Page 141 of Caging Darling

This time, the color does drain from Lady Whittaker’s face.

“I don’t wish for the good you’re doing to end, Lady Whittaker,” I say. “My life, and my brothers’, have been difficult. There’s been little kindness, little care bestowed on us. And now I see these children who would otherwise be cast out, at worst, without futures once their caregivers died, at best, taken care of. Fed, educated, loved. It’s the type of world I’ve always longed for but never imagined could exist.”

“Then what do you suggest I do?”

“Your son has offered my master a great sum, but there’s something you have in your possession that money cannot buy.”

“Which is?”

I fight the urge to swallow. “A faerie.”

Lady Whittaker stiffens against the back of her chair. “Pardon?”

“He would find her quite useful.”

Lady Whittaker scoffs. “I’m sure he would.”

“You made it clear earlier tonight that you would do anything to preserve the futures of those children. Even murder.”

“I spent the majority of my adulthood complicit in trafficking. I won’t be roped back into it.”

“I’m afraid you have little choice,” I say. “It’s her or the children.”

A needle pierces my conscience as I realize this was exactly the choice Peter was forced to make.

Lady Whittaker stares at me for a long while before she rises from her chair. The legs squeal against the hardwood. “There is always a choice, my dear.”

“So you’d put the children at risk for one faerie?” I ask.

For a moment, she doesn’t answer, and I worry I’ve failed. That my plan has not worked, or perhaps, worked too well.

“Alren,” she says.

The guard shuffles into the room. All it takes is a slight gesture of Lady Whittaker’s head in my direction, and the guard snatches my hands and binds them behind my back.

“Dispose of this girl,” she says. “I’m afraid she’s proven herself a liability.”

Mingled panic and relief flood my chest as the guard does what he’s told and grabs me by the hair at the nape of my neck. I should probably struggle. Should probably sell it.

But my limbs feel limp with relief and extreme sadness.

I’ll never see Michael again. Never run my hand through his sandy hair. Never glimpse his smile or hear his little songs.

And Astor.

I can’t bring myself to think about Astor.

The guard forces me to my knees.

“Try not to get any blood on the rug,” says Lady Whittaker, now returned to shuffling through her papers.

“Yes, my lady,” says the guard.

I shouldn’t think of Astor, but I do. I whisper apologies through the night. Tell him he shouldn’t have had to mourn another woman. Outlive another woman he loved.

My heart aches for him.

“Tell him what I did,” I tell Lady Whittaker. “When he comes for you.” So he’ll understand. So he’ll know it wasn’t because I wanted to leave him. “Maybe then he’ll spare you.”

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