Page 41 of Caging Darling

“Wendy Darling.” Peter spins me to face him, then places his hand on the side of my jaw. He looks sad, as he so often does these days. Strange, since it’s an emotion I never saw on him before.

Funny how I thought myself in love with a man whose sad I had never seen. Not truly. Of course, I hadn’t known he wasn’t feeling it. I’d just projected all of my emotions onto him.

“You know you can’t stop taking it completely.”

My hands are jittering, itching for it. I stick them in my pockets. Remind myself that Astor’s wraith might still come back, might change his mind. Remind myself that I can be a better sister to Michael without it. “I haven’t been taking it, though. In Chora, I didn’t take any. And when I was with Astor?—”

Peter’s jaw goes stiff. “You weren’t on an island bombarded with wraiths when you were with Astor,” he says. “And even then, the one wraith you encountered talked you over the side of the ship.”

I swallow again. “I didn’t understand that she was a wraith. Now that I know what they are and can expect them…”

Peter shakes his head. “It’s too dangerous. Can’t you see that? Just look at what they did to your brother. Wendy Darling, think of Michael. You can’t risk leaving him.”

The mention of my brother hollows out my stomach.

Shame washes over me, and as if that’s not enough, Peter continues. “Remember how you hurt him that night? I hate to bring it up, Wendy, but you’ve forgotten how bad, how dangerous your dreams had gotten.”

“I remember,” I say, gritting my teeth, because it’s impossible to forget the night I woke in a terror and almost strangled my brother, not knowing what I was doing.

John had spent the entire night holding Michael to keep him from hurting himself. When I’d seen John the next morning, he’d had streaks of blood all up his arm from where Michael had scratched him.

It’s not as if that’s something one can forget.

“But that was from the trauma of killing…” I stop myself before I say Victor’s father. Poor Victor still doesn’t know the man I killed on the beach was his father come searching for him. Not that I’d known it when I drove the dagger into his back. Sound carries down the tunnels, and I’d rather my friend not overhear.

Peter frowns. “You think you’re over that? You think you’re okay now?”

He doesn’t have to say it. We both know it’s true. I’m worse off now than I was that night.

So when Peter dips his hand into his pouch for the faerie dust, I don’t protest as he puts it to my lips.

My only thoughtwhen we return to the Den is whether I can still see Astor’s wraith. Like before we left Neverland, this dose isn’t enough to make me fly. Peter only used a few particles, but I’d been overcome with a sense of numbness unlike before we left Neverland. It’s like it’s dulling my feelings while making the colors around me brighter.

The fear that my body is more sensitive to this dosage now that I’ve spent a day and a half off of it nags at me. I try to reason with myself, remind myself that I’m being irrational, but the anxiety of losing my only connection with Astor has my mind on a constant loop.

Thankfully, Peter has duties to attend to on the island, and I’m able to sneak away just after dinner.

Panicked, I search the cave for Astor, but he’s nowhere to be found. I wonder if perhaps I light a lamp, he’ll come out, be unable to hide and meld with the shadows. But when I light my lamp, all it illuminates is the glittering onyx sand.

“Please,” I beg nothing at all. “Please don’t leave me. Everyone else has left me. Please don’t leave me, too.”

Something shuffles behind me. I spin around in a whirl, hope soaring through my chest. He came back he came back he came back.

But it’s not ivy green eyes that meet mine. It’s not even a shadow in the shape of a man.

It’s a faerie with cropped golden hair and glittering incandescent wings.

“You,” I say, practically snarling at Tink.

She lifts a brow, placing one hand on her hip. She’s dressed just as she was the last time I saw her, in a burlap sack that barely covers anything. Just the sight of her sends me back to the day she scratched up my cheek, the night she shoved my face under the waves of the ocean just to watch me struggle, just to enjoy watching me drown.

That’s not what has me angry, though.

“What did you do to him?” I ask. When she cocks her head at me, daring to look confused, I practically spit at her, my voice infused with vitriol. “What did you do to my brother?”

Her chest heaves, her lips curling like she’s laughing, but no sound comes out.

She points a finger to her chest and makes a face. As if to say, me?

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