Page 104 of Losing Wendy

But the captain isn’t done. “Tell me—what about the winged boy revolts you so much?”

“It’s not for lack of desire, I assure you,” I say, smug satisfaction settling in my belly when the captain has the audacity to look annoyed by my response.

“Well, if you’re denying his advances until marriage, I suppose that explains the ring.”

“At least he respects my decision,” I snap. “Because no one is touching me again until I see a ring on his finger.”

Captain Astor stills, his throat bobbing slightly.

Sand bulges underneath my fingernails as I dig them into the ground to steady myself. Slowly, I feel the pain in the beds of my nails tether me back to reality. Reminding me I’m here, not in my parents’ dark and smoky parlor. Not in the arms of yet another…

“Again?”

I blink. “What?”

The captain’s breathing quickens. “You said no one is touching youagain.”

Outside the mouth of the cave, the stars blur together. “You already saw what happened with Lord Credence.”

“But it happened before.”

“I wish that’s all that had happened before,” I say, and I tell myself to end this conversation there, but for some reason, the words start to spill out. Because I’m so angry, furious at the captain for making me remember. Angry enough to pelt him with the grimy details of the past, so he’ll have to sit in my discomfort with me. “When it was time for my coming out into society, my parents relied on my beauty and charm to win over suitors. They knew my Mark would be a hindrance, but that didn’t stop them from assuring me I’d have several proposals to choose from by the end of my first season.

“They were right to assume I’d attract attention. Men were always calling on me, lining up to ask me to dance. We thought our fears that my Mark would drive them away had been all for naught. But then the end of my first season came, and I was without a single proposal. My parents chalked it up to my youth—I was only fifteen at the time. But I knew they were just saying as much to make me feel better.

“My nightmares grew worse after that—almost as bad as when I was a child. Once my second season rolled around, I was more motivated than ever to win a man’s heart. But my motivation couldn’t have matched my mother’s. The night before the season’s first ball, she visited me in my rooms and said it was time that we talked. Woman-to-woman.”

A lump forms in my throat. It feels like a betrayal, telling this story to the person responsible for my mother’s death. But it’s as if the story has taken the reins of my mouth, and I’m simply listening, a bystander like the captain, hanging onto every word.

“She assured me that things would have been different if not for my Mark. That I would have had several proposals the previous year otherwise. As our hopes had proven vain, she suggested it wastime we employed a more shrewd approach in securing me a husband.

“My mother said…” I draw a square in the sand with my finger, but then erase it because it makes me think of Michael. “She said there were other ways to entice men, besides good manners and etiquette. I thought…” My throat stings, and I have to talk around the lump swelling in my throat. “I thought she was going to suggest that we lower my neckline. Cut slits into my skirts, which was starting to come into fashion. That wasn’t what she meant.

“There were things a woman could do with a man that could leave him wanting more, later, she said. Things that would leave behind no evidence.” My cheeks go hot, and I flip the collar of my coat up so the captain won’t see. I still don’t know why I’m telling him this, except that suddenly, though I’ve refused to think of the parlor in over a year, I feel as though, if I keep it to myself a moment longer, it will gnaw my flesh from the inside out.

“I told her I didn’t want to have to do those things. Most of the men who courted me in my first season were—well, they hadn’t seemed so bad when I’d thought marriage meant living in the same manor and having a baby magically appear in one’s belly once every few years.” I chuckle nervously.

The captain does not.

“She hugged me. She didn’t want me to have to do any of those things either. But she said once the Shadow Keeper took me away, he would make me do all those things and worse. At least this way, I’d have my mother just outside the door, listening for me to cry out in case the suitor wanted more than we were willing to give him.”

At the sound of the wordwe, the captain’s jaw bulges.

“That first night, she bullied a man attending the ball to come speak with us in the parlor. I remember having to tug at my collar because the incense my mother was burning made my throat scratchy. The man seemed annoyed to have been cornered by yet another mother wishing him to give up his bachelorhood for the sake of her daughter. My mother went to pour him a drink, but the wine bottle was empty.”

My hands are sweating now, so I rub them on my trousers. “She’d left an empty bottle on the cart on purpose, of course. She jabbered on about how silly she’d been, that she’d have to make a trip to the cellar to get more wine. Before she left, she made sure to mention how long it took for her to make decisions. How if she ended up trapped in the cellar for hours, I was to keep the suitor entertained.”

A tear, salty as the ocean breeze wafting into the cave, scrambles down my cheek. “I did what I was told. When it was over, I just remember racking my brain trying to make sure what I’d let him do was within the parameters of what my mother told me. We waited all week for a proposal, but it never came. I believe my mother threatened him with exposing what he’d done to me, but he told her to go ahead. No one would blame him for not wanting to marry a Marked girl. Exposing him would only ruin my already meager chances of finding a husband.

“I was relieved, to be honest. I thought that would be the end of it, but my mother insisted the flaw was not with the methods, but the suitor. By the next week, she’d found another man to abandon me in the parlor with. She always smiled at them, even afterward. Always beamed at them like they were our last hope.

“I got used to it after a while, but I was relieved when my second season came to a close. I thought it would mean a break, but my parents had other ideas. They made it a ritual to invite over a bachelor for dinner at least twice a week. We’d go back to the parlor, but only after a few drinks, of course.”

My tongue goes parched at the memory of faerie wine. Father wouldn’t let me drink any of it. Not after I almost died from it as a child. But I remember watching it sparkle in the crystal, hating the suitors who got to be rid of their inhibitions when I had to remembereverythingthat happened in that parlor.

I blink back tears. “I got used to it eventually. But then a man came by for dinner, and when he smiled at me, butterflies swarmed in my stomach. When he told jokes, I didn’t have to pretend to laugh. The parlor didn’t seem like such a dreadful way to end thenight, and I found myself looking forward to the moment she abandoned us.”

I go silent, the will to form words having died out. I don’t have the energy to tell the captain about that particular suitor—the first night a man’s touch felt pleasant against my skin. I’d cried after he left, just because I hadn’t known women had the capability of enjoying being touched. For the next week, I stalked my parents’ valet, waiting for the letter petitioning my father for my hand.

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