Page 146 of Caging Darling

So what rules is he playing with? Did the Nomad offend him so badly by kissing me that Peter’s ego compels him to win one last time?

“Hand her over to me, and we can all go home,” says the Nomad.

Peter presses the knife further to Tink’s throat. She winces, but no whimper comes out of her mouth.

“Have you not done enough already?” I ask.

Peter’s face actually falters. That he somehow still cares what I think baffles me. I’d laugh if my friend’s life wasn’t hanging in the balance.

“If you just give Tink to me, you and Wendy can walk away,” says the Nomad cautiously.

“Except Peter doesn’t want me,” I say.

All heads turn in my direction, none as confused as Peter.

I shake my head, staring in disbelief at my counterfeit Mate. “You don’t like me how I am. Can’t you see that? You liked me better when I was under the influence of faerie dust. Subdued. Without Tink supplying the faerie dust, you lose the woman you love. Even if you do manage to take me back home.”

Shock paralyzes Peter’s lips for a moment. I watch him reason through, not what I’m saying, but how I was able to say it while still bound by my bargain to him.

“Choosing you,” I say thoughtfully. “I think I misunderstood initially. I don’t think it means withholding everything that’s unpleasant for you to hear.”

And suddenly, I feel the chains of Peter’s bargain loosen around my throat. Just slightly. It’s still there, the chain. But how tightly it’s been wound—how much of that has been my own belief about what it means to choose someone? How much of my choking was at my own hand?

“Wendy Darling,” says Peter, because my name on his lips is the only defense he has for himself.

I find myself hugging my torso with my shivering arms. My posture isn’t bold, but it gives me the support I need to speak my mind. “You and I both know it’s true. The best night we ever spent together was the first night you took me dancing in the stars. But it wasn’t you I fell in love with, Peter. It was the taste of the dust you pressed to my lips. The feeling of getting to be someone else for a little while. The thrill of falling. But me? Peter, I have no wings. I was never made to fly.”

“You don’t belong on the ground, Wendy Darling,” says Peter.

I shake my head, glancing down at my palms with a soft smile as I examine the calluses that never completely faded from my years climbing my parents’ clock tower. “No. I’m made for somewhere in the middle, it seems.”

“Enough,” says the Nomad, putting his palms up. “Enough with this nonsense. Wendy’s purpose in life doesn’t concern me. Just hand over Tink, fulfill Wendy’s bargain, and settle your little lovers’ spat between yourselves.”

Peter presses the tip of the blade into Tink’s throat. She gurgles, except the sound is silent. There’s panic in her eyes, and I can’t help but be whisked back to the time I scratched her throat in Peter’s room, and what should have been a minor annoyance paralyzed her temporarily.

I wonder if it hurt when they took her voice.

“Peter, please.” My voice warbles, but it melds with the Nomad’s.

“Stop. Please,” he says, his blue eyes transfixed on the way Tink’s chest is pulsing rapidly. There’s no lust in his gaze, only horror as he watches the panic overwhelm her body. Everyone in the garden pauses, staring at him in disbelief. But any sympathy in the Nomad’s face is already gone as he whisks his hand. “Well, she’s no use to me dead, is she? Wendy, consider yourself released.”

The back of my neck stings. I grasp at it, only to find flecks of curled up ink stuck to my palms as the bargain wilts away.

Peter flashes a grin. “Come now, you two. It’s time to go home.”

My feet obey without my consent.

My hands don’t.

As I step toward Peter, the Nomad moves, but Peter misjudges it. Assuming he’s coming for Tink, Peter goes to shield her.

But the Nomad’s not coming for Tink.

Across the courtyard, the Nomad’s knife comes flying.

I catch it, my fingers curling around the hilt.

The last time I held a knife like this, I brought it down upon a Mating Mark.

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