Chapter 28
CHAPTER 28
WENDY
S ince Astor gave the crew commands to meet us in Naverough if we hadn’t returned to the ship by midnight, we have to cut inland. While the ship will have traversed easily around the bay and into the harbor of the next city, there’s a mountain range separating the two. Astor assures me that the trek is manageable, especially by horse. There’s a mountain pass that cuts through the range. As it is, it will take us hours to arrive.
The idea of spending so many traveling hours with Astor at first has me wriggling in the saddle, unable to still myself. Once the adrenaline of interrogating Vale dies down, the reality of the night’s events crashes to the forefront of my mind, one grisly scene after another competing for attention.
We killed Arthur Carlisle. Well, Astor killed Arthur Carlisle, but I might as well be an accomplice. We’ll have made enemies—anyone who might have had unfinished business with Carlisle and paid up front. Not to mention his wife, who likely still maintains enough connections to hunt us down.
She knows who I am. And she knew enough about Peter’s whereabouts to contact him, though I’m still unsure how she managed that. I’m still convinced she doesn’t know how to journey to Neverland; she said she used a contact in this realm, probably someone Peter knows from the errands he runs for the Sister. But still.
If I was going to predict anyone to have the tenacity and resources to figure out how to reach Neverland, it would be her.
Wendy Darling had taken her husband.
The only question is, how far will Lady Carlisle go to exact her revenge?
I consider the lords and ladies I met growing up, those who were friends, or at least ran in the same social circles as my parents. Few of them seemed happy together. Even those who pretended, batting each other on the shoulder and holding hands in public. Those were the couples often found slinking away from each other’s grips once they thought they were out of sight.
Lord and Lady Carlisle had put on a pretense of being infatuated with one another, but surely most of it was for show. The pair might have operated as incredible business partners, but there can’t have been love between them. Surely not. Not when Lord Carlisle seemed so calm, so pleased, knowing exactly what his wife was doing with one of his dinner guests in his own home.
Business partners. Business partners with wedding bands.
That’s all they had been. Surely.
I comfort myself knowing that in a place like Laraeth, Lady Carlisle will be the sole inheritor of her husband’s estate. Perhaps she’ll see Arthur’s death as an opportunity, rather than a reason to seek vengeance.
For John and Michael’s sake, I pray so.
For a while, as we ride, I’m able to keep my mind busy with the eternal loop of pondering Lady Carlisle’s next move. But in the corners lurk what happened in the library annex tonight. What Peter—rather, his shadow self—almost did to me.
I hadn’t wanted to approach the subject with Astor, not when he refuses to look at things from any but one, very accusatory angle. But I know Peter. And the shadow in the parlor—that wasn’t him. At least, not who he would be if he hadn’t been altered by the Sister, if he hadn’t been warped outside of his control.
Except for the confusion when he realized what he’d done—that Peter I had recognized, even if it was for the briefest moment. It hadn’t been sadness, hadn’t been pain, really. But a numb resignation. That wall that Peter hits when any normal person would feel hurt. A callus too tough to cut through.
Still, I can’t forget the fear that lanced through my heart when I realized he wasn’t going to stop. That I had no power other than to beg, and that my pleas meant nothing. I can’t forget the feel of velvet at my fingertips and hands touching skin I had wished to remain covered. Shame still tingles on the patches of skin that, while now hidden, feel as bare as they did when Peter tore my gown.
I can’t. I can’t go back to being the weak girl in the parlor. I can’t be touched like that again.
I can feel myself begin to shake, and because I fear Astor will bring up the events of the night again, I breathe deeply, trying to calm myself.
For the first time, I’m confronted with doubt. A question I hadn’t considered.
I’ve wanted nothing more than to free Peter of his curse. Made it my utmost goal, my purpose.
I’ve been so fixated on healing Peter, I haven’t considered what I will do if I fail. It’s never been a question of whether I will return to Peter, just when—before the six months are up because I’ve helped Astor finish the task, or at the end of it.
But tonight I got a harrowing glimpse into what my future might hold if I don’t manage to free Peter from his curse.
And because I can’t abide the thought of losing the part of Peter I love—the kind man who dances with me in the stars, who always catches me when I fall, who’s shown my sad spirit heights I’d never hoped to graze on my own, my spirit too short to reach; because I can’t imagine a life apart from my Mate, I refuse. I refuse to answer the question, though it beats at my mind.
I have to break Peter’s curse. I can’t. I can’t…
“You’ve had a…difficult night,” Astor says. “Why don’t you try to get some sleep?”
“I doubt very much I’ll get any sleep on a horse,” I say.
“Let me guess. The debutante can’t sleep without a pillow and a set of silk sheets?” says the captain, though there’s no venom in his tone.
“The silk is unnecessary, but the pillow is paramount,” I say, grateful he’s attributing my trembling to exhaustion, when we both know that’s only half of it.
Astor clicks his tongue and kicks at the horse’s side. It comes to a stop. In a fluid motion I’m not expecting, nor that I fully understand the physics behind, Astor takes me by the waist and flings me around and behind him, switching our spots in the saddle. I hardly have time for an alarmed exhale.
