Page 55 of Caging Darling

He closes his eyes, frustrated. “No, I know that. But I need you to forgive me.”

I grin. “I forgive you, then.”

Peter’s face falls as he examines me, what he’s done to me. It’s as if for the first time he’s realizing just how much of a facade this curse has turned me into. A prisoner in my own body.

A prisoner who will gnaw her own arm off to get out if she has to.

“You don’t mean that,” says Peter.

“Of course I mean it.” But he’s right; I don’t. The curse only bears down on my actions, not my feelings, not my thoughts.

For over a year, I’ve not been able to distinguish between what is me, what is the bargain, and what is the Mating Mark. Now, they untangle before me, a cord unraveling at the fraying edge of Peter’s favorite sweater.

The feelings for Peter, those belong to the Mark. The fire I feel at his touch. The thoughts that I love him, that I’m comforted in his arms. All Mark.

The compliance, the choosing Peter, the actions, those are all the bargain.

For a while, it was me, too. Me, Wendy, the compliant girl. The girl who lets life happen to her.

Correction, the girl who let life happen to her.

The girl who believed, deep in her very being, that she couldn’t resist Fate. That the magic of the Mating Mark was too strong.

If I’ve learned anything from having my heart shredded to pieces by Nolan Astor, it’s that Mating Marks can be resisted if you put your mind to it.

I might not be able to resist the bargain in the same way, but I can twist it. Make it mean something else. Make the meaning suit me.

For the first time, I am no longer entwined with the Mating Mark and the bargain. Instead, I am the third force, looking down upon the other two as hands gripping my wrists.

But Nolan Astor taught me how to get out of such a situation.

I just have to find the weak points and throw my entire being into them.

“Wendy Darling, please don’t be angry with me forever. I tried to get him back. I begged the Sister to get him back. I wasn’t myself when it happened…”

I stare into Peter’s eyes. It almost makes me pity him, how fully he believes his own words. How easily he can banish the less swallowable facts. Like how, when he brought me back to Neverland, he already knew John was dead, hanging from that tree. He knew he’d killed my brother when he called in the bargain that forces me to choose him.

It hadn’t been about Astor at all.

He’d just wanted to make sure I couldn’t leave him if I ever figured out what he did.

“I understand why you did it.”

Peter’s shoulders sag in relief. “You do?”

I smile, but this one’s not my mother’s. It belongs entirely to me. “I do.”

CHAPTER 20

Ibegin meeting Tink in the evenings before dinner.

Peter allows me more freedom to roam about. Perhaps there’s no incriminating evidence left for the wraiths to tell me. Perhaps he’s simply weighed the options, and he’s deemed my simmering bitterness a greater danger than any secrets he might have left.

I like being dangerous.

“BOY,” Tink says, then adds a tile “-S” to clarify.

When we first started meeting, I’d brought Tink a journal to write in, but I’d quickly discovered that though she can write, it isn’t in any language I understand. Even what she can write in Estellian is limited to the words from her tiles, and she’s faster at finding them than she is at recalling how to spell the word.

---