Page 105 of Losing Wendy

In the end, all I can bring myself to say is, “He didn’t want to marry me either. So I promised myself no more nights in the parlor. No more letting men touch me. Not until I saw a ring on his finger.”

I glance at the captain, just for a second, waiting for him to mock me. There’s a tick in his jaw, the only movement in his body.

“You shouldn’t have told me that,” he says, and it feels as if my heart is falling out of my chest, all the air being wrung out of my lungs.

Stupid. Stupid of me to open up to him. “Well, I figure better you than anyone else, considering you’ll be dead soon enough,” I practically spit.

The captain stares at me, murder limning every sharp feature. “No,” he says slowly. “I mean you shouldn’t have told me that. Not if you ever wanted me to feel a twinge of guilt about spilling your sorry parents’ blood.”

His words skewer me, twisting and taking bits of my flesh with them on the way out. The manifold facets of my pain fold atop one another, murky and opaque and impossible to differentiate. Is my hatred toward the captain because he killed them, or because he killed them before I grew brave enough to scream at them for what they’d done to me? Did he steal my parents, or my chance at hearing their ardent apologies? And is my hatred for the captain, or have I only directed it toward him because that seems less complicated than aiming it elsewhere?

“Why are you here?” I ask, wrenching my racing thoughts from their destructive path.

“I think you know the answer to that question.”

I grit my teeth, shaking my head. “No, I know you’re here for me. But why? What do you want from me? You’ve already gotten your revenge for whatever it is you think my parents were to blame for.”

“If that’s your subtle way of trying to get me to tell you why I killed your parents—excuse me, had them kill themselves—I’ve met possums that were slyer.”

“Or you could just tell me,” I say, sitting on the ground next to him, a careful distance, then folding my legs over one another. “Wouldn’t that be the best revenge of all? Knowing you spoiled their memory for their daughter they so adored?”

“The best revenge of all was watching them take the blade to their own throats. Besides, it seems as if they already did the spoiling themselves.”

I breathe through the way his words puncture my chest, lodging in my sternum. Slowly but surely, I’m learning not to let his cruelty tie my tongue in knots. “But it’s all you have left now, isn’t it?”

The captain’s eyes flicker with something I can’t quite read. “I already told you, Wendy Darling. You’ll suffer enough as it is. No need to add to your load.”

A chill rattles my bones. The last time Captain Astor predicted my suffering, it had come at his own hands. I find myself clenching the pouch of rushweed powder stuffed in my pocket.

“I see nothing around that might harm me,” I say, placing my words with care.

“That’s because there’s no seeing the shadows when you’re blind.” Captain Astor says it with a smile, though the words have to make it past his clenched teeth.

Now that he’s done with his food, I gather my things to go. It’s clear the captain is done talking anyway. Before I leave, I fish a pinch of rushweed powder out of my bag with the tip of my spoon, then offer it to the captain. He stares at me for a moment, but he must know I’m offering him a chance at dignity by not shoving it in his mouth, because he closes his lips around the edge of the spoon.

His thumb, still stroking his Mating Mark, goes limp.

“So, was it better?” asks the captain on my way out.

I turn around, furrowing my brow in confusion. “Was what better?”

“Whatever it was that the Shadow Keeper persuaded you was so much better than kneeling?”

CHAPTER 39

It’s almost morning by the time I make it back to the Den. That concerns me, mostly because I don’t like that I lost track of time while telling the captain my story.

His words still grate on me, the way he took my pain and used it as yet another reason to justify what he did to my parents.

I’ve worked myself into such a fury that I don’t notice Joel until I run straight into him.

“Winds?” he says, placing his hands on my shoulders as he looks down at me with a sheepish grin. I fight the urge to recoil at his touch. Joel has always been kind to me, but I won’t easily forget his tendency to torture animals.

“What are you doing up so early?” he asks, noting the satchel slung across my body.

My heart pounds, my mind searching for an answer that will satisfy him. I’m so exhausted, it takes me a moment to realize that he asked what I’m doing up early rather than why I was out so late.

“I’m about to go gather…” I stare at my satchel. “Herbs. Today’s a busy day, so I thought I’d get an early start.”

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