Page 33 of Caging Darling

“Soon you’ll be going about calling them privateers.”

The blonde girl blushes, gaze far-off, clearly thinking of last week’s dalliance. “Mine didn’t seem all that bad.”

“I’m sure none of them do, until you’re the one with a price on your head and they have a knife to your throat,” says the red-headed one, though it doesn’t seem as if she heeds her own warnings. She more seems like the type to make others feel as if such dalliances are dangerous to heighten the intrigue of her own.

“They’re just doing what they’re told,” says the blonde one, brushing her fair hair behind her ear.

“Well, yours was. Mine was the one giving the orders.”

Jealousy, faint but present all the same, sparks in the blonde girl’s eyes. “What else did you expect from the famous Captain Astor?”

CHAPTER 12

My heart falls through my chest.

Astor. He’s here. In Chora. I can’t decipher if I’m elated or crushed. Ready to fly or bury myself in the ground so that he can’t find me. I glance at myself in the mirror. My now-spindly form. The way my cheeks have gone sallow, pale.

I don’t want to be seen like this.

“You know Captain Astor?”

The two women turn slowly, as if they’d noted that I was here but had considered me too wasted to comprehend their conversation.

“Missed them by a week, I’m afraid,” says the blonde one as the other sighs condescendingly.

“I get the feeling she already knows Astor,” the red-headed woman says, cutting her gaze over me, coming up looking unimpressed. She must see the way I deflate at the news that he was just here and I missed him, because she says, “He’s good in bed, isn’t he? A pity he left so soon.”

This time, when my heart plummets, it has nothing to do with Astor’s location.

I fumble for words, but none come out. The woman cocks her head, giving me a face much too pitying to be genuine. “Oh dear. Were you under the impression that you were the only one?”

The blonde girl frowns, a look of actual pity on her face. Like she knows the feeling.

“No,” I mutter. “No, I just…”

“It’s alright, dear,” says the red-head. “We’ve all been there,” she says in a way that implies she has not. That she emerged from the womb wise to the ways of the world and embraced them with open arms.

Tears sting at my lower eyelids. Images of Astor in bed with this woman spring to the forefront of my mind, blinding me to the present, to this dingy bathroom and these curious women and this awful place.

She’s beautiful, the woman standing before me. I’d thought so before I knew Astor had taken her to bed. But now, I see nothing but the difference between her and me. The way her hips and bust swell where mine are narrow. Her stark cheekbones to my generic face. Her green eyes, a sharp match to his.

The luscious hair that’s only a shade darker than his wife’s.

She’s just his type.

My stomach hollows out, but I do my best to keep from sobbing. Not only do I not wish to cry my eyes out in front of these women, there’s more information I need.

“It’s just that he said he was departing for Jolpa in a fortnight,” I say.

My bait lands, and the red-headed woman snaps her teeth around it. She places her hand on her hip and laughs, a high-pitched sound that’s somehow both grating and beautiful. “Is that what he told you? Oh, he really didn’t want you following him, did he? He’s on his way to Kruschi.”

Kruschi. Which is on the far end of the sea from Estelle. The opposite direction of the warping that leads to Neverland.

Astor is getting as far away from me as he can.

I wince before I can hold it in, and the red-headed woman descends like a viper. She comes toward me and tucks my hair behind my ear, still cocking her head. “My, my, you look as if you’re going to be sick. It’s alright, dear. Just be thankful you got one night with him. A notch in your bedpost. A brilliant story to tell. When else are you going to be able to brag about bedding the most famous pirate in the world? And now that he’s got that hook…” She whistles, and I feel as if I’m going to be sick.

“A hook?”

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