Chapter 36
The cave I find to dump the captain in is off the shoreline. The tide has come in, so I have to drag his body over the jagged, wet rocks to get there, water sloshing inside my leather boots. I get a sick catharsis every time the captain’s shirt tears, the sharp rocks digging into the flesh of his back. Every time I have to tug extra hard to get his limbs unstuck.
I don’t know how he’s here, in Neverland, but the captain must have been hunting me. He’d wanted to kidnap me the night of the masquerade, though for what purpose, I don’t know. Fear threatens to overtake me, and just before reaching the mouth of the cave, I consider whether I should leave the captain face-down in the water.
I’m not sure what all kills the fae anymore. They rarely make an appearance among humans, so all I have to go on is what I’ve read in the old faerie tales. So far, they haven’t steered me correctly. When the fae were cursed with mortal lifespans, did it make them easier to kill too? That seems likely given the fact that I was able to take the life of the murderer with my dagger.
I bite my lip, a sharp pain stinging at my lower back from where I slipped and had to overcompensate on my right side to keep the captain from falling into the water.
What am I even doing?
Even if I manage to hide him in this cave, there’s no telling how quickly he’ll come to his senses. How quickly he’ll be able to escape.
I release my grip on his arms and let the captain slump.
As if hearing my call, a wave consumes the captain’s body, covering his mouth and nose in the ocean’s froth. The ocean itself tries to pull the captain into its watery grave, its treasure store of corpses and bones and waste, but the jagged rocks provide a barrier upon which the captain’s limbs become stuck.
I watch as the waves retreat, leaving a gargling half-corpse upon the rocks as the captain’s body fights for air. It sounds like choking on your own blood. The sound my parents made when their throats were slit.
I should revel in this male’s pain. His agonizing death should fill some gaping hole in my chest, but I make the mistake of looking at his face.
He’s devastating. That alone might be enough to let him drown here. People with wretched hearts shouldn’t get to be beautiful. Not when he ripped mine from my very chest. But it’s the pain on his face that gets me. The slight wrinkles around his eyes betraying years of suffering he has over me.
Another wave splashes against the captain’s face. I might as well be pinching his nose shut while covering his mouth in a cloth. But even in his passed out stupor, he reaches for his hand.
The hand with the severed Mating Mark.
With a jolt, I remember the hatred and desperation with which I dug my dagger into the murderer’s chest cavity, even thinking he might lay a hand on Peter. I tremble to consider what I might have done had he succeeded. And Peter isn’t even my Mate.
The captain had been married to his Mate, I remember from the night of the masquerade.
What sort of madness had the captain been driven to when the Mark on his hand withered and died, following the death of his wife?
This time, the crashing waves succeed in lifting the captain from his safehold behind the rocks. In a moment of anguish and folly, I lunge after him, splashing myself up to the waist as I struggle against the sea for the captain’s body.
Heaving, I drag him across the rocks and into the mouth of the cave. I drop him onto the ground, wondering if he’ll drown despite my effort. But the man’s mouth begins to foam with saltwater. He chokes and gargles, coughing it up as it spews past his lips and down the sides of his cheek.
I stand there for a long while, staring at him, until I realize I don’t have time for such things. Not when he’ll wake eventually and persist in his quest to kill me. Or whatever it is he has planned for me.
My mind is racing, and I rub my hands on my hips absentmindedly. As I scan the cave, my gaze lands on the purple-leafed plants that jut out rebelliously from the sand.
Rushweed.
The same herb Victor gifted me after Tink’s attack.
It’s not faerie dust by any means. Back at home, it’s what doctors used to keep their patients still while they operated on them.
If only it helped with the pain.
For now, I’m glad it doesn’t.
I left Victor’s pouch back at the Den, so I’ll have to make do with what I have on hand. My hands trembling, not just with fear, but from the muscular exhaustion of dragging the tall and broad captain across the rocks, I grab a handful of rushweed, then grind it between two rocks. The leaves are brittle and dissolve easily into a powder, which I press to the captain’s lips. They’re softer than I imagined, and the feel of them against my skin brings an unwanted fantasy to the forefront of my mind—the reaction I’d expected from the mysterious man with the golden Mark when I approached him at the ball. I’d thought he’d press his lips to the back of my hand, hold my gaze in a trance.
I’d been a stupid girl then.
I’m probably still a stupid girl, but at least I know better than to blush like that.
I swallow my reaction and watch as the captain’s tense face goes lax, his breathing stabilizing. In hindsight, I probably should have waited to make sure he coughed up all the water, but I’m still not convinced I don’t want the captain to die. I just don’t want his blood on my hands.
It’s still several hours until the sun rises, and I can’t very well go back to the Den. If any of the Lost Boys see me quaking like this, they’ll think I’m as high as the clock tower, and Peter will find out I went looking for faerie dust. Even if I did turn back.
Besides. Now that I have the captain subdued, I have so many questions. Questions I buried when we crossed into Neverland. I’d accepted the fact that I’d left the answers behind in my home realm. But now that Captain Astor is here, they’re flooding back in with such urgency, I have to restrain myself from grabbing the captain’s shoulders and shaking him awake.
Instead, I sit and wait.
I’m not sure how much time passes before the captain’s long, black eyelashes flutter and reveal those stunning green eyes.
They’re awash with confusion. I watch as realization slowly overcomes him. It’s in the way his fingers tense in an attempt to curl together, but fail. In the way his boots flick as he tries to move his legs. I’ve been dosed with rushweed before, and it feels as if the doctors poured concrete into your limbs.
