Page 101 of Caging Darling

“Darling.” Astor’s voice is an anchor. A tether, keeping me in my head instead of floating outside of it. His eyes pierce my soul as he says, “Nothing bad happens to you tonight.”

“What? Have you looked into my future?” It comes out more caustically than I mean it.

Astor’s face shutters, but he doesn’t retract his promise. “You getting hurt again simply isn’t a scenario I’ll allow for.”

Again. My mind snags on that word and that word alone.

“Well then, who do we have here?” Vulcan’s preening voice rips me out of my fixation. I shouldn’t, but I jerk my chin up to face him. Astor flinches next to me, and I instantly recognize my mistake.

I was supposed to keep my face to the ground until the last possible moment.

Recognition flashes in Vulcan’s eyes, but that’s the only place on his body he shows it. His spine remains straight, his shoulders simultaneously relaxed, as well as his easy smile.

“Well, well,” he says, turning a smile that’s all teeth toward Astor. “Trying to outdo all the other guests, are we?”

“What can I say? I’m the competitive sort,” says Astor, returning Vulcan’s unfriendly smile with equal potency.

“Lost this one a year—or was it two?—ago. I was beginning to think she’d never turn back up.”

A shiver snakes my spine at his implication. It seems that while Astor wasn’t busy looking for me, Vulcan was.

“Don’t worry, my love,” says Vulcan, stepping down onto the steps of the stage, yet refraining from meeting us on the floor. The result is that he towers over me, looming like an unwanted storm cloud on a town having just survived a hurricane. “I haven’t forgotten you. In fact, I’ve dreamed of you more nights than not.”

On stage, the two muses exchange a fleeting look.

There was a time where looks like Vulcan’s, the undressing sort, would have kept me still, pinned in place. But I’ve been locked up in my own body for so long under Peter’s bargain, I can’t help but stretch my limbs. Just a little.

“That’s a shame, because I haven’t thought of you at all.”

The corner of Astor’s mouth tilts upward.

Vulcan’s doesn’t.

“Welcome home, my precious one,” he says to me, then flicks his neck to the woman on his right. “Phoenix, show our newest muse to her quarters.”

Phoenix steps toward me, but Astor holds a hand up. “Just a moment. I’m afraid there’s been a misunderstanding.” He addresses Vulcan. “I didn’t bring the girl as a gift. I’m not exactly the generous sort.”

Vulcan smiles, and his eyes don’t participate. “You’re correct, for one cannot gift something that is already the possession of the other. I purchased my muse two years ago…”

“From a man named Zane. I know,” says Astor. “Except Zane had no right to sell the girl, seeing as how she belongs to me.”

“I fail to see how it’s my fault that you failed to keep your hands on what was yours.”

“The same could be said about you, don’t you think?” asks Astor.

Vulcan pauses. “Fine. Let’s talk payment.”

Phoenix leadsme toward the nearest doorway, the one she, the other woman, and Vulcan entered the parlor through. Now that I look more closely, I realize it’s a hidden door, a bookcase swiveled perpendicular to the wall.

It snaps closed behind us, leaving us alone in a dark hallway, hardly lit with sporadic lanterns.

“He doesn’t like for us to be seen entering and exiting a room,” she says, then adds with a slightly shriller note. “Says he doesn’t want guests thinking of us like we’re on par with servants.”

When a few seconds go by and I don’t answer, Phoenix spins to face me, then places both of her hands on my shoulders, her long nails tapping against the fabric of my dress. “Listen, you’re the one Vulcan tried to buy a couple of years ago, right? The girl with the Mating Mark?”

I nod. Feigning fright isn’t all that difficult. Not when my mind is whirring with all the possibilities of what could be happening to Astor back in the parlor.

All the things that will happen to me should he fail.

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