Page 44 of Caging Darling

“Of course, I know that.” My voice betrays me with a drunken warble.

Peter takes my jaw in both his hands. Tilts my face up so I have no choice but to look at him. “We can’t be telling each other lies.”

“I’m not lying to you.”

Peter frowns. “I know the shadows can be persuasive, Wendy Darling. Seductive, even. But they don’t care for you. They don’t wish for your well-being.” He actually lets go of me, leaves meshaking with fear and cold in the middle of the cave as he takes a step back. He’s running his fingers through his hair, pacing relentlessly, worrying at his lip. When he turns back toward me, there’s mourning in his drooping, boyish eyes. “I really wanted this to work, Wendy Darling.”

For just a moment, the naive girl in me is stupid enough to think he means us. But then his fingers find the drawstring of the pouch at his side, and my heart wilts in my chest. I take a trembling step back.

He catches it, my fear of him, and wrinkles his brow. He reminds me of a parent about to give their favorite child a paddling. “I really wanted you to be able to wean down,” he says, shaking his head. Like I’m the one who’s disappointed him. “But clearly, you can’t be trusted to stay away from the things that wish to hurt you.”

“Peter, please.” I’m holding my hand out, palm facing him. Like I think I have any chance of fending him off. I don’t even have a weapon.

Hurt flashes across Peter’s face, like I’m the one who’s broken our trust. That doesn’t stop him from stepping forward. “Come here, Wendy Darling. I’m not going to hurt you.”

I shake my head frantically. It’s more of an act of self-control than I thought myself capable of, with the desire for faerie dust creeping up my throat. But I’m so afraid of never hearing Astor’s voice again.

“Please, help me.”

Peter thinks I’m speaking to him, and nods sympathetically.

“No, I’ll be good, I promise,” I say. “I don’t…I don’t want to go back to being her.”

“I’m afraid we’ve no other choice, Wendy Darling. We have to keep you safe.”

As he approaches, I will myself to fight him. I’m unsure if it’s that I’m not strong enough to resist the bargain, or if it’s thefaerie dust cravings that have me folding into Peter’s arms in the end.

Either way, the only protests I’m able to summon are incoherent pleas and childish whimpers, before Peter presses the dust to my tongue and I forget why I ever wanted it to be any other way.

CHAPTER 16

“Why is it you always act so sullen, Victor?”

“I’ll stop acting sullen when Wendy wakes up.”

“She just needs the rest.”

“Needs the rest? It’s been three days!”

“Her body has been through a lot.”

“Her body has been through you.”

Silence.

I knit my brow, keeping my eyes closed. I try to grasp for what happened before the fog descended over me, turning my muscles to lead and submerging me in a sleep from which I cannot seem to fully wake.

“Astor?” is the only word I can make my lips form.

The voices don’t answer. The slamming of a door does. A hand finds my shoulder and squeezes it. “Come on, Winds. Wake up, why don’t you? Please.”

I don’t recognize the voice. I try to open my eyes. Maybe then I could place it. But the blanket covering my shaking body is much too heavy, and my body sinks until sleep is a coffin into which I’m lowered.

“Wendy Darling’s sleeping.”

Michael’s warm little body slides onto the bed with me. Instead of slipping underneath the covers, he sprawls across them, pulling them taut across my throat, choking me.

His voice is my first indication that I’m conscious.

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