Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
WENDY
“ I ’m not doing that,” I hissed, shoving Hook’s shoulder as we spoke in his captain’s quarters. “Also I really want the bed.”
“You don’t have a choice, and that’s my bed.”
I’d pretty much given up on the pretence of not wanting him, so I didn’t hold back the seductiveness in my slow smile. “We could share it.”
“You would jump me in my sleep,” he deadpanned.
“Yeah, but in a sexy way,” I said with a shimmy, making my boobs sway in my loose canvas shirt. A glimpse of skin was visible through the strings; I watched his eyes pour down my throat, drawn to the allure of my boobs, and I grinned.
“You’re trying to distract me to get your way,” he sighed, tearing his gaze away and walking around the impressive, eagle-foot desk set in front of the wide window. I was a little sad to no longer be captain, to lose these gorgeous quarters, but honestly that job was way too much work. “But there’s no way around this, Wendy. Because of your irresponsibility—”
“In saving my sister from literal murder—”
Hook sank into his chair and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You missed Feeding Day. The monster is hungry.”
“That’s not unsettling at all,” I muttered, sauntering across the room and splaying myself in the chair across from him, my legs thrown over the wooden arm. “What is Feeding Day anyway?”
Apparently by breaking Joanna out of the hold, I’d thwarted a Banshee tradition of throwing kidnapped women into the ocean. Boo hoo, I wasn’t going to apologise for saving my sister.
A muscle feathered in Hook’s clenched jaw, but he wasn’t looking at me. He stared at a brass globe on his desk that was so much fun to spin 1 as if it had offended his mother.
“The Banshee is stalked by a sea creature with an endless hunger. It can be satiated by giving it a sacrifice once every month. We call it Feeding Day.”
“And why does it have to be a woman?”
The look in the captain’s eyes was almost empty, hollow. I leaned forward, frowning at him. “It’s part of the price. One sacrifice, young and female, every month.”
I narrowed my eyes, tapping my knee with restless fingers. “Part of the price. Before, you made it sound like you’re being followed by this hungry monster but you can get it off your back by throwing someone for it to eat. But you wouldn’t know its terms if that was the case. What are you not telling me?” To butter him up, I threw in a, “Captain.”
Hook sighed heavily, his mouth pressing thinner as he focused dark eyes on me. “That’s not your business.”
“As the enforcer of this ship responsible for slaying all our enemies, I disagree,” I replied, adding a little bite into my voice.
He dragged his tongue over his canine tooth, and I blinked when I realised he was at war with himself. Whatever it was, he didn’t want to tell me. What heinous crime had he committed? What skeletons did he have in his past?
“I don’t trust you, Wendy,” he said finally, his voice deep, bleak. “Anything I tell you, you’ll spread to the crew.”
My eyes widened. “The crew don’t know this?”
“No one knows. So you’ll understand why I’m reluctant to disclose this story to you.”
“There’s a story?” So he had committed something heinous. “Don’t worry, captain.” I leaned across the desk to pat his hand, “I’ve killed a lot of people. Like a lot of people. I won’t judge you for anything you’ve done.”
“What makes you think it’s something I’ve done?” he asked with a little laugh.
I sat back, frowning. “My brother told me a secret when he was thirteen and I never told anyone.”
Hook leaned back too, his fingers running through his hair as he appraised me. “You kept the secret to this day?”
“No, I kept it until he was twenty and told everyone anyway. But that’s not the point. I’m good at secrets. I only tell them if the person’s an asshole or betrays me or really deserves it. One time Tina Jackson told me a secret in confidence, but then she slept with Lamonte when she knew I had feelings for him, so I told everyone about her having crabs. But she deserved it.”
Hook stared at me like I was mad, but then he asked, “Who is Lamonte.”
I waved a hand. “A minor infatuation when I was twenty.”
“You just said you had feelings for him.”
“Yeah, but then he got crabs. Weren’t you listening?”
Hook rolled his eyes, but he was smiling. It was a disarming smile, amusement changing his whole face from something grim and dour to full of life. “That’s all it takes for you to fall out of love? Crabs?”
“Hey, I never said I loved him. I never presented him with the heads of his mortal enemies.”
A furrow formed between Hook’s brows. “Are those two things related?”
“Obviously.” I rolled my eyes. “Do you even love someone if you don’t give them the decapitated heads of the people they hate?”
Hook tried to kill a smile by pressing his lips flat.
I pointed a sharp finger at him. “Don’t evade the question. What is Feeding Day? Why do you have to give a sea monster a sacrifice?”
Hook sighed so heavily I doubted he had any air left in his lungs. He dragged his hand down his face, his eyes going distant again. “Because I made a deal with a sea god,” he said quietly, gravely. “That’s what the sea creature is. A god of bargains and deals.”
My eyes grew bigger in increments as I processed each word. “We’re being hunted by a god?”
“Not hunted.” He waved off that word. “But the god is owed a sacrifice, and we haven’t paid. If we don’t give it blood soon, it’ll draw ours.”
“Well,” I whispered. “Shit. I see why you asked me to kidnap a woman now.” I’d been ready to stab him a few times for even the suggestion, but… damn. You couldn’t exactly say no to a god. “Do they have to be a good woman? Pure and virginal and innocent, all that bullshit men are obsessed with?”
He almost smirked, but his face was still drawn, his eyes distant. “No, as long as they’re young and female I don’t think they have to be good and virginal.”
