Page 49 of Caging Darling

“I know,” says John’s wraith. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know what he—the real John—was planning to do. I’d just been made, and I didn’t understand what was happening. I just saw your brother walk off. I should have followed him, should have talked him out of it.”

Why this wraith is being kind to me, I don’t know. Or maybe he’s not. Maybe because he’s John’s wraith, he’s smarter than all the others. Maybe he told me this story, the truth, just to rip me to pieces. Just to kick me while I’m down, like a dog purchased for fighting, who’s disappointed its master by being too anxious to attack. Maybe that’s why Astor’s wraith found me, just so he could leave me.

I didn’t want to know this. I thought I wanted to understand, but I didn’t.

Because had I just been strong enough to tell my mother no, had I screamed and kicked and refused to go quietly into the parlor, maybe John wouldn’t have died. Maybe had I just taken ablade to my parents’ throats sooner, maybe had I gotten to them before Astor…

“I hate them,” I cry through sobs. “I hate them so much.”

John’s wraith swallows. “I know. He did too. Once he knew.”

I’m not sure that makes me feel any better, but it does give me the strength to wipe the tears from my cheeks, flick them toward the onyx sand.

My whole body feels drained, whether from the drowning or the crying or the absence of faerie dust, I’m not sure.

But then Tink kneels next to me and places a tile in my hand. I open my palm and turn it over.

“MORE.”

I choke. “I don’t think I can handle any more.”

Tink frowns, but she shuffles through her bag and presses another two tiles to my palm all the same.

“TINK HELP.”

CHAPTER 18

Tink leads me by the hand to the cliffs, John following behind, though the further we get from the cave, the more blurred his edges become.

I don’t want to think about that. About why Astor’s wraith was able to follow me into another realm, his edges just as inky, when my brother, who’s never been anything less than faithful to me, couldn’t get to me.

It’s because you wanted to see him, is what John said.

Even after all Astor’s done to crush me, all of the pain John endured on my behalf, the evidence has spoken. My wayward heart has shown where its loyalties lie.

My mind is in a blur as Tink leads me by the hand through the forest, the stars twirling through the pine canopy above. When we reach the cliffs, Tink places two tiles in my hand.

“UP. AROUND?”

I frown, staring into her eyes. For the first time tonight, I find myself wondering why she can’t speak. It hits me, the selfishness of it. How self-absorbed I must be not to have considered it until now.

If Tink cares anything at all about my impudence, she doesn’t show it. Her impatience gleams through her eyes, and she taps on both tiles, cueing me to choose.

I glance at the towering cliff before me. A year and a half ago, when I first arrived in Neverland, I could scale it not with ease, but without fear of falling.

I’d been stronger then. Which isn’t saying much. Now, as I stare down at my limbs, gone spindly and thin from a year of disuse, of months lying in bed, chained down in Peter’s arms to keep me from floating away in my faerie dust highs, I realize I couldn’t climb if I wanted to.

Blinking away tears, realizing that bit of comfort, that joy of climbing, has been taken away from me—that I let it be taken—I place a tile in Tink’s palm.

She frowns at it, but she does as I ask and takes us another way.

There’sa path up to the storehouse that winds around the backside of the cliffs. John explains how he cut through the brush over a period of weeks when he was trying to find a way to get us off the island. Apparently, he’d hoped there would be faerie dust up here, but Peter had already emptied it out.

“If we’re not going for the faerie dust, what are we going to…”

Neither answers my question, I guess, because the realization dawns on my face. The screaming I’d heard the night I met the night stalker by the storehouse…it had been a wraith.

By the time we reach the storehouse, my legs are wobbling, the combined effort of my grief and exertion. It’s misty up here, a fog blowing in from the ocean, obscuring the star-littered sky, the wind howling.

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