling cinders. I watch the bits drift to ground on the breeze, glowing like the last embers of a dying fire. They sizzle when they hit the ground, some drifting off to take their last breath among the hedges.

And all at once, it’s as if a hand being held to my throat has been released. Fingers pried away from my neck.

There’s so much I should want to say. So much vitriol I should spit at my captor. How often I’ve dreamt about the poetry I would make from my hatred for him, should this moment ever come.

But Astor will be gone soon, and I don’t want to waste another second of my life on the flying boy.

I turn back to Astor, but it’s an unnecessary gesture. He’s already scooping me into his arms, his hook pressing gently against the bottom of my chin, cold and wonderful, as he uses it to guide my mouth to his.

And then we’re kissing, and the whole world stops to watch us.

We only have a moment. A second. A blip in time. A wrinkle in the tapestry. Easy enough to take a stitch remover to and rip out.

But that moment is ours, that kiss.

It’s the only thing the two of us own together.

Astor doesn’t wait for the Sister to pry me out of his arms. No, he pulls away first, smoothing my hair against my scalp, and he offers me the most genuine smile.

“Thank you for saving me, Darling,” he says. “I didn’t remember what happiness was until you.”

And then the Sister takes him by the arm, and they’re both gone.

The garden is colder without Astor’s presence. There’s a silence that lingers over the four of us left.

Peter glances between me and Tink.

He’s lost both of us, I realize. I feel nothing regarding that.

There’s no joy in watching Peter suffer. Not when my own suffering at the loss of Astor gnaws a hole in my chest, one that hatred for my captor could never hope to eclipse.

There’s a glimmer in Peter’s eyes. A moment that the two of us share. And I know what he’s about to do. That he’ll take me anyway, regardless of the bargain. Keep me in a cage if he has to.

But when he lunges, so do Tink and the Nomad.

The Nomad reaches me first.

I scream for the Nomad to watch out, knowing that Peter can easily slip into shadow form and move through him.

Peter attempts as much, but when he shifts, his shadows appear, but separate from him. They form a cloud that funnels into the Nomad’s hand, then disappears altogether. When Peter barrels into the Nomad’s chest, the Nomad doesn’t budge. Peter, still in his solid form, falls to the ground, stunned.

Something shines in the Nomad’s hand. He’s pressing his finger against it, clicking it shut. A sleek black pocket watch. There’s something familiar about it, but I can’t place why.

“Amazing engineer, that Charlie of yours,” the Nomad says over his shoulder to me. “Once there was no reason to try to get the shadow powers of the ship working again, I convinced her to help me out with a little project of my own. You know, if she could figure out how the contraption contained the shadows, perhaps she could find a way to bind them.”

I’m reminded of the device used by the witch Peter paid to tie me to a table and rob me of my memories. The wretched woman who had taken one of Peter’s shadows as payment, had bound it in a black box made of adamant.

Peter’s eyes widen, and he lunges toward the Nomad, but without his shadows, the Nomad is faster and twists Peter around, securing his hands behind his back. Peter struggles, and the Nomad kicks out his knees. There’s a horrible popping sound, and Peter gasps in pain before falling on his knees on the stone padding of the courtyard.

“Pity you didn’t exercise your authority with more discretion,” says the Nomad. “We could have been partners, you and I. But I’m afraid I find your lack of self-control…distasteful.”

Tink, aware of her one opportunity to leave, sprints for the bushes, but the Nomad calls after her. “Don’t you want revenge?”

Tink halts, her hands shaking by her sides.

“I hear he killed someone you loved dearly. Took everything away from you. Kept you caged much longer than Darling here.”

“Run, Tink,” I say, but she doesn’t.

We both know she won’t.

She turns, not looking at the Nomad, but at Peter, kneeling before her.

Without his shadows, his wings remain, unable as he was to contain them within himself before his shadows were taken. They’re that same dark patagium Victor’s father rent through on the beach. Before I defended Peter’s life and killed an innocent man for him.

Tink takes a step toward them.

“It’s not worth it,” I whisper to her, but she’s not listening to me. I can see it now, the hatred she’s kept piled in all these years, drowning out my voice, whipping like the wind in her ear.

“To you, it’s not,” says the Nomad. “But Tink and I—well, we’re cut from a different tapestry altogether.”

Tink glances up at him, fear in her eyes. But when he extends his hand, she takes the blade from him. Her hands are shaking. Her slender fingers.

“What all did you take from our friend here?” asks the Nomad, twisting at Peter’s arms. Peter, on his knees, grits his teeth. The Nomad twists harder.

Peter, never one to endure pain, speaks. “Her voice. I took her voice.”

A shriek of pain as the Nomad wrenches tissue from bone. “What else?”

“Her freedom. I kept her locked away in Neverland for years.”

“What else?”

Peter stares at Tink, blood dripping from his forehead. “I took John.”

He doesn’t even look at me as he says it.

“And?”

Peter’s gaze is almost predatory. “And I did all that after seducing her into my bed. Making her love me so that she would trust me. I went to her with a plan, then I took everything from her.”

Tink winces, shakes, but she doesn’t cry. Doesn’t whimper.

She can’t.

For a moment, she turns to me. She looks so small next to the Nomad and Peter, contorting like that. It’s strange, seeing her in real attire, not that burlap sack that was all Peter allowed her to wear all those years. She was thin when I first met her, but her form has filled out, revealing muscular legs and a sturdy torso. Her cheeks are fuller, too.

