Chapter 45
CHAPTER 45
WENDY
A s the town of Endor grows ever closer, I make the mistake of wandering one night. My destination is the deck—all I want is some fresh air, to feel the sting of salt against my face—but hushed voices stop me from rounding the corner in the hall.
“Is there a reason you’re questioning my decisions?” says the first, unmistakably Astor.
“Oh, I don’t know. Possibly because your decisions lately have been idiotic,” says Maddox.
When Astor says nothing, Maddox sighs, his voice softening. “Listen. I’ll be right behind you, backing whatever decision you make. You know that. I just wish you would give yourself some time to consider what you’re throwing away.”
“Would you question me if I found a way to cast away shackles?”
“If those shackles were the only thing securing you to the best thing that’s happened to you in over a decade?” asks Maddox. “Yeah. Yeah, I would.”
My heart patters against my chest, appreciation for the ship’s first mate welling in my heart. He might be Astor’s friend first, but that only makes it more meaningful that he considers me so highly. I’m unsure what I did to deserve it.
“Claiming Wendy is the best thing to happen to me in over a decade is a bit of a stretch, don’t you think?” says Astor. “For one, it ignores that she was the worst thing to ever happen to me prior to that.”
“She was a child, Nolan. And unconscious, if I understand correctly. You know as well as I do that Wendy had no more to do with Iaso’s death than Iaso did. They were both victims. Just in different ways. So what is this really about?”
At this, Astor seems to snap, his tone chilled. “I don’t want Wendy. Why would I want to be Mated to someone I don’t want?”
“If you don’t want her,” challenges Maddox, “why does it matter if you’re Mated to her or not? Why go through the trouble of removing your Mark if it has no effect on you?”
“Is it so difficult to believe that I wish to set Darling free from her infatuation with me? It’s unnatural for a woman to feel such things toward the man who murdered her parents.”
For a moment, my heart lifts, but it’s a stupid moment. I let myself hope that Astor’s hesitation lies in believing my feelings for him aren’t real, but then Maddox scoffs. “Nice. Did you come up with that excuse before or after she confessed her love for you?”
Astor lets out an aggrieved breath. “You don’t believe me?”
“Nolan. You don’t believe Wendy’s parents were worthy of love. In fact, I consider it proof that Wendy’s presence has softened you. Otherwise, I think you’d derive some sick pleasure from making her love you.”
“I didn’t make her do anything.”
Maddox ignores him, plowing onward. “And I don’t believe you when you claim not to want Wendy, either.”
“Well, if you’re looking for proof of my lack of feelings, I’m afraid I have nothing to show you.”
“She was right, you know,” Maddox insists. “You really do look to her in a crowd. And you touch her more than is actually functionally necessary. Besides, you talk about her constantly.”
“Darling has made herself vital to my mission. Of course she comes up in conversation.”
“Yes, well, I guess I’m too dense to grasp how it’s vital to our mission that Charlie rid the wardrobe in her room of any trace of velvet. Or how reminding us how Darling used to climb the outer facade of her parents’ clock tower at the age of twelve has anything to do with the mission. Yet it somehow comes up in conversation unprovoked anyway.”
Even though I can’t see him around the corner, I feel the air around Astor stiffen. “I never claimed not to enjoy Darling’s company.”
I fight back a groan, knowing how my stupid heart is going to twist this statement into a foothold for which to support my foolish hope.
“Hah!” Maddox says. I peek around the corner just in time to witness him jamming Astor in the shoulder with his finger.
Astor shrugs him off. “That doesn’t mean I want her.”
“Oh yeah? What was Wendy referring to when she mentioned ‘that night in the crow’s nest’?”
“A mistake that thankfully did not get the chance to occur.”
My heart aches at the surety in the captain’s voice.
“A mistake, huh?”
“Yes, Maddox. What do you want to hear?” Astor flicks his hands, opening his palms to the ceiling in exasperation. “Would you like me to admit that I’m attracted to the girl? You’ve seen her yourself. You could have figured that out on your own. And yes, I’ll admit that I enjoy her company, our conversations. When she actually speaks her mind instead of repeating whatever it is she thinks you want to hear, that is. But overstepping boundaries with her—it would have been a mistake. You overheard her on deck. She’s gotten it into her head that our relationship is more than it is. She’s….” Astor sighs, rubbing his forehead with his fingers. “Kind. She’s kind and humorous and clever—I expect even more so in that head of hers than she reveals. But she’s so very lost, Maddox. You wouldn’t need a storm to toss her about. It’s not as though I blame her for that. Her parents keeping her cooped up, Peter whispering to her from the shadows all those years, her entire upbringing hanging on one value: that she be desirable…they did her a great disservice. But she’s sensed my attraction—granted, it’s my fault entirely that I let it show—and my desire for her conversation, and she’s warped it in her mind into something it’s not. Into her salvation. And I’m certainly not that.”
