Page 76 of Caging Darling

He grabs my neck. Hard. I wince, but he doesn’t seem to care. When he pulls his hand away, he shoves it in front of my face, so my eyes have to focus to see what he’s trying to show me. It doesn’t help that his hand is trembling.

“I was playing with your hair while you slept,” he whispers, accusation suffusing his tone.

Slowly, my eyes adjust to the dim lighting in the room. Paint, the color of cream, smears across his tanned hands. The blood drains from all the muscles in my body.

“Wendy Darling, tell me what you did. Who did that to you?”

I stare at Peter for a long moment. Fear lances through my blood, setting me on edge. But I’ve feared Peter for so long now, it feels like a baseline.

“What does it matter, my love?” I ask. “I choose you.”

I glimpse the jealousy spark in his eyes. I could get drunk on him looking at me like that. Like he’ll die if he ever loses me.

“What did he make you agree to?”

I smile. I like that he thinks my bargain was with Astor, the last person in the world who would ever bind himself to me. I like the way it gets under Peter’s skin, makes him crazy. I can see it in the way his eyes strain, his nostrils flare.

Anger makes Peter ugly. At least, it makes the outside match the inside. It’s easier to see him that way, now that I’ve had almost two years to ward my mind against my Mark. The urges, the feelings pulling toward him, are still there.

I’m just so much better at setting them aside than I once was. Seeing myself as a separate entity from them.

“What is it you’re afraid I agreed to?” I ask.

Peter shoves me up against the wall, holding me there by his forearm. It presses up against my neck in a way I know is sure to leave a bruise. Pain threatens to steal the breath from me.

I don’t mind.

Let him kill me. It’ll just end my torment a month earlier. Let him set me free. He’s already taken everything else from me. Why not my life, too?

“Wendy Darling, you will tell me what you did. That’s part of choosing me.”

It’s not. I know that well enough from prodding at every loophole in my bargain. I remember my father bringing in a nobleman who owned several goat farms. He hated the animals, because they would stalk the perimeter of the fence, looking for any weaknesses.

I happen to like being a goat.

It’s one of the few things from which I derive pleasure these days. That, and taking my trophies. Watching Peter look away as I slice through their wrists.

“What did you do?” I ask, repeating his question back to him.

He doesn’t have to ask what I’m referring to. It’s typically a hopeless endeavor. I can’t count how many times I’ve begged him to tell me what really happened the night he killed John, knowing in my soul it wasn’t the self-defense he claims.

But tonight, Peter’s angry.

For him, it’s a rare state.

“Your brother poked his nose where it didn’t belong. And even then, he didn’t have the good sense to keep it to himself. Thought he could skewer me with Victor’s crossbow. He only just missed. I would have overlooked it, but he knew too much. He didn’t understand that I only did what I did to Iaso so we could be together. Didn’t understand that the only thing the truth would do was hurt you. Ruin us. If he had just kept quiet, I never would have had to hurt him.”

It should ache, this revelation. But it only confirms what I’ve suspected for ten months now.

I should cry. But the only reaction I can bring myself to muster is a wry laugh.

When Peter realizes it’s directed at him, at his unforgivable delusions, he applies more pressure, until my back begins to bruise against the force of the wall. He’s never done this, hurt me physically like this. Black spots swell at my vision, but I welcome them.

Just a few more moments.

When my vision blurs in and out, that’s when Peter realizes what he’s doing. He jumps backward, startled at his outburst. Like a child that’s just tossed his favorite clay model across the room in a tantrum.

It’s funny he’s only realizing now how shattered I am. That he broke me a long time ago.

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