Chapter 6
There is a single comfort I derive from my countless murders.
When I was a child, before the Nomad invaded my sleep, I used to dream I was being hunted, kidnapped. The nightmare wasn’t the kidnapping itself, but that I couldn’t find it within me to scream.
Now, my nightmares are the only place I can scream.
Even as the Nomad murders me, even as I’m crying out in pain, there’s a catharsis in knowing that I can. It’s the one glimmer of peace I derive from my nightmares.
But then I wake.
I’ve never had a dream where I’ve had my voice that the Nomad wasn’t present for. In the back of my mind, I’ve always known it was a possibility—getting my voice back.
The problem is that getting my voice back and being murdered by the Nomad seem to be inextricably linked.
How far would you go to get your voice back?
The Nomad is staring at me, his gaze dipped toward my throat. It takes me a moment to comprehend why, until I realize that’s where my fingers are hovering. I jerk my hand back to my side, which also seems to snap the Nomad back into the present moment, because he flicks his gaze to meet mine.
I’m surprised at how relieved I am that he doesn’t acknowledge what he just witnessed. I expected him to use it against me, to laugh. Hold my weakness over my head.
Instead, he gestures to the door. “That’s it, I’m afraid. All I have to offer you. If you’re content to go on as things are, you’re free to go.” Then he promptly begins sifting through a stack of papers on his desk. Before long, it’s as if he’s forgotten my presence entirely.
I’m too stunned to move. A few moments later, he glances up from his stack of work. “Have you decided to stay and assist me?”
As far as hope is concerned, his tone is severely lacking.
I stare down at the parchment and quill still on my side of the desk. My hope lingers, but the silence between us draws out long enough that it soon fizzles out. He’s just pulling my strings. Legend has it that in certain realms fae cannot lie, but that is not the case in this one.
“I’m not accustomed to lying, my dear,” he says, as if he can read my thoughts.
“Got me in a tight spot once. Still, if you don’t believe me—or if your voice is not as valuable to you as I assumed—the door is unlocked, which I’m sure you noted on the way in.
I commanded my people not to follow you.
In fact, we’re to make port by nightfall.
You may wait on deck if you wish, or in the room where you so politely left one of my best guards tied up and undressed.
But you may not wait here. I do have work to do, after all.
Especially considering I’m going to have to rework my plan completely, given your lack of cooperation. ”
When I don’t answer, he says, “Oh, it’s all right. No need to apologize. It’s not as if my entire plan depended on you and you alone.”
I shoot him a glare, to which he smirks. There’s no way the man who’s haunted my dreams since childhood is simply letting me go now that he’s finally found me. Even if I hadn’t grown up with premonitions, I would know better than to believe a word he says.
Men like the Nomad are born in love with money and power. And since he’s expended one to get me, he won’t risk losing the second.
As I make my way to the door, I don’t take my eyes off him.
I know better than to turn my back on a man like him, but he doesn’t look up from his desk as I leave.
When I turn the knob to the door and it clicks, he simply says, “Just so you know, as soon as you walk out of this room, the deal is void. I won’t re—”
The satisfying slam of the door behind me keeps me from hearing the rest.
The Nomad has made good on his word. For now.
After leaving the Nomad’s office, I briefly contemplated waiting in the room where I’d first woken, but the idea of lingering behind a door that might be barred later made my skin itch. My wings, too.
So I’ve spent the last several hours on deck.
It might be teeming with the Nomad’s sailors, but the air up here is fresh, saturated with salt.
I revel in that taste. Neverland tasted like salt too, but not like this.
Neverland’s air was tainted with the knowledge that the realm’s edges were even more of a prison than the cage the Sister built for me.
But the air here? I imagine that I can taste the salt from the waters of Kruschi, my homeland, that the waves and the wind carried it here just for me.
Besides, none of the Nomad’s sailors bother me.
They don’t leer either. Instead, they cast hasty glances before scurrying back to their work, pretending not to have seen me at all.
When we finally arrive at port, it’s the captain of the guard, the one I tied up and gagged earlier, who escorts me off the ship.
“For the record,” he says, “the Nomad didn’t tell me he planned on you getting out. Nor did he tell me that our prisoner was a beautiful young woman.”
I sneer at him, and he adds, “With a temper.” There’s a playfulness to his tone. “You sure you want off here? It’s not exactly the safest port.”
I roll my eyes. If there’s one thing a life on the run has taught me, it’s how to take care of myself.
“Well then,” he says. But then he adds, “I didn’t know you couldn’t—you know.
” He gestures to his mouth, and then, clearly feeling awkward about it, stuffs his hands into his pockets.
“All I mean is that I wouldn’t have bothered you had I known.
By bothered you, I mean that I wouldn’t have kept trying to get you to speak.
Not that I wouldn’t have stopped you in the hall.
I think you’re beautiful regardless of whether you can… ”
He gives up on making it better, and I make a point of staring at the docks.
“Well then,” he says again, then gestures for the ramp. “Good luck, then, with whatever your plans are.”
Whatever my plans are.
Those are the words that haunt me as I stroll through the village, a hood pulled over my head that the Nomad supplied through his first mate, as the Nomad didn’t bother to see me off.
Not that I would have wanted him to.
The robe itself is roomy, so that it drapes over my wings, hiding them.
I wouldn’t say that it’s comfortable. The tendons attaching my wings to my spine are already aching.
Oh well. I’m used to having to contort them to evade attention.
As I pass through the streets of the town, I try to figure out what my plans are anyway.
The most obvious option (and probably the wisest) is that I could try to make my way back to Lady Whittaker’s.
I didn’t mind my life there. Lady Whittaker had been kind to tutor me.
Besides, she had put me to work helping with the children.
She’d always claimed it was to pay for my and Michael’s boarding, but it had felt less like rent and more like a gesture of gratitude for a gift I could never repay—shelter from a world that would wring the value from my wings and blood without a thought.
Besides, if I went back to Lady Whittaker’s, I could track down Wendy.
I wonder if I’ll ever see my friend again.
Not just her, but her brother Michael, the closest thing to a brother I’ve ever had.
When I’d first taken him from Neverland, I’d done it for Wendy and John.
But the more I’d taken care of the boy, the more I’d watched him flourish at Lady Whittaker’s school, the more I’d allowed myself to settle into a false daydream—that he and I were family.
But he’s reunited with his actual family now. It’s not that I’m jealous or angry. Just keenly aware of a bond he and I will never fully share. Still, I would like to see him again.
I decide that tomorrow, once the sun is out, I’ll find my way onto a ship headed toward Lady Whittaker’s. Maybe the Fates will be kind to me for once, and Wendy and Michael will still be there.
Not that kindness is exactly in the Middle Sister’s nature. She’s taken not only my voice, but Wendy’s Mate, Nolan Astor.
I might feel a tad guilty about that. The Nomad had wanted my help to break into the Sister’s lair, where Astor is surely being kept. Had I helped the Nomad, perhaps I could have saved Astor as well. For Wendy.
But I’ve been fleeing my fate for too many years to break the habit, even for a friend. Maybe I don’t deserve to show my face around Wendy at all.
I’ll decide in the morning. No matter my destination, I’ll have to barter my way onto a ship, offer to work, as I have no money.
I finally reach what appears to be the only inn in town—a shabby establishment whose shutters could use straightening.
I enter, fully aware of the male gazes that lock onto me.
My hood might be drawn, but there’s no mistaking my feminine features, my full lips and delicate jaw.
At least there’s one male in this room not staring, a hooded man in the corner who is paying too much attention to his drink to notice that a female just walked in.
This inn doubles as a tavern. A bearded man who must be the innkeeper stands behind the bar. When I reach the counter, I search for a sign, less to scan for the cost of rooms (all I have to barter with is a few days of work) and more so I can point at what I need: a single room.
I’m not keen on sharing. Not when I can’t cry out in the middle of the night in the event of an assault. Not that the men who frequent this type of establishment would offer much help anyway.
To my dismay, I find no sign, and by the time the innkeeper approaches me and asks, “What will it be, then?” my heart is already racing in my chest.