I hadn’t realized how little she’d been given to eat at Neverland. I should have brought her more of my food, more of my leftovers. I bet John thought to do that.

Tears sting at my eyes. She handles the blade in her hand carefully, then offers it to me. My mind flashes back to the cave of Endor. To picking Astor’s blade off the floor.

I’ve never solved any problems by wielding a blade in anger. As much as I’d like to. I stare at Peter, then shake my head.

“Wendy Darling,” he says. As if he thinks I’m going to try to talk Tink out of whatever she’s about to do. As if talking her out of it would be for his sake and not hers.

But if Tink needs her abuser dead, I won’t stop her.

Perhaps in several years, I’ll be wise enough to know I should have spoken wise words. Told her to do the right thing.

Tonight, I simply don’t have the energy for it.

My Mate is gone, enslaved to an immortal spirit who will cage him for the rest of his life. All because of what the man on his knees before us did to save his own happiness.

I shake my head. It’s all yours, I don’t have to say aloud.

Tink nods, then handles the blade carefully in her hand, staring at it as she flips it over in the grooves of her palm.

I wonder where she will cut first. If it were me…

She raises the blade. Touches it gently to Peter’s lips. He presses them tight, but she pries them open easily enough with the blade, plays with the edges of his tongue.

Sweat breaks out on Peter’s forehead. I can sense the urge to plead within him, but he’s too afraid to speak, too afraid to move his tongue and lose it against the edge of the blade.

A single tear rolls down Tink’s cheek.

Peter can’t help himself. No self-control, that one. “Please,” he begs. “It was the Sister who wanted to take your voice, not me.”

Tink cocks her head at him, her expression unreadable.

It’s that moment that Peter realizes he won’t get an answer from her. That she can’t give him one.

Peter’s face falls, and Tink grins.

She removes the blade from his mouth, and Peter, fool that he is, lets out a sigh of relief. Lets his head hang.

Tink brings the blade down at his back.

There’s the ripping of patagium first, then the crunching of bone. Peter lets out a wail, and the Nomad has to hold him in place, because Tink is strong, but the bone holding Peter’s wing in place is as thick as my forearm.

On the first strike, the bone at Peter’s back doesn’t break from its place.

I gag, clutching my palm against my mouth, but I can’t bring myself to look away. Not when blood spatters Tink’s face, mixing with her tears.

She hacks and hacks and hacks. Until finally, the wing falls. It hits the ground like leather, folds up over itself. Peter’s weeping now, hunched over. He begs.

Tink just stands there, her chest rising and falling with exertion. She stares at his other wing. I brace myself for the carnage, but Tink doesn’t move. She just stares at Peter’s remaining wing for the longest time.

And then hands the blade back to the Nomad.

At first, there’s a glimmer of relief on Peter’s face.

That’s because he’s a fool.

I wonder how long it will take him to realize what she’s done. That she’s not only rendered that wing useless without its other half, but that it would have been kinder to sever both. He’ll feel the weight of that wing all of his days, the absence of the other in its shadow. It will pull at the muscles in his core, forcing his torso to compensate for the lack of balance. I hear John’s voice in my head, rattling off all the maladies the single heavy wing will cause Peter in the future.

Not to mention, where will he go?

Fae ears are simple enough to hide with hair or contraptions. But Peter will go nowhere without being recognized. He will no longer be able to hide. Not in the shadows. Not anywhere. His single wing will attract not only attention to his fae state, but to the fact that he is weakened.

Tink has marked him for captivity. For a trafficker waiting to capture an oddity.

He thanks her, because he’s too stupid to recognize it.

The Nomad isn’t. He shoves Peter, now passed out, to the ground, uninterested in him now that Tink stands before him. He’s examining her with a sharpness in his gaze. Not so much an assessment, but a hunger.

She flinches under his scrutiny.

And then Tink falls to her knees, her face in her hands as, silently, she weeps, the closure she’s been craving not nearly enough.

I stand and watch as the Nomad crouches and scoops her limp, weeping body into his arms. She surrenders her strength, all the fight having fled from her body.

“Don’t fret, Wanderer,” he whispers. “I’ve got you now.”

“Wanderer?” I ask, the breeze carrying what’s left of my voice.

The Nomad turns toward me, Tink slumped against his chest, exhaustion and grief having pummeled her to sleep. There’s a dare in his expression, a challenge for me to ask my next question.

“She doesn’t know you,” I say, then carefully, watching the protectiveness with which the Nomad grips my friend, the mingled gentleness in his touch. “But you know her.”

The Nomad’s eyes twinkle. “What’s it to you, Wendy Darling?”

I bite my lip, suddenly rent in two directions. There’s a part of me that knows I should try to stop him. Try to keep him from whisking away my friend, who so clearly fears him.

But if he’s telling the truth—I remember the tapestries hanging up in the Nomad’s rooms, the ones I never bothered to examine—if he’s seen something she hasn’t…

“You won’t hurt her?” I ask.

He cocks his head to the side, like I should already know the answer to that question. I hug my torso, swallow the lump in my throat, and nod as I stare at my feet. “Just take care of her, okay?”

For a moment, the only answer I get is the howling wind and the shuffle of feet as the Nomad turns to leave. But then, the footsteps halt. I look up at him, having to wipe the tears from my eyes to see him clearly as he pivots. He’s grimacing, looking utterly inconvenienced, when he sighs and says, “I’m going to regret helping you, aren’t I?”