Page 97 of Caging Darling

Astor answers, but he’s not looking at Peter. He’s looking at me, still stroking his beard. “I’m afraid Wendy’s already made up her mind without either of our input.”

Something swells in my heart, but I quickly snuff it out. I won’t let myself beam at his approval, especially when it’s only implied.

“It will never work,” says Peter. “Vulcan and I have had altercations in the past. He’s on the Middle Sister’s list. A difficult man to kill, but he knows I’ve attempted it. He won’t believe for a moment that I’m not laying a trap for him.”

“Yes, that is problematic, isn’t it?” says the Nomad. “Unfortunately, you and I are in a similar conundrum. I tried to poison him last year at a dinner party.” Astor straightens, the muscles of his forearms bulging. The Nomad shifts, leaning into my ear and whispering loudly enough for the others to hear. “What do you say, Wendy? Think you can pull off acting like you hate our mutual friend?”

CHAPTER 36

“Are you certain you’re ready for this, Darling?”

Astor and I are in an alley in Kahlia, the city in which Vulcan’s manor resides. One of the Nomad’s henchmen drove us here in a carriage and dropped us off. We’re several blocks away from the manor, the idea being that Vulcan’s guards won’t be able to follow the carriage of the newcomers back to the sea, and then to the Gathers.

“Last I checked, I was never the one nervous about this plan.” It’s not true, not at all, but I’ve been dealt so few upper hands in my life, and I don’t have the restraint to keep from playing it.

“Are you claiming I care for you, Darling?”

“I don’t have to do much claiming, do I, considering how quickly you opposed the idea of putting me in harm’s way?”

Astor’s green eyes flick upward, pinning me through his long black eyelashes. “I wasn’t trying to deny it. I just wanted to hear from your lips that you know I care.”

Irritation and another emotion I don’t care to acknowledge has the hairs on my arms standing up. I yank on my shawl over my evening gown to mask my body’s reaction. “I fear you’ve lost the privilege of claiming that.”

Astor stares at me. “In that case, our fears are aligned.”

Heat creeps up my exposed chest. Thinly made would be a generous description for the gown the Nomad gifted me for the occasion. When I’d told him as much, he’d shrugged and reminded me that if I wanted to act the part, I needed to dress for it as well.

Astor’s eyes land on the splotches at my chest, but his gaze doesn’t dip further than my clavicle, despite there being plenty on display. His restraint fills me with a mixture of warring emotions. Aching, because of the respect he continues to demonstrate toward me, refusing to see me as something to be valued because of the vessel I came in. Shame, because I can’t help but wonder if in the end, I’m simply not all that tempting to him. Not to keep, certainly, but not even to look.

“May I ask you something?”

“May?” I repeat, incredulous.

“I’m trying out a new vocabulary. It’s at Charlie’s recommendation.”

I wait.

“You seemed less than eager earlier to assist the Nomad in finding your faerie friend. Why help now?”

I scratch at the back of my neck. “It’s not as if I have much choice in the matter.”

“Yet you’ve resisted its pull this long.”

I shake my head and choose to stare at an oblong brick in the alley wall. “My time is running out. Besides, it’s more difficult to resist the closer I am to the Nomad.”

“You were going to let yourself die, Darling, before you gave her up. Why go along with the plan now?”

I snap my neck back. “Why ask?”

“Because if you’re planning on sabotaging us in there, I need to know in advance.”

My stomach clenches at his challenging stare. “It was different, when I assumed she was free. If it’s true that Vulcanhas her…well, whatever the Nomad has planned, I can’t imagine it’s a worse fate.”

A chill runs over my entire body at the thought of Vulcan’s touch, his wet kiss in the carriage right before a horse had run into it and wrecked it. I’d hoped Vulcan was dead. But I rarely get what I hope for, so I don’t know why I assumed he was.

“So it’s the lesser of two evils for her, then.”

“You’re not exactly in a position to judge,” I snap. Not after you planned to trade me for your dead wife, is what I don’t say. But I don’t have to. Astor shifts on his feet, and it might just be a trick of the light, but I think I catch his neck reddening. “Besides, I’ve lived my entire life having to pick between the lesser of two evils. Between degrees of pain. I’m rather experienced by this point.”

---