“There,” he says. “Now you have a pillow.”
I stare awkwardly at his back, arms fidgeting at my sides. Impatiently, Astor lets out a groan and takes hold of my hands, wrapping them around his waist. When I don’t budge, Astor says, softly, “You’ll feel better if you sleep.”
“You don’t know what awaits me in my dreams,” I whisper quietly.
“How about this? If I detect any sign that you’re having a nightmare, I’ll wake you up.”
My lips twitch into a soft smile. “They always say you’re not supposed to do that.”
“Then it’s a good thing that I don’t know who ‘they’ are or why they think I care what they say.”
I let a careless chuckle leave my throat. “You promise?”
Astor opens his mouth, then quickly shuts it. Over his shoulder he offers me a smirk. “Nice try. You know I don’t make promises.”
“Worth a shot,” I say, the teasing between us making it easier for me to nestle my cheek into his back, at the muscle just between his shoulder blades. His back is firm. Warm. Not at all like a pillow. But it’s somewhere steady to rest my head.
I close my eyes and let myself feel the gentle ebb of his ribcage as he exhales, his breaths shallow. A moment later, warm skin closes over the back of my hand at his waist. A spark sizzles from where he rests the pad of his thumb at my knuckles, coursing up my arm and burning my cheeks. He must feel my whole body tense, because quietly he explains, “So I can keep you steady once you fall asleep.”
His thumb grazes over the back of my hand so subtly, I wonder if I’m imagining it. If I’m imagining how he avoids scraping it against my ring accidentally.
I fall asleep like that, Astor’s heart pounding gently against my ear.
When I dream, it’s not of Peter’s hands all over me in the parlor as I feared, but of Astor, easing his fingers into the spaces between mine as we dance, for a blissful moment unaware of the bloodstained rug below our feet.
The coastal town of Naverough is the illegitimate daughter of whatever royalty birthed the thriving city of Laraeth. While both cities sit enthroned in a cliffside bordering the coast, the similarities end there. Instead of the marble facades of Laraeth, the buildings in Naverough are made of poorly hewn stone, the roofs hardly weather-resistant enough to make up a port city.
Though port is a bit too strong of a word for what’s in the bay. It’s more like two shabby docks, one of which looks about ready to make its hasty escape into the sea any day now. That’s, of course, where the Iaso is docked.
The shadows that usually encapsulate the ship have retreated, presumably into the magic-infused black box that Evans keeps watch over. I’d asked Charlie about it once. She’d explained that while the shadows are excellent when warding off attention in the seas, or frightening other voyagers, they’re a coveted black market item and best kept secret among a city of people who could fetch a high price for one if stolen. She’d had a similar explanation when I’d asked her why our escape from Neverland was the only time I’ve experienced the Iaso ’s ability to fly. Apparently it requires quite a bit of faerie dust to sustain and isn’t a feature that Astor wants advertised.
Rain pelts Astor and me as he guides the horse to the dock. I’m soaked and shivering, and I give in to the urge to cling more tightly to Astor’s firm torso. He tenses, and for a moment, I wonder if he’s stopped breathing.
“What happens to the horse?” I ask as we trot through the uneven streets and approach the docks.
Astor nods his head over to a seaside inn, a shabby but clean-looking place compared to the rest of the town. “I’ll leave him tied up here. The innkeeper will notice soon enough that it’s not one of the animals of the guests and will peddle him off, I’m sure.”
He slides off the horse and offers a hand to me. I take it, unsure I’ll be able to get down myself. Not with how my thighs and torso are aching with fatigue from riding through the night. Sure enough, when I whip my leg over the horse, it cramps and I fall, sliding down the beast’s hide.
Astor’s there to catch me, one hand around my waist, pulling me into him to steady me, while the other remains unwavering around my own hand. Rain pelts us from above, dripping off his forehead and onto my nose, rolling down to my lips where his gaze lingers, just for a moment, before he sets me down, my feet squishing in the mud.
I clear my throat and tear my gaze from his to peer down at my feet, only inches away from a pile of what looks to be horse manure.
“That could have been tragic,” I say, chuckling at the absurdity of possibly being any more filthy than I already am, covered in grime and gore.
“I wouldn’t have dropped you,” the captain says, his tone less playful than mine. I glance back up at him in surprise, but he’s no longer paying me any attention, just tying the horse up at the post.
By the time we slog through the muddied streets and onto the docks, Charlie and Maddox have already slid a rope ladder down the side of the boat and are waving to greet us.
When we scale onto the deck, Charlie looks me up and down, her gaze asking a single question. What happened to my dress?
The answer is, shredded to bits and dumped on the floor of Carlisle Manor, but explaining what happened to it is going to involve bringing up Peter, and…
“I’ll buy you a new one in the next city we dock in,” says Captain Astor, heading off Charlie’s question before she can ask it. But he soon amends his statement. “The next city that doesn’t stink of refuse.”
“I will hold you to that,” Charlie says, to which Maddox chuckles. “Though the last one had ruffles at the bottom of the skirts, and I have to say, if you’re already having a new one made…”
“No ruffles. Got it,” says Astor, his closed-lip smile genuine if not a bit weary.