A simple question. Such a stupid thing to fear.
Before Neverland, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it.
I motion in the air, as if writing with a quill.
The innkeeper looks annoyed, like he doesn’t understand.
Rather, that he doesn’t have the patience to try to understand.
Switching tactics, I pretend to write on the palm of my hand as if it’s paper.
When he raises his brow at me and says, “You want a room or not?” I nod my head.
“Single or communal?”
I raise one finger. Huffing, he reaches under the counter for a key.
“And the name?” asks the innkeeper, his thick brows rising almost in a challenge. I grit my teeth. “I need a name for the room.”
Next to me three men, all of whom boast a rather foul stench, are perched on barstools much too small for them. They cackle as the one closest to me—the one in a red shirt whose buttons at the top of his chest would be better off utilized—says, “Cat got your tongue?”
Clever.
I ignore them and again motion with my hands, asking for a quill and paper.
“Don’t have any parchment,” says the innkeeper.
I find that hard to believe. This is a business establishment, meaning someone keeps up with the finances, which typically requires parchment and ink, unless this man has a pristine memory. Which I very much doubt. But I am in no place to argue, nor do I have the ability.
“No name, no room,” he says.
To my mortification, my cheeks heat, which, unfortunately, the men next to me misinterpret.
“Oh, poor thing. Embarrassed she can’t talk?” says the one whose chest hair is poking out of his lazily buttoned shirt.
No, not embarrassed. Furious that this imbecile is too lazy to walk ten paces to the back to get me a sheet of paper and a quill.
I decide this likely isn’t the innkeeper. Probably a hired hand. Otherwise, he wouldn’t turn down my business. At least, not before he realizes I have no money.
In the rush of anger, I shove my hand into my pocket and fish out a wooden tile.
“TINK.” It’s one of the first tiles John made for me.
My heart aches at the thought of my lost friend. Rather than placing it on the counter, I hold out the tile so that the man can read it.
“Strange name,” he says.
I probably shouldn’t be doing this, shouldn’t be giving this man my name.
But as far as I know, the only person who’s put a bounty on my head is the Nomad, and he just let me walk off his ship with no repercussions.
I’ve been checking to make sure no one followed me here, but no one even got off the ship at port.
“Tink,” says the man on the stool next to me, “like the noise you make when you ring a bell.”
Ah, the first man ever to make that connection.
“Well then, Tink,” says the man behind the counter before giving me the price of the room. Now for the fun part.
I fish through my tiles until I find the five I’m looking for, then place them on the counter in a line.
“NO COIN BUT WILL WORK.”
The man behind the counter scoffs. “Should have known. Your type’s always looking for charity.”
Who even knows what he means by “your type.”
The tips of my ears heat, and I jab the “WORK” tile.
The man behind the counter laughs, then turns his back on me before taking up polishing a wine goblet.
I’m debating between throwing one of the dirty goblets on the counter at him to get his attention and simply finding somewhere else to take shelter, when the man with too few buttons fastened leans over, ale heavy on his breath.
“If you’re looking for work, I have something in mind.” His gaze drops to my chest, and he smacks his lips.
Ew.
“I’ll take your silence as a ‘yes,’” he says.
All right, time to be going. I turn to leave, but before I’ve taken a step, the man grabs my shoulder.
I wrench away, whirling to face him.
“Rethink that, miss,” he says, kicking his stool out of the way as he stands to tower over me. “A woman like you will need someone to take care of her around here. I’d be willing to protect you—for a price, of course,” he says, flashing me a set of rotted teeth.
He’s human. If this were a one-on-one fight, I could take him. But the other men at the bar must be his friends, because they abandon their stools to rise in rank behind him.
“I think she might need more than one bodyguard,” the second one says.
Panic has me itching to take a step back, but if I’ve learned anything, it’s that displays of fear only encourage men like this.
“Hold on now,” says the third. “Maybe we should wait for her to give us an answer. What do you think?”
Before I can stop him, he lunges forward, shoving his hand into my pocket and plucking out my coin purse. Then, with a sneer that curls his full upper lip, he dumps the coin purse upside down.
Tiles clatter to the floor.