Maddox goes quiet for a moment. “Have you ever considered that you could be happy with her? That perhaps good conversation and a bit of attraction might be enough?”
“Have you? When it comes to Charlie?”
Maddox suddenly finds a spot on his shoe quite interesting, but Astor returns to Maddox’s original question. “There might have been a time when I would have considered what we share to be more than enough. But if I could have Iaso back…well, it’s not Darling I’d choose.” There’s a bit of shame in the dip of his voice. “She would choose me over Peter. I believed her today, when she said as much. Darling deserves better than to be first by means of elimination. She deserves better than what I have to offer. Of that, I’m certain.”
Maddox frowns. “So you’ll let her go back to Peter? After everything he’s done to her?”
Astor doesn’t answer that.
Over the next few weeks, the pang of Astor’s rejection deepens into a steady ache. Like a wasp sting that’s become infected. The pain is no longer as sharp, but it infiltrates layers of skin, threatening to corrode everything around it.
I can’t decide what’s worse: that Astor doesn’t want me, or why he doesn’t want me.
In a way, it was easier when I believed it was due entirely to his devotion to Iaso. Convinced as I am that this remains the primary reason, it’s not what I hear repeated in my mind as I lie awake in the night.
Because it’s less that he still loves her. What I heard is that I don’t measure up. That there was the potential for Astor to love me, but I’m simply not worthy of it.
His criticisms of me are valid. I think that’s what makes them so agonizing. There wasn’t a single claim he asserted to Maddox that night that hadn’t been true.
I am easily tossed, more easily swayed. In a world of captains, I am a rudder. Surrounded by those infused with the spirit of the wind, I am a sail, made for catching the wind, just not keeping it, the only sign that the wind and I ever brushed hands the fact that I’m no longer where I started. That I’ve been pushed along, stranded somewhere I can only hope is close to the shore. Trusting that the wind cared enough to deposit me within drifting distance of a safe harbor.
I was molded to be desirable. Told I’d never find my Mate, the only person guaranteed to want me, then forced to bend to the whims of greedy hands who always found me wanting.
Wanting. Never wanted.
The more I consider it, the more I recognize why Astor cannot love me.
He asked me once if someone wanted me to be Wendy Darling, could I be her?
But I don’t know who Wendy Darling is. All I know is who she is supposed to be to everyone around her.
I can’t bring myself to hate Astor for stating the truth. He hadn’t known I’d been listening, after all.
But I think I’ve been tricking myself into believing that somehow, Astor has been barreling through the facade of murky mirrors I’ve placed around myself. That with his harsh exterior, his constant insistence that I tell him what I want, that I speak my mind, he was picking through the not-Wendys. I suppose we both assumed that one day, he was going to find, underneath it all, me.
It hits me that he tried. Astor pulled out all the stops. Took a battering ram to the facade made of bricks I’d let others place.
But when the walls came down, there’d been nothing inside.
I think, if Captain Nolan Astor couldn’t manage to find the true Wendy Darling underneath the rubble, that perhaps she was never there. Or if she was, she died a long time ago. Perhaps with Iaso Astor.
It’s probably for the best that Astor discovered the truth before things progressed further between us. I think he’s right. That if he’d kissed me that night in the crow’s nest, I might not recover. I’d convinced myself that I liked the way Astor challenged me. That I need to be prodded to grow.
I thought Astor was the furnace to my iron, that with his intensity he’d fashion me into steel.
But I was a fool to ever believe I was iron in the first place. Must have been disappointing for him too, to believe he’d placed iron into the furnace, only to return to a melted puddle and realize that I was only ever made of tin.
Peter hadn’t seemed to mind that I was made of tin. Perhaps he liked that my substance made me malleable. That’s how Astor would see it.
Astor would find a way to be disgusted at Peter for seeing me for what I am, and liking what he sees. But I have grown weary of trying to fortify what was always intended to bend. I am Peter’s. I have been since Astor traded me away.
Why would I bother to fight what’s already been decided? That’s how I think most of the time. On days when I’m stronger, when the sunshine on the deck feels comforting rather than condemning, my thoughts turn outward. Toward my brothers.
They’ll never truly be safe in Neverland. Not as long as Peter is without his ability to feel pain. Not as long as he has no true reason to fight against the Sister’s wishes. As much as I want to believe that Peter would never hurt them, that hope seems akin to a child hoping a street dog won’t bite them as they poke it in the eye.
I can’t see a way forward for myself, but I can see one for my brothers.
I only have so much strength inside for myself. So much fight. But for John and Michael, I can push a few steps further.
Maybe that’s why, the night Maddox tells me we’ve almost reached the coast of Endor and that Astor and I will infiltrate the cave the following morning, I sneak out of my rooms, and lower a rowboat into the water.