Page 53 of Caging Darling

My mind catches. Simon. He has to be talking about Simon. He’s blaming himself for Simon’s death.

“But he wouldn’t listen to me. Try as I might, he never trusted me. The wraiths on the island, they must have gotten in his head. Turned him against me. He came at me with Victor’s crossbow one night, determined to kill me. I didn’t even realize he was there. My instincts just told me there was danger. I shifted into my shadow self without thinking about it. I barely remember what happened after that. Just that when I shifted back, John was dead.”

Time stands still, but Peter doesn’t seem to notice. My jaw works, my tongue too, but words have escaped me. I’ve forgotten how to form them.

The image plays out in my mind like I’m reading a novel, not real life. It doesn’t seem logical for John to try to kill Peter. Almost laughable, my peaceful brother raising his hand against anyone.

Then again, he had seen what went on at the storehouse.

He figured Peter would stop at nothing to own me. He figured there was only one way to stop Peter.

John’s wraith had witnessed John heading up to the reaping tree. We’d all assumed it was to kill himself. Because that’s what Peter had wanted us to believe. The story he had planted in our heads, without ever having to say a word.

“I know I shouldn’t have covered it up,” Peter says.

I glance up at him, his voice yanking me from my trance.

Is that what he’s calling stringing my brother’s corpse up in a tree for Michael to stumble across? Covering it up?

I blink, and Peter stares at me, sorrow painting his deep blue eyes. “Wendy Darling, please say something.”

I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. I’m not prepared for this information, much less this conversation. What would come out of my mouth, anyway? What does a girl say to her Mate upon discovering he killed your brother?

In the end, I settle on, “I wasn’t talking about John.”

Peter blinks. Then blanches. “You said you talked to his wraith.”

He thinks John’s wraith was made during John’s death. The implications of that makes me ill.

Of course it would have been agonizing. There had been strangling wounds Peter had needed to cover up with a noose.

“His wraith was made before his death,” I say. “It wasn’t there when he died.”

Horror overtakes Peter’s face. If I wasn’t completely devoid of all emotion, I might be amused.

Peter grasps for me. “Wendy Darling, it wasn’t me. I know I should have told you earlier, but I was so afraid?—”

“Of losing me?” The words come out empty of emotion. It’s as if a slate of gray has been laid over my heart, over everything I’m seeing, feeling. The emotion wiped clean from the world, my surroundings. “You let me sleep with you. You let me sleep with my brother’s murderer.” There’s no emotion in those words either. I can’t tell if it’s because the bargain will only allow me to state it as a fact rather than an accusation, or if it’s because my entire world has been leached of color.

I’m not sure what I’m expecting from Peter’s response, but it’s not, “Yet you would have slept with Astor, if you’d had the chance, even after having watched what he did to your parents.”

One would think that by now I would anticipate Peter’s attacks, the ones he uses to deflect blame, but the concept is still so foreign to me, I’m too stunned to respond.

“I couldn’t bear it, Wendy. The thought of losing you.”

“I know,” I say. “They couldn’t bear it either…”

My mind goes back to my parents. To my mother explaining to me before she invited yet another suitor to the parlor that it was for my own good. That the family couldn’t bear to lose me.

That I was just too precious to them.

Peter stills. Blinks.

“Oh,” I say, the word a half-laugh. “That’s right. I never told you, did I? What my parents did to me.”

Peter takes a step forward, but I slip from his grasp, evading him. I cross to the other side of the room, tracing my finger through the dust on the bedside table.

“That’s right…” I say. “I remember now. I told him.” I don’t have to look in Peter’s direction to sense the pang emanating from his chest. “Now, how did I get that confused?”

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