Page 21 of Caging Darling

“The Sister has her own duties. But after centuries of carrying out her purpose, she grew weary of getting her hands dirty. So she sends me to do her dirty work instead.”

I remember the story of the Three Sisters. How the Middle Sister took it upon herself to weave the tapestries, the futures, of mortals. How she hunted those few mortals who were too dangerous to live, whose tapestries refused to be woven into a brighter story, no matter how long and often she labored, trying to reshape their futures into something brighter.

“You kill them before they harm anyone else. Before they become monsters,” I say. “Just like the Sister was going to do to the Lost Boys.”

That was how she and Peter had met. She’d been at Thomas’s bedside, readying to poison him before he enacted his revenge not just against the warden who’d abused him, but the entire village for allowing the orphanage to exist.

Judging by the timeline Astor offered, this must have happened a year or two after Astor and Iaso had married and left the town of Endor. Peter had abandoned them, ill with envy toward Astor, believing he couldn’t have possibly let me go in his heart.

If only I had possessed Peter’s skepticism.

But Peter had stepped between the Sister and Thomas. Peter had intervened. Convinced the Sister to create Neverland instead. A place where the Lost Boys could live, separate from the realms, separate from the pain that had seeded violence in their hearts. The Sister had taken the Lost Boys’ memories. But she hadn’t taken their pain. Not really. Not like she had intended.

“Peter?” I say, when he doesn’t answer.

He doesn’t respond until we’ve reached Chora several hours later.

I shouldn’t rejoice. Shouldn’t be exuberant that Peter is murdering people before they commit their crime.

But he’d told me. He hadn’t wanted to, and he’d told me, anyway.

I’d made him do something he didn’t want to do.

In some ways, that tastes better than even faerie dust.

CHAPTER 8

“This is nice,” says Peter. “I should take you on my murder sprees more often.”

I glance up at him. He’s nodding toward my hand, wrapped over his elbow as we stand in line outside an opera house on the cobbled streets of Chora.

He’d brought a change of clothes for himself in his pack. Stolen an evening dress for me from a nearby tailor.

My mind drifts back to the port town of Laraeth.

“You should have told me,” was what Astor had said when he discovered the velvet on my gown had been transporting me back to my father’s smoking parlor. To the atrocities that had occurred within it.

“Why?” I’d asked. “So you could kill an innocent woman for her gown in order to replace this one?”

“No. I’d have lifted it from a shop like a proper gentleman.”

But I’m not in Laraeth, and I’m not with Astor. I try to ignore the stinging in my belly, how Peter’s kind gesture feels stolen. Feels like it should have belonged to Astor. As if that man deserved any firsts with me.

I push the thought aside and stare up into Peter’s deep blue eyes, appreciate the slick black lines of his shoulders, highlighted by the evening coat.

“I assume you’re referring to having a date,” I say to Peter. “Though I wasn’t aware that murder was the popular sort to take a lady on.”

Peter smirks and brushes his finger down my nose. “I was referring to touching you.”

A sliver of warmth snakes underneath my skin, curling around my ribcage.

“Because it means you get to stay in your fae form,” I say. The Sister usually requires that Peter maintain his shadow form when he’s outside of Neverland, but for whatever reason, my touch allows him to stay grounded in his fae form. We tested it earlier when we arrived. Since we were touching when we left Neverland, he’s able to maintain his fae form even after he lets go of me, though I’m not sure how long the effects will last, nor do I care to find out.

Not after what happened in the Carlisles’ annex.

Peter’s shadow self hadn’t been able to feel pain then. I can’t imagine what that side of him might do to me now that he can actually hurt. Pain is dangerous in the hands of the selfish.

“That, too,” he says, though he takes his other hand and squeezes mine. It’s warm, even through my silk glove, guarding me from the night’s chill.

---