Page 117 of Caging Darling

A miserable limbo the two of us inhabit.

“You’re still sick, aren’t you?” I say, dreading the answer. “You never got all the way better. That’s why you didn’t want me to know…” Panic surges through me when he doesn’t deny it. “Are you going to die?”

A sad smile overtakes his features. “I wish you wouldn’t worry about such things.”

Pain lances through my chest. “Charlie said there were healers. What do they say about it?”

“Relax, Darling. They have everything under control. I’m walking and fighting, aren’t I?”

Among other things, I don’t say, thinking of the woman at the pub.

As much as it hurts, none of that seems to matter now.

“I did this to you,” I say.

“No, Darling. I did this to us.”

My breath catches. He’s staring down at me now, looking like he might die, not of illness, but of me.

He squeezes my hand gently. “What all did Charlie tell you?”

“That you were sick. That Peter sabotaged the ship’s flying mechanisms, and you scoured the world trying to find a way into Neverland.”

Astor nods, then sighs. “So she left the rest for me, then. I suppose that is like her.” He rolls his eyes, if not affectionately. “Wendy, I need to tell you something, though doing so, I must admit, is incredibly selfish. It’s not the right time, not with that Mating Mark warping the way you think about things, but I can’t bear it on my own any longer.”

I nod, hanging on his every word. There’s nothing he could tell me at this point to dissuade me from wanting to know the truth.

He sighs. “You really should tell me not to tell you.”

“You know that’s not really in line with my temperament.”

He laughs, then goes to run his hand through his hair, except he’s still clinging onto my hand for dear life, so it’s his hook that ends up wiping his hair back across his face.

“When it became evident that we weren’t getting into Neverland by the ship, the crew and I returned to the Nomad to recruit his help. He was…smug, if not eager to have help in getting his hands on that faerie. And once he realized Peter had made Neverland impenetrable through stealing our equipment, he was more open to my less conventional idea.”

“Which was?”

“I’d never been one to believe all the rumors about the Nomad, but I was desperate. They say he’s been to the realm of the dead. That he befriended the Fates in order to claw his way back to the realm of mortals. So I asked him to arrange a meeting between the Fates and myself.”

My heart stops in my chest, the idea of Astor subjecting himself to the Middle Sister provoking a surge of fear deep within me.

“He advised against meeting with the Middle Sister. Said she was unreasonable and that the Eldest Sister would be more likely to feel sympathetic to my cause, given her priorities.”

Love; I remember from the story. My heart stutters.

“So he arranged a meeting. Summoned her on my behalf. The meeting was…” He pauses for a moment, looking past me. “Enlightening, to say the least.

“She wasn’t pleased with me. Apparently, she takes her Mating Marks very seriously, and that I’d transferred mine was a grave offense. Although, she considered the fact that I’d lost my hand to be a fitting punishment. That, and the infection—” He winces, and I realize now that he’s been in pain this entire time. “I think she received not a small amount of pleasure from enlightening me regarding my innumerable mistakes.”

“What did she show you?” I ask, though I’m unsure I want to know.

He leans backward, props himself against the rim of the crow’s nest, looking toward the stars instead of toward me. His hook angles downward, digging into the wood of the rim.

“She brought with her a tapestry,” he says, then, lingering on the word. “Our tapestry.”

I swallow. “You saw our future?”

He shakes his head. “I’m afraid not. The Sister was too wise for that. This tapestry was torn.” My chest tightens, and he continues. “It was how our lives were supposed to go, how our story was supposed to play out had I not intervened. Had I not taken to removing the Mark, transferring it to Peter.”

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