Painfully, the captain squeezes his eyes shut—I suppose in an attempt to contain his frustration.
Then, effortfully, judging by the way his neck muscles flex, he cranes his neck to look at me.
The breath whooshes out of my lungs when those ivy irises pierce my very soul. As with the first time we met, I feel as though I’m naked. Not because he stares at me as some of my suitors did, as if they were undressing me in their mind. It’s more like I showed up at a gathering having forgotten to don clothes, and the captain is the first to notice.
I fight the heat crawling up my cheeks.
I don’t have to be intimidated by this man. For once in my life, I’m the one in control.
Then why do I let him be the first to speak?
“You didn’t kill me,” he says, slowly. I can’t tell if he’s testing out the words, careful not to startle a rabid animal, or if the drugs are just making him have to focus more on speaking. “Tell me why.’’
My response catches in my throat, and I fumble for an answer. “I—”
No. I shake my head. “I’m the one who has you subdued, not the other way around.”
“Forgive me if your tone isn’t convincing.”
Okay, so the captain isn’t having difficulty finding his words, after all. He’s right though; my voice is shaking terribly, coming out in short screeches at parts. His pointing it out only causes my tongue to grow thicker in my mouth, a stumbling block for any witty response I might have come up with.
“Now tell me why you didn’t kill me,” says the captain.
My heart stills.
My father used to say that I was the most compliant child in the world. That I’d do anything I was asked.
Being told to do something, on the other hand?
That’s when I would dig my heels in. I wouldn’t tantrum like some children or outright refuse like others. But if it was a chore I didn’t find fair, I’d do it poorly. If it was schoolwork, I’d do it so slowly, force my tutors to suffer through a long afternoon with me.
So no.
I don’t have a clever response to the captain, but I’m sure one will come to me in my dreams tonight. When I sleep exceedingly well, knowing I have this man underneath my thumb.
Instead, I just crane my head to the side and smile softly. Waiting.
After a moment of staring me down, the captain actually gives an approving laugh, though there are remnants of the gurgling ocean in it. Even now, in my resolute state, I can’t help but notice the way the laughter softens his harsh features, warming his eyes as they come to a fresh simmer.
“So you can be stubborn, after all.”
“I can see you struggling,” I say, nodding toward his feet, which are wiggling, though not with much success.
“Come now, Darling. I was just coming to terms with the fact that you’re not as dull as you let on. Don’t go and ruin it by stating such obvious facts. Of course I’m struggling.”
I flush, anger roiling inside my throat, silencing me and holding my tongue against my will.
A cruel smirk slices against the captain’s beautiful features. “Oh, but I forgot. You’re not the type to struggle against your chains, are you, Darling?”
Tears spring up in my eyes, but I blink them away hastily. “How did you find me?”
This time, it’s the captain who offers me a cruelly placating smile, mirroring my own from earlier. I fear his probably appears more sinister than mine.
“How did you find me?” I repeat.
“Why do you assume I was looking for you? Slightly presumptuous of you, though I suppose that’s to be expected from a girl whose parents taught her from a young age that she was the only thing that was important in the universe. That her life was so much more valuable than anyone else’s.”
“Please don’t talk about my parents,” I whisper.
The captain’s cheek ticks. “Please?”
Again, my throat bulges, and I find myself nervously digging my fingers through the black sand underneath me.
“I don’t do please. Or do you think that would have been a kinder way to ask your parents to slit their own throats?”
I’m not sure what happens to me, but I lunge, the anger I’ve been stuffing down finally building up enough resistance, like a metal spring that’s been pressed and released, propelling me to my feet.
I find myself above the captain, my dagger unsheathed and glinting against his throat.
“Your hands are trembling, Darling,” he taunts.
“You know what you don’t need a steady hand for? Slitting a man’s throat.”
“But do you know what you do need?” says the captain, sighing. “Courage. Guts. And that, Darling, is something I’m afraid you’re utterly lacking.”
“I’ve killed before,” I say, and the words feel like a betrayal. Like holding up a medal I won by slicing off the hand of the person who earned it.
The captain cocks his head, though barely, searching my face intently. “Have you now? I’m impressed. But if you believe that makes you courageous, you’re sorely mistaken. Courage isn’t found in what you’re willing to do once. Courage is knowing what it feels like to get your hands slick with blood, to have your soul chipped away at. Courage is to know what it is to steep in that kind of pain, and to still be willing to do it again. Are you willing to do it again?”
I try to dig the blade further into his throat, but it’s like I’ve hit a wall—the resistance of his skin that begs me not to go forward, not to rip through it like I did the stranger. Or maybe the resistance is in my limbs. Possibly even in my soul itself, begging me not to sacrifice yet another piece of it to this island.
With haste, I retract the blade from the captain’s throat and bite down to stifle my frustrated scream.
When he finally answers my question, it feels more like a failure than anything else. A reminder that he only answers me on his own terms. “If you must know, you left your pocket watch behind in the tower. There are some talented Seers out there who can locate people by their possessions. Especially possessions that evoke emotion.”
My father gifting me the glass pocket watch dances before my memory. The present of a father tainted by what the object meant—a reminder that my time was running out.
“Where is it then?” I ask, mouth dry.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?”
As I slogmy boots through damp sand on the way out, hoping the tide will come in and fill the cave and drown that horrid man in its wake, his last words pound at my skull.
“Wendy Darling, always letting life happen to her, never brave enough to take the helm.”