Page 1 of Freeing Hook

CHAPTER 1

WENDY

The best part about flying is the nothingness. Nothing but the weightless hum of the empty air. No ground to tether me. No gravity to shove me downward and chain me to the earth.

The sweet taste of honeysuckle and powdered sugar still lingers on my tongue, sparking in clusters throughout my weightless limbs. The feeling lasts for but a moment before my spine scrapes against something hard. Faintly, I can feel a splinter puncture my shirt, lodging itself into my skin.

A moment later and the faint pain is gone, lost to the vast array of colors speckling my vision.

I’m not sure how long I stay like that. Forever and a second are synonymous when your body obeys the tick of a clock not of another realm, but a different plane of existence entirely.

“Get. Her. Down.” Rage suffuses the growl, making the hairs on my arms prickle. I don’t mind. Even gooseflesh feels pleasant at the moment.

“Captain—”

“I said get her down. Now.”

There’s a shuffling like flapping parchment against my ears. Labored breaths as someone climbs. Perhaps once they reachmy heights, they’ll stay up here with me. I’m not sure whether I’d prefer that. On the one hand, I’d love nothing more than for every creature that roams the earth to soak in this pleasure. On the other, part of me worries that having someone else join me in the nothingness will make it…well, less like nothingness and more like somethingness. Cause the pool to overflow at the edges, chase the warmth away.

The skin that grasps my wrist is calloused, but the hand itself is small. Almost like a child’s. My thoughts threaten to go to Michael, but he’s far off, and I don’t want to think of my brother right now. Not when fingers wrap around my wrist like my fingers wrapped around Michael’s throat…

No. No, I’ll just drown in the nothingness for a while longer.

A gentle tug, and my body drifts. Down, down, down. Like a feather freed from a recently shredded pillow.

The hand weighs me down, and I soon worry it’ll steal me from the flecks of riveting color that mask my surroundings. We’re above the clouds, and this hand will drag me through their soft embrace, only to stake me to the ground. To the world below, where death and suffering reign.

I flail, and though my movements are weak, like kicking through sludge, the grip around my wrist loosens.

“Captain.” The voice is both warning and panicked. Female, I think.

“Out of my way.” That one’s the deeper voice, the voice I’m trying to escape. The voice that would tie me down, shear my wings if I had them.

I thrash, digging my fingernails into the nearest flesh they can find, and whoever’s detaining me lets go with a cry.

Finally, I’m free.

I hang suspended in the air, just for a single breath of exhilarating freedom, when another hand fastens around my wrist.

This grip is not so gentle. It digs into my skin like it intends to imprint itself there, and yanks. A whoosh of air, and I find my body pressed against something hard, something warm, something pulsing, no—heaving.

This is not what it feels like to fly. This is what it feels like to be had. Seized. Owned.

I kick at my captor, but each successive blow only strengthens his fortitude. And then he yanks me down.

I waketo the caress of plush bedsheets, my captor’s warm but rough grip replaced by the icy sting of metal around my left wrist. I gasp, flailing, mussing the sheets, but all that serves to do is get my arm tangled up in the chain securing me to the bedpost.

“I see you’ve come back down from your little excursion. Tell me, Darling, did you soar?”

A chill, colder than the shackle’s kiss, trickles down my spine as I turn to face my captor.

Captain Nolan Astor is perched on the bedside facing me, swathed in shadows, though none of them consume him. Not with the lantern sitting atop the bedside table illuminating his harsh features. The sharp slant of his jaw, the black tips of his hair razoring across his forehead. His ivy green eyes glow in the darkness, pinning me to the bed.

When I don’t answer, Astor’s throat bobs. He digs his fingers into the mattress, like he’s restraining himself. “I offered you freedom. I would have thought you clever enough not to toss my generosity overboard.”

The past few days swarm the edges of my memory, but I try to hold them back. Better to keep them from assaulting me all at once. Still, they break through my measly fortifications. Nettle confessing to the murder of three Lost Boys. Captain Astor stealing me from the cave I’d used to imprison him. Peterbargaining me away on the onyx beach in exchange for the Lost Boys’ safety.

I’d thought the captain would throw me in the hull of his ship, but to his credit, he’d been a man of his word. Back in Neverland, he’d told me he wouldn’t stuff me in a barrel when he took me. Instead, he’d provided me with my own room—a small, dingy chamber, but it was mine and it meant there was a lock between me and the rest of the crew.

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