Page 6 of Caging Darling (The Lost Girl #3)

CHAPTER 6

M y heart ceases beating. Falls through the bottom of my chest.

The voice is coming from behind me, freezing me in place as the icy green ocean brings its waves to trickle between my toes, soaking my entire body with a chill. His voice is so familiar, so much a part of me, I think for sure it’s in my head. I can’t even bring myself to turn around. Not when the disappointment of his not being here will pick me apart bone by bone until there’s nothing left of me but sand and dust.

“You always did have an annoying habit of apologizing to those who should be apologizing to you.”

My heart aches, not just at his voice, but at the sorrow in his voice. The hesitant apology. Awful, stubborn, wonderful man.

He came.

My whole body trembles, and I can’t tell if it’s from the icy water at my feet or from sheer relief. It’s over. He came.

“I thought you hated me,” I breathe, my voice a rasp that I’m shocked he can hear over the howl of the wind. I still can’t bring myself to look at him. Not when I’m so terribly afraid that I’ve tipped over the edge. That my mind has finally cracked wide open, and the fantasies I’ve concocted for myself have spilled out, melding with reality.

“Darling,” he says, actually choking on the word. “How could I ever hate you?”

The lump in my throat stabs at me, pulsing. A thousand hateful responses come to my head. Then immediately flee. Every scenario I’ve considered, every carefully planned insult I’ve polished to perfection, gone with the gentle caress of his voice.

“You came,” I gasp, and even the words feel as if they’ll break me. I spin around, digging my heel into the wet onyx sand, preparing to launch myself into his arms.

When my eyes meet his, the ground falls out from underneath me.

They’re empty. Black. Shadows. Just like the rest of him.

The wraith is in the shape of Astor, has his voice. Even the way he carries his shoulders is the same.

The hope flaring inside my chest withers. Peter must have miscalculated my faerie dust dosage. In his desire to cease competing with the substance for my love, he’s given me too little to keep me from seeing the shadows.

“Oh.”

The wraith cocks his head at me. “Disappointed, Darling?”

I wrap my shawl tighter, tugging on my shoulders as I press my closed fists up against my chest. The trembling has taken over now, so much that I hardly feel as though I’ll be able to stand upright much longer.

“I thought…”

“You thought he’d come for you.”

A flush burns at my cheek. There’s no condescension in the wraith’s voice, which should have been my first clue this wasn’t real.

No, my first clue should have been the fact that Astor planned to kill me to get his wife back. I shake my head, like somehow that will clear my head of the delusion that he cares for me, and survey the area. I’m near the cave where I once held Astor prisoner.

I hadn’t realized at the time what a luxury that had been. The power to keep him trapped. Close by. Where I could visit him whenever I wanted.

I squint, trying to figure out when exactly I would have made a wraith of him. It must have been during one of our conversations. A particularly painful one, at that.

Ah.

“You’re from the night I told Astor about the lengths my parents went to in order to find me a husband.”

“Clever, Darling,” the wraith says, interlocking his hands behind his back.

I close my eyes and rub at my temples, but the pain in my head is nothing compared to the aching emptiness of disappointment constructing a chasm in my chest.

“I didn’t expect you to hear me.”

With my eyes closed, the effect is palpable. His voice is so clear, so real, it’s as if I could reach out and touch skin and not shadow. My heart is foolish, but it flutters within me all the same. “Why is that?”

He doesn’t answer my question. “You’ve grown snarky since the last time we spoke.”

“Yes, well, certain life events will do that to a person.”

The wraith chuckles, and the sound is so deep, so warm, it settles into my joints, the spaces between my ribs.

When I breathe in the salt air, focus on the wind swirling around us, the unsteadiness of my limbs as I trudge through my faerie dust withdrawals, I can almost imagine that I’m on a ship, somewhere far across the Shifting Sea.

“I didn’t expect you to hear me, because I’ve been speaking to you for months. Though it’s just now occurred to me that you might have simply been ignoring me. I’m certain that whatever I did, I deserve such treatment.”

This time, I’m the one who chuckles. It feels strange, foreign in my throat. “You’ve been stalking me?”

“Yes, well, I didn’t expect to get caught.”

Something dangerously warm fills my chest. Something sweeter than even the faerie dust. “And why would you do that?”

“Believe me, the reasoning escapes me as much as it does you. Even so…” His voice draws closer now, and with the wind blowing, I can shape it into the feel of his breath against my cheek. I shudder, and though the wraith has no breath, there’s a sound as though it catches. “I can’t seem to help myself.”

“What did you say?” I ask. “When you were calling out to me? When I couldn’t hear you?”

A pause. Then a whisper. “A great many things I’m too much of a coward to tell you now, knowing you’d actually hear me.”

“And here I was, thinking I was the coward.”

“What is it you would have liked me to say?”

This time, it’s my breath that catches. A thousand fantasies I’ve played over in my head rush to the front of my mind, but they clot at the tip of my tongue. Because to admit these hopes wouldn’t be choosing Peter. I open my eyes, realizing how foolish this is. Reveling in this night terror as if it were a daydream.

“You’re not real,” I say, panic overwhelming me now, the sting of the truth overcoming me. “So it doesn’t really matter what I might have liked you to say.”

The wraith draws back, his inky shadows floating just above the onyx sand. I keep thinking the wind will blow him away, but it doesn’t. He stays put, staring at me.

“I have to go,” I say, realizing how my feet have gone numb from the cold of the salty waves. The sand sloshes against my feet, pebbles digging into my heels as I make my way up the beach and toward the Den.

“Darling?” the wraith calls after me. Despite myself, I halt in place.

“Yes?”

“Where you’re going—is it real?”

I think of Peter. Of the addicting warmth I feel when I’m nestled in his arms. Of the way his chest against my back chases away the pain in the middle of the night. Of how I could drown myself in his kisses when he’s close by.

Of how empty I feel when he leaves my side.

Slowly, I turn. “What does it matter?”

“Exactly. If none of it is real, what’s the harm in staying with me for a while?”

I stare at the wraith, slack-jawed.

Later, I’ll tell myself I went with him because I didn’t have a good enough answer.

But I know why. I go with him, because I don’t want to have a good enough reason not to.