A smile bloomed across my face, tugging at my cheeks. “We’re about a day from Summer Isle, right?”
Hook frowned. “We are. I was planning to sail us to Nova; there’s a larger city there, more chance we’ll be successful kidnapping someone.”
“Oh, we don’t need a large city. We need the Drunken Squid.”
“The Drunken Squid,” he echoed, meeting my eyes with heavy cynicism. “Please tell me it’s not an actual squid. I don’t think the monster will take payment in squid.”
I snorted. “It’s a pub. With a really foul barmaid. She’s no older than nineteen, and gorgeous. As pretty as any princess.”
“There’s a catch, I’m sensing.”
“She’s a Darling. We’re not supposed to kill other Darlings, but god, I hate her.”
“Darlings being…”
“Me. Joanna. Michael. Our family. We’re all from Mama Darling’s Home for Children. Out of all the children Mama took in, Gisele was the only one I ever hated. She always thought she was better than the rest of us, a righteous stuck up bitch, and—” I dragged down air. “That twisted excuse for a human sent my sister to her death.”
I never spoke about it, had buried it down so deep that I couldn’t even think about it, but with the chance to kill Giselle, to get justice for my baby sister, it raked up all the memories.
“Not Joanna,” Hook guessed, his voice strange, unfamiliar. It took me a moment to realise it was softer.
“No. My biological sister and I were both abandoned together. She was three and I was ten. She didn’t even live a year after we were taken in by Mama.”
“This Giselle killed her?”
“As good as,” I spat, lost in the past, the terror and screams that came from me, the blood that poured from Aymee. I fought against the memory, trying to claw my way out, but there was no way out. I’d held back these memories for so long that they’d grown power. “Giselle hated us all. I never found out why. Superiority complex, probably. Jealousy, maybe. She hated Aymee the worst because she was the youngest, and she spent the most time with Mama.”
“Aymee’s your sister?” Hook asked, in the same hushed voice.
I nodded, not looking at him. “She was young, and trusting. She trusted Giselle when the bitch told her I was waiting for her outside, down by the shops. She said I wanted to buy her a gift, lied to get her out of the house. I don’t know if Giselle was just trying to scare us, or make Mama realise Aymee was too much trouble so she sent her away, or if she wanted Aymee to get lost forever or—”
I dragged air in through my nose, grinding my teeth. “A gunfight broke out between rival gangs. Aymee was caught in the crossfire. She died there in the street.”
I dragged myself out of the bloody memory by my fingernails, focusing on Hook’s face, the roughness of his stubble, the fleck of a white scar on his cheek, the slope of his nose, the sharp edge of his jaw, the way the collar of his well-worn shirt laid against his throat, curling at the edges.
“So that’s why I’d absolutely love to throw Giselle into the mouth of a sea creature.”
“I can think of no better sacrifice,” Hook agreed, a little roughness to his voice. “I’m sorry you lost your sister so young. I’m sorry you lost her at all. I never had blood siblings but there were—others like me, where I was raised.”
“More show-off captains with annoying smirks and great hats?”
His mouth flickered at the corner, not quite a smile. “Stock. Things to be trained and sold.”
Shock snapped my mouth shut, and I regretted the joke. “Shit,” I breathed. “I’m sorry.”
I’d heard about traffickers. There were none on the island where I grew up, but some of the kids who passed through Mama’s had been their victims. Hook shrugged off my sympathy like oil on water.
“I’m only telling you this because you opened up about your sister,” he said, meeting my stare, holding eye contact. “But you repeat this to anyone, and I’ll kill you instantly. Understood?”
“I won’t tell anyone,” I said seriously. “You keep my secrets, I keep yours.”
He nodded, his eyes unfocused again. “My father sold me when I was fourteen. I only got out when I was eighteen because I made a deal with the sea god. Otherwise, I’d still be there now. Or I’d be sold to somewhere worse.”
“There aren’t many worse places,” I murmured.
“No,” he agreed, his throat rising and falling with a hard swallow.
“Four years,” I said, trying to imagine being kept in one of those places for even a week, let alone four years. “What kind of training takes that long?”
“It didn’t take that long. They were waiting for me to be of age so they could legally sell me.”
I gnashed my teeth. There was nothing legal about selling a person, no matter what the laws said.
“Plus,” he added, “I gave them too much enjoyment by fighting constantly. The trainers liked breaking people.”
“Children,” I corrected. “You were a child. They liked breaking children.”
Darkness filled Hook’s eyes. Not the darkness that happened when he exploded into tentacles. The same darkness that probably filled my eyes when I thought about Aymee.
I got out of my chair, walking carefully around the desk, slow enough that he could stop me if he really wanted to.
“What are you doing, mutineer?”
“In the Silver Isle they call this hugging, captain,” I informed him, bending to put my arms around his shoulders. “It’s a strange human gesture meant to convey sympathy and support.”
“It’s despicable.”
I squeezed him tighter. “You’ll live.”
The breath he let out this time sounded like a laugh. It was confirmed when he rested his hand on my arm, just a hand but enough to acknowledge the embrace.
“You can sleep in my quarters,” he said after a prolonged moment. “But you’re on the floor. The bed is mine. And you are strictly forbidden from joining me in it.”
I finally released him from the hug, stepping back. “So,” I said, a strangely welcome comfort between us now, none of the animosity from earlier. “Summer Isle?”
The smile that settled on his face was malicious, like he was already thinking about serving justice to Giselle. “Summer Isle it is.”