Page 12 of Freeing Hook

I shake my head. “He didn’t give me enough to get me addicted. He knew what he was doing.” I get lost in my head a little, remembering how it felt to dance in the swirl of color in the air, how it felt to fall, over and over. “It was the third time thatdid me in. I was having nightmares. After I killed the man who attacked Peter.”

“Ah, yes. The child murderer,” says the captain. “As evidenced by possessing a cheap bracelet.”

I nod, hesitantly, and it feels like the worst sin I’ve ