Chapter 50
CHAPTER 50
WENDY
W hen Astor closes in after slicing through the vines, it’s like a predator trying not to spook his prey. He even holds his Mated hand up, placatingly. Apology shadows his eyes, deepens the purse of his lips.
At the sight of him, Iaso lets out a pained sob.
“How long?” I ask. “How long have you been intending to sacrifice me to get her back?” Astor winces, but I don’t give him the chance to respond. “That’s what this is, isn’t it? Some dark bit of magic that makes it so that the living can trade places with the dead?”
My mind races to catch up.
I gasp, realizing it’s just like the story I used to tell John and Michael. The one where the man sacrificed his wife so that she could trade places with his dead lover. His dead lover, who had been slaughtered by his jealous wife. The murderer’s life in exchange for the victim’s. It had been depicted in the Nomad’s sketchbook, hadn’t it? I’d flipped right by it, immediately distracted by the sketch of the Reaper and the Oak.
I might not have been the one to slit Iaso’s throat, but I’m the one who drank her blood. I’m the one who technically killed her.
Except the stories aren’t the same. Not really. Because I’m not Astor’s wife. I’m not even his lover.
“Wendy—”
“Were you already planning this the night in the crow’s nest? When you almost kissed me? What about all those times you practically begged me to fight back? When you locked the faerie dust up to protect me, was it so I’d feel everything about your betrayal when you finally brought me here? How long, Nolan?”
He cringes at the use of his given name, but I’m not done.
“You could have kept me locked up,” I almost shout. “You could have carried me over your shoulder, bound and unable to move. You could have been content to let me go on hating you, but no. You went and made me love you. You pretended to be my friend.”
Astor shakes his head. “If it’s any consolation to you, which I’m not enough of a fool to think it will be, I didn’t know until we met with the Nomad.”
My mind races back to my private meeting with the Nomad. How he’d offered me exclusive information about the Seer in this cave in order to bargain for Tink. How he’d put it into my head to betray Astor.
“He offered you a deal too,” I say, feeling so stupid. “That way, it wouldn’t matter if either of us failed. As long as one of us succeeded, that person could retrieve Tink for him. Me with my sway over Peter, you with the brute force of your crew.”
“And what was it that you wanted?” he asks.
I stare at the calling stone in my hands. “I was going to free Peter of his curse.”
Astor swallows. “Was going to?”
“I decided not to. The Nomad told me the Seer would only have enough magic to break one of the curses, so I was going to let you remove the Mark instead.”
Guilt washes over Astor’s face. His blade shakes, but he doesn’t sheathe it. Doesn’t cease his steady approach.
“Peter’s cursed?” asks Iaso, though Astor doesn’t appear to hear her. Doesn’t appear to see her either, likely because I’m the one who activated the calling stone.
“Yes,” I say. “He can’t feel pain.”
Iaso crinkles her brow.
Astor looks confused as to who I’m talking to, but realization soon dawns on his face. “Iaso is here,” he says, eyes scanning the room hungrily for his lost wife.
Somehow, I’m the one who’s never felt so invisible.
Iaso goes to him, clings to his shoulders. “Please, Nolan,” she says, pressing her forehead to his. “Please, don’t do this. This isn’t you. This isn’t the man I love.”
But he can’t hear her, can’t feel the press of her skin against his brow.
“What is she saying?” he asks, staring straight through his wife at me.
I open my mouth to tell him, but something stops me. Maybe it’s the emptiness of the cave. The way Iaso’s voice doesn’t echo. The desperation with which she tries to reach her husband but can’t.
She’s spent fifteen years like this. Alone. Calling out to those who can’t hear her.
I assumed there were more than just her in this cave, and perhaps there are, but I’ve heard no one else calling out to me. Can she even speak to the others who are dead, or do they wander about, unable to communicate?
She’s spent fifteen years trapped, all so I could live. All so my parents wouldn’t have to suffer the pain of losing their daughter. Had I died, I would have faded into nothingness or crossed to the afterlife. Iaso hasn’t been granted that luxury, that peace.
She’s weeping now, screaming at Astor, who still waits for my response. “Please. Please, don’t ruin yourself for me. Please, Nolan. I love you, but this isn’t you.”
My heart aches. Iaso didn’t choose to trade her life for mine when I was a child. That choice was thrust upon her. Even so, when given the chance to take her life back, she’d rather be doomed to the shadows than watch the man she loves slaughter me. A girl she sees as innocent.
Maybe that’s why my mouth produces the lie with such ease. “She says she misses you,” I say, tears bubbling in my eyes, falling down my cheeks. “She says she’s been so alone. That she wants to come home.”
Iaso goes still, hanging off of Astor’s shoulders, her breathing ragged from weeping. Slowly, she swivels her head toward me. “What do you think you’re doing?”
My throat hurts, but I get the words out all the same, craning my neck to the side and shrugging. “I wasn’t supposed to be here. I wasn’t supposed to live. I was supposed to die during that plague, to have spent the last fifteen years at peace. It was wrong, what my parents did to you. I was given years I wasn’t supposed to have. Years I squandered in fear, when you would have used them for good. Think of the children you would have healed while I was climbing towers and hiding from the shadows. It’s okay that you want to go home, Iaso.”
She stands, placing herself between me and Astor. “There are many things I would do to escape this wretched place. But his soul is too valuable a cost.”
I offer her a sad smile. “I know. That’s why I’m giving him my permission.”
Astor goes still, all except for his blade, which is shaking. He paces toward me, straight through his wife, who is back to screaming, tugging at his neck, though to no avail. When he reaches me, he places his warm hand on the back of my neck, pulling me into him. So my body won’t fall when my legs give out from underneath me, I realize.
