Page 70 of Caging Darling

I turn back around. Face the betrayal in her eyes. I don’t know what the symbol is on my neck, but it must havesomething to do with the Nomad, or something else that scares Tink. She backs away from me.

“Please don’t hold it against Michael,” is all I can manage to say. “Please. Please, just take him and go.”

Tink’s lip trembles, and she bites it. Like she’s forcing it to keep still. I turn and walk across the beach until I get to Michel. I ruffle his hair as I crouch before him. He doesn’t look at me. He just keeps organizing his seashells, sorting the perfect ones from the broken ones.

“Your friend Tink is going to take you on an adventure,” I say, praying he understands. “She’s going to take care of you, and you’re going to have so much fun.”

“Wendy Darling is going on an adventure.”

Again, my stomach cramps. “I’ll go on the adventure too. In my mind, I promise. I’ll use my imagination to be with you every day.”

Michael says nothing. Anger spikes within me, that my sweet brother can’t tell me how he’s feeling. That I can’t even be sure that he understands I’m saying goodbye.

My brother stops sorting the seashells. With one hand, he takes a perfect seashell, pink and unbroken. With the other, he takes a shard.

Quietly, he places the shard in my hand. It reminds me of Tink’s tiles, and my heart shatters.

“I’m heartbroken too, buddy,” I say. When I wrap him in a hug, he lets me bury my face into his hair, grimy and sweaty and smelling of sea salt. I promise myself to hold on to that smell forever.

Then I take Michael by the hand and lead him to the boat. Tink’s already dragged it to the water’s edge by the time we reach it. She jumps over the side and settles herself in, then extends her arms.

I squeeze my brother one last time before I hoist him into the boat.

Tink watches me the entire time. There are tears in her eyes, angry ones she tries to blink away. The betrayal seeps off of her, but she reaches into her pouch all the same and hands me two tiles.

“MICHAEL SAFE.”

“Thank you,” I whisper, hugging my chest tightly.

When I push them further into the water, Michael is singing.

“Wendy Darling’s waking up.”

I watchthe waters for what feels like hours, even after they disappear from view behind the boulder. Anxiety wells within me, that perhaps they didn’t make it to the warping, that perhaps the wraith was wrong, and Peter was right, and the warping is only one-way.

And I realize I’ll never know. I’ll just have to believe they’re safe. I don’t think I’m capable of anything else.

But then the boat floats out from behind the boulder, empty and straying without anyone to guide it. The waves carry it to shore, depositing it in front of me. As I trace my hands over the slick wet hull, my attention catches on something glinting at the bottom of the boat. I pluck out a dagger. Examine it in the moonlight.

Hope, desperate and wild, surges within me, and I shift the dagger into my left hand. My fingers tremble at the hilt as I rest it over the crook of my right elbow. Pain stings at the fold of skin as the edge of the blade breaks through the outermost layer of my flesh. Teeth gritted, I will myself to press harder. Will myself to make the cut.

I picture the pig corpses Maddox used to train me on. Strength summoned, I raise the blade and drive it downward.

It stops just above my already bleeding skin, but there’s nothing around to cause the blade to cease ripping through the air but my own cowardice.

I try again, just for my body to stop itself a hair above my arm.

Again, I raise the blade. Thrust it downward. Again and again and again.

Until finally I drop the tear-stained dagger, my bargain as intact as it’s ever been.

Eventually, I collapse into the sand, unable to hold myself up any longer.

Completely and utterly alone.

TIMELINE

Day 695 of Choosing Peter

---