Page 81 of Caging Darling

The shadows wail, multiplying until the cabin is blanketed in darkness, until there’s nothing anchoring me to this space except for Peter’s grip on my neck and the cold press of the table against my cheek.

What must be a full minute passes. Then, slowly, the shadows dissipate, disappearing into the cracks in the planked walls. The Nomad’s face appears before mine again, the vision fading at the edges, but his blue eyes just as potent.

“Now,” he says, holding out his hand. “Do we have a bargain?”

“What did he say? Who is that man?” demands Peter.

“He has many names,” says the old woman, “but in this region, they call him the Nomad.”

Only when the vision dissipates and the light filters out of the room do I let myself lose consciousness.

CHAPTER 29

“Idon’t care that your master requires a passcode.”

“Sir, with all due respect, ain’t nobody getting into the Gathers without a?—”

The man standing before us guarding the dock goes still as Peter’s shadowy tendrils snake from his back and secure themselves around the man’s throat.

“Tell your master,” says Peter, as the man gargles, the woman next to him taking a step back from the scene, “that I have a master of my own. And that she will not be pleased if I don’t deliver.”

It’s a bluff, but the woman on deck with the other guard runs off toward the ship in the center of the Gathers. The Nomad’s ship.

Tears prick my eyes as I stare at it in the distance. The Gathers has moved docking sites since the last time I visited. While before it was stationed off the coast of Zereth, they’ve since drifted west, closer to Kruschi. The waters here are just as black as Zereth’s, shadows cast down by a nearby cliff.

“You don’t have to kill him,” I say to Peter, still choking the Nomad’s guard.

He ignores me, and I watch as the man falls to his knees onto the deck, Peter’s hand unfaltering from his throat. I recognize him from when I was last here with Astor. He had led us all the way to the Nomad’s ship.

I suppose if he’d killed me then, he wouldn’t be dying, the breath slowly being squeezed from his lungs.

Mercy is such a strange, horrible thing, for which the Fates have no tolerance.

Still. “Peter, please.”

But Peter isn’t listening to me. And there’s nothing I can do as the light leaves the man’s eyes.

When the woman returns, it’s with orders to bring us to the Nomad. She doesn’t comment on the corpse of her friend, but tears glimmer in her eyes as she leads us the entire way.

When I came here with Astor, we both climbed the rope ladders between the boats until the man who just died thought I was shaking too hard to climb the last one. Only then did Astor carry me, and only after telling me he knew I could do it myself.

Peter doesn’t consider such things. He just wraps his arm around me and tucks me into his side, flying me at a distance as the woman directs us to the looming center ship.

“It wouldn’t be choosing me to tell anyone about that bargain of ours,” he whispers, stroking my hair. “But I imagine you already know that.”

Whatever force arbitrates the terms of our bargain must agree, because already I can feel the unspoken words being bound in my throat.

As the womanleads us below deck, Peter keeps his arm around me, claiming me. He pulls me extra close, slipping his hand to my hip whenever we pass a young male sailor in the hall.

I want to crawl out of my skin at the look in the men’s eyes. It’s not that they’re leering. It’s the realization that dawns on them.

She belongs to him. In his bed.

They get the message and steer clear of us in the hall.

I imagine I’m supposed to get the message, too.

When we arrive at the Nomad’s office, I find my legs trembling. The first thing I look for isn’t the Nomad himself, but the book of sketches displayed on the other end of the room. But I’m not really looking for the book. I’m looking for the object that will anchor me to the moment I realized Astor was my true Mate. To the feeling of his arm wrapping around me and moving my hand to close the pages. The press of his chest against my back.

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