Page 156 of Caging Darling

I can’t help the sly smile that snakes across my lips. “No. No, you made sure the one person who could have healed him died saving me.”

The Sister’s spine straightens. “Your Mate is dying, and you find amusement in his suffering?”

“No,” I say. “But I do find amusement in yours.”

The Sister glides forward, her shadows multiplying around her, looming over me, expanding like the neck of a cobra. “Only fools taunt a Fate, girl.”

“Fools. And those who have something to bargain with.”

“And what could a little weasel like you possible have that I would want more than the precious little time I have left with the man I adore?”

My throat constricts, my courage faltering. Or maybe it’s not my courage faltering at all. Maybe what I’m about to do is so wicked, so selfish, it’s my last bit of courage, last bit of selflessness, reining me back, reminding me there is still time to back out.

But I can’t let him die.

More than that, I can’t let him be a slave to the Sister. Can’t allow him to be abused and mistreated, the boy who escaped the tortures of the orphanage warden, now marked with a deeper brand.

I can’t allow him to be trapped.

Besides, if my time with Peter is any indication, I’ll never have to worry about fulfilling the end of the bargain I’m about to strike.

Still, Renslow’s voice reaches out to me from the past, haunting me from where I left him dead in the opera house.

And you wouldn’t do it? If the person most precious to you were in peril, you wouldn’t trade the life of a stranger for them?

But no, it won’t come to that. I won’t let it.

“If you keep Astor to yourself, he’ll die, and his line will end, and you will mourn him the rest of your eternal existence,” I say.

“Or, perhaps,” she says, “his line will end, and I’ll be free of my curse, my longing, altogether.”

I shake my head. “I don’t believe you want to be free.”

“And what makes you say that?”

“Because you’re not all that different from humans, from fae. Because at the end of the day, when the heart is involved, we’ll hold onto what wounds us for an eternity, so long as we don’t have to face the pain of letting it go.”

“Wendy Darling,” says the Sister, stroking my face with shadowy fingers that are trickles of ice to my cheek, “are you offering me what I think you’re offering me?”

I pause, wondering if Astor will hate me for this. Wondering if I’m doomed to lose him regardless.

But at least he’ll be free.

And besides, I won’t let it happen. I won’t let it come to this.

So I speak the words I can’t take back.

EPILOGUE

ASTOR

Horrific acts line the hallways of the Sister’s lair. One tapestry details a string of rapes, the victims dressed in last century’s attire. Another details a man plotting to murder his only child, envious of having lost his wife’s attention. Wars that never happened play out in scarlet threads.

I’d examined the tapestries with unbreakable resolve as the Sister had led me through the winding halls, my intentions two-fold: deny her the satisfaction of my attention and distract myself from the way my skin had gone slick with a cold sweat.

But the tapestries could only prove a distraction for so long, for when we reached the Sister’s bedchamber, I’d found the obsidian walls bare.

“I hope you like it,” she’d said, her voice slithering into my ear as she gestured toward the center of the room, in which spread a bed the width of my entire cabin on theIaso. “I’m not keen on sharing, but for you, I’ll make an exception.”

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