Page 26 of Caging Darling

My stomach twists into knots, and Peter allows his shadows to coalesce around him. Renslow screeches, but he doesn’t run. He just wields his scalpel from his bag, as if it will do anything to defend him against the advancing fae.

“It’s not us,” I say, drawing near the physician, strategically placing myself between Peter and him.

“Wendy Darling.” Peter’s voice is a warning, but I ignore it.

When Peter asked me to choose him, it was in a decision between him and Astor. The decision of whom to spend the rest of my life with. Well, this is a part of spending my life with him, isn’t it? Disagreeing with him? Keeping him from continuing down a dark path?

“It’s you who kills the girl tomorrow,” I say, hands stretched out in front of me, an attempt to show good faith.

Renslow’s mouth twists in disgust. “I’m a physician, child. I heal. Do no harm. I took an oath…”

“I know, I know,” I say, even though I don’t, really. “I don’t know why you do it, but you do. In every rendition of the future, tomorrow Millie dies at your hand.”

Renslow’s mouth twitches, but Peter has stilled behind me, so I continue.

“After that, you kill a girl by the name of Judith Mooring. Do you know her?” I don’t really have to ask. Renslow’s horrified expression reveals plenty.

“Wendy Darling, what do you think you’re doing?”

I ignore my counterfeit Mate and continue. “You murder twelve people before you’re caught and hung.”

Renslow shakes his head in disbelief. “You’re mad, the both of you.”

“Please, we know it’s you,” I say, fighting for a detail that will make him believe us. “You’re left-handed, are you not?”

He glances down at his scalpel like it’s given him away. “All the victims will end up with wounds on their abdomens inflicted by a left-handed man.”

“I assure you, I’m not the only left-handed man in this city.”

“No, but you’re the only left-handed physician,” I say. “And the victims all have their kidneys surgically removed.”

Renslow’s face drains of color. He blanches, his lips quivering for just long enough for me to glimpse the hint of belief. The knowledge that somewhere deep down, he believes himself capable of murder.

Or, at the very least, he knows what would drive him to it.

“Sweet Millie?” Tears form in Renslow’s eyes, and soon a sob at his wobbling throat.

“But you don’t have to do it,” I say, rushing toward him. When I place my hand on his, he flinches, but he doesn’t pullaway. “Maybe if you just tell us why you’re going to do it…maybe we can stop it together. Keep it from happening.”

Renslow’s eyes go blank. Like he’s looking far off. “In the future, however you saw it, did you see whether I meant to kill her? Whether I meant to kill any of them?”

Peter takes a step forward, his shadows lingering dangerously close to Renslow’s neck. “Does it matter?” he asks. “Twelve children end up dead.”

“So, I fail then,” Renslow says, rubbing his fingers against his temples.

When Peter first told me of the twelve murders enacted by a physician who believed himself above the rules of life itself, I’d thought he was murdering out of pride. I’d suspected the deaths were accidental, a case of hubris gone wrong. A man convinced he could do the impossible, regardless of the evidence of bodies piling up around him.

It seems I’m right. “You don’t have to prove anything,” I say. “I know you want to help people. I know you want to prove organs can be transferred from one person to another. But it’s not worth hurting innocent children.”

He turns to me and gives me a look that somehow feels as if I’m the one who doesn’t understand. It puzzles me.

“I wouldn’t have meant for Mille to die,” he says. “I would have tried to save her.”

“Then save her tomorrow,” I say.

Something isn’t right. A surgeon isn’t held culpable if his patients die on the table. Not when their life was in peril to begin with. Millie will convulse tomorrow. Renslow’s surgical skill will be her only chance at survival.

So why does the Sister judge him so harshly for it? Why does she deem the eleven other surgeries murder? And why does the man in front of me not deny it, not defend himself as any rational surgeon would do?

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