Page 94 of Caging Darling

I blink, somehow unfazed.

Anger boils in me now, but it renders me mute. Everything in my head goes quiet except for the rage. There are so many retorts I’d like to spit back, but they flee my skull.

“If not for yourself,” he asks, “then why not for Michael? Why not for John?”

My skull rattles, needles piercing me from behind my eyes. “John’s dead.”

Astor blinks. He opens his mouth, then shuts it sharply. “How?”

I stare at him a long while. It’s not like me—or maybe I should say that it’s not like the person I used to be—but I choose my words carefully. Not to be diplomatic, not to make certain I don’t offend.

I find the words with the most serrated edges, and I pluck them from their sheath.

“I wasn’t there to protect him.”

Astor doesn’t look away in shame. He keeps his gaze fixed on me. “That would be my fault, then.” Then he does something I’m not prepared for, and steps toward me.

“You need to leave,” I say, before he can wrap me in his embrace.

His throat bobs, and he does.

CHAPTER 34

“What do you mean, you have no idea where she is?”

The Nomad is in a set of silk robes and matching silk night pants, pacing back and forth across the floor at my feet. I’m still curled up on my pallet in the floor, my back and limbs aching from where the uneven floorboards of the ship jabbed into my joints all night. Not that I would have slept, anyway.

I was too busy replaying every moment, every word, every touch of the conversation between me and Astor.

“I already told you. Tink left through a warping in Neverland. I’ve no idea where it dropped her off. For all we know, she might not even be in this realm.”

The thought makes me ill, but not nearly as much as the first time I considered the fact that Michael might be so far away, in a realm I can never reach.

“Yes, I’m aware of what you told me. Information doesn’t flit from my mind quite so easily. But you mean to tell me that you never had a conversation with her as to where she might go if she left Neverland?”

I stroke the floorboard next to me, feeling the lump of wood against my skin, wondering if a splinter will scrape against my finger. “Communicating with Tink was difficult.”

“Really? By the way you seek to protect her, I would have thought the two of you were friends.”

I sit up, stretching out my back muscles as I interlock my fingers in front of me. “We are. Were.” I pause. Does Tink want anything to do with me now that she knows that I made a bargain with a man she clearly fears? Has ten months been long enough for her to forgive my betrayal?

Not that it matters. Even if she does forgive me, she won’t once I betray her again. It won’t matter that I can’t help myself.

People who can help themselves, people with control over their own impulses, have so little empathy for those who can’t and don’t. And why should they?

“When I say Tink was difficult to communicate with, I’m not talking about her personality. Though she can be a bit prickly until you get to know her.”

The Nomad’s lip twitches. “Do you always draw out explanations?”

A smile tugs at the corners of my mouth. “I’m told I have a tendency to meander.”

The Nomad taps his foot against the floor, crossing his arms.

“When the Sister crafted Neverland, she had to find a way to bind it. So she used Tink’s voice.”

The Nomad’s foot goes still. I wait for him to respond, but he simply waits, his face a stone, so I continue. “Tink can’t speak. Not verbally, at least. She can write, but not in any language I recognize. My brother John befriended her while I was away. You see, our younger brother, Michael, has always had difficulty expressing himself, so when he was little?—”

“Wendy Darling,” the Nomad says through a slick but emotionless grin. “This meandering you speak of. I believe you’re doing it again.”

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