Page 29 of Caging Darling

So I hold Peter’s gaze, watch those blue eyes widen in fear—fear of me—when I snake my hand down Renslow’s arm, to his wrist, until I feel the bulge of it beneath my thumb.

Then carve the blade through the divot of his wrist.

CHAPTER 10

It doesn’t hit me what I’ve done until we reach the inn Peter booked for the night, and I drop the satchel on the bedside table.

It lands with a thump, its contents rolling around inside it.

I wonder how long it will take Renslow’s hand to rot. What to do with the hand now that I have it. These were things I hadn’t considered when I’d chopped it off.

Peter places his hand on my shoulder, for the first time in a long while not in a possessive way, but in a gesture that I sense is meant to be comforting.

He’s saying something, but I can’t hear him. All I can hear is the squelch of flesh and the gush of blood at Renslow’s throat. All I can see is the swollen nature of his daughter’s skin, the ticking of the clock as her life draws to a close.

I killed her only chance at life. Decided her fate for her.

Just like my parents had decided mine. Just like Astor had decided mine.

The contents of my belly slosh. I find breathing makes it worse, so I rush out of Peter’s grip and toward the small adjoining bathroom, and lose the contents of my stomach in the latrine.

When I’m done, I only feel empty, not relieved.

It’s not as though I haven’t killed before. I killed Victor’s father, before I knew who he was, to protect Peter. I wasn’t the one to lift the blade, but it was my idea to kill one of the Nomad’s men to get the passcode to the Gathers from his wraith. His blood is as much on my hands as it is Astor’s.

But I’ve never killed out of anger.

Not until now.

There’s something about it that sits differently in my stomach, on my conscience.

It’s not that I regret Renslow’s death. Logically, it was the only thing to be done. Rationally, I can convince myself that by ending his life, I saved twelve others.

Although…a gut-wrenching thought still raps at my skull. Without a surgeon to attend to their initial maladies, those twelve might be doomed anyway.

“Did he succeed? In the tapestries?” I ask Peter. “Did he succeed in getting Daisy the transplant she needed?”

“Those tapestries are irrelevant now, Wendy Darling,” says Peter.

But are they? Are the alternate versions of the future we burned because we were afraid of them irrelevant? Are they ever really finished, or do they play alongside us like ghosts, whispering what could have been?

“Please, just tell me,” I breathe, staring into the mirror in the bathroom. Staring into the blue-eyed, sallow-cheeked face of a killer.

“Yes, he succeeded,” says Peter. “Eventually.”

If there was anything left in my stomach, I’d still be craned over the side of the latrine. “So we traded the life of one child for the lives of twelve?”

Peter comes up behind me, wraps his arms around my waist, and presses his warm torso into my back.

“No, Renslow was the one who was going to make the trade. He decided that his daughter’s life was worth more than the lives of other children. We just kept him from making the switch.”

Daisy was never supposed to live.

I was never supposed to live. I can see it now in my reflection. In the shadows forming underneath my eyes. In my time in Neverland, I’ve practically faded into a ghost.

Into who I was supposed to be all along.

“What if the other children die? Without a surgeon to heal them, I mean.”

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