His ivy eyes shimmer under the gleam of tears as he presses the blade to my neck. When he speaks, his voice is hoarse. “Why, Darling? Why is it that you never fight back?”
“I don’t have to wield a blade to cut you, Captain,” I say with a soft smile, the sting of a tear at my eye.
His blade trembles at my throat, his own throat bobbing. His chuckle is pained. “Is that what this is? Wendy Darling’s last revenge? The knowledge I’ll see your face every time I close my eyes? Are you intending to haunt me from the grave?”
“Come now, Captain,” I say. “You should know better than that.”
“Is that so?” he asks. “Because I would hate to think…” He closes his eyes, breath halting. “I would hate to think…”
“That I’m a fool, so hopelessly in love that I’d let you slit my throat as long as I thought it’s what you wanted?”
The playfulness has left his expression now. He’s desperate. It doesn’t suit him.
“Don’t fret, Captain.” I steal a glance at Iaso, who’s crying, though she’s no longer fighting him. “I’m not doing this for you.”
Astor actually flinches, as if someone’s put a blade through his stomach. But it’s just me and him in this room, and I’ve never been all that good at fighting back. When he closes his eyes and brings his forehead to mine, I can’t tell which one of us is trembling.
“Thank you, Darling,” he whispers.
“An apology and a thank-you in one conversation,” I say. “Careful, Captain, or I might just start to believe you care for me, after all.”
“I don’t deserve the honor of claiming that,” he says. “I shouldn’t…I shouldn’t have been cruel to you.”
Something swells in my throat. Not so much the captain’s words, but that I already know them. Already believe them. “I know. Now, if you’d get on with it, please. The anticipation is torture.”
His ivy green eyes sweep over my face. I can’t tell if he’s memorizing my every feature, or simply searching for some wickedness in me that will justify what he’s about to do.
In the end, he has to close his eyes as he presses the edge of the blade to my throat.
I let out the smallest gasp as the cold blade slices through flesh and a sharp pang eddies at my throat. Warm blood wets my skin, but that’s not what really hurts.
I don’t want to die. Not any more than I wanted to die when I grew ill of the plague. I want to live a long and peaceful life. I want to taste happiness for longer than a few stolen moments. I want to live, but perhaps not the way I have been used to.
I wish I had let myself be happy.
I wish I had let go of the shadows. Spent more time playing with Michael. Laughing with John.
There’s a bit of me that knows I’m betraying them by not fighting back. But no matter how much I hate to leave them, I can’t leave Iaso here. Not when she’s given so many years to me.
Not when I wasted every one of them becoming more of a ghost than she is.
The blade trembles, digging deeper into my throat. I cry out. It’s not going to be a clean cut. The captain can’t bring himself to do it swiftly, and he’s going to prolong my suffering.
“Darling, please,” the captain begs, though I’m not sure what he’s asking.
Maybe for me to just die.
“Please. Please, fight back,” he says, eyes still closed as he rests his forehead against mine. “Please.” He’s heaving now, and I don’t understand. Pain trickles, following the trail of blood against my neck. “Beg me. One word, Darling, and I’ll stop.”
“I’m afraid I’m a bit weary of begging you, Captain.”
When he flutters his eyelashes open to look at me, I can hardly breathe. Anguish ripples in my chest at the pain in his expression. Leftover magic from the Mark that binds our souls together in a pitiful twine of dangling string, I’m sure.
He lets out a strangled sound.
And drops the dagger.
In a moment, he’s on his knees, pulling me to the ground with him, cradling me to his warm, heaving chest as he weeps, before the blade even clatters to the ground. “I’m so sorry,” he mutters. “I’m so, so sorry.”
His face buried in my shoulder, relief filling my lungs, I don’t realize he’s not talking to me until Iaso appears behind him, brushing her fingers through Astor’s hair, though he can’t feel her.
“It’s okay, Nolan,” she whispers. “I never expected you to hold on this long.”
If Astor wishes to hear his wife’s response, he must be too ashamed to ask, because he remains quiet, cradling me to his chest. I can’t bring myself to embrace him back. To comfort the man who listened to me admit my love for him, while all the while plotting to trade my life for the dead’s.
But Iaso deserves for her words to be heard. So I whisper into the captain’s ear everything she says, every word of comfort. I let him cling to me as he weeps.
“He loves you, you know,” says Iaso, a smile soft on her freckled face as she watches Astor. “In his own, broken way.” She’s crying now. “It’s all I ever wanted for him. I thought…I thought the Nolan I loved was gone.” She turns to me. “Do you love him?”
When I don’t answer, she grins. “You do.”
“Broken love was what got you killed in the first place,” I whisper, and Iaso’s countenance falls, so I don’t finish my thought.
I don’t have the heart to tell her that I don’t want anything to do with broken love anymore. I could still do it, I realize. I could pick up the blade and bring it to my throat. Trade my blood for hers.
That would be the brave thing to do.
But I only had enough bravery in me for one shot. Now that it’s passed, I’m too weary, too cowardly to pick up the blade on the ground.
As it turns out, I don’t get the chance.
“What have you done to my Darling?” hisses a voice from the edge of the cave. I shoot my neck up to find Peter, swathed in shadows, his wings taking up the entrance of the tunnel. He stalks toward us, and as I scramble to my feet, Astor turns, placing his back to my front as he covers me by reaching his hands behind his back.
Peter cranes his head to the side. “Oh, so now you’re trying to protect her? Tell me, Nolan, why’s there blood dripping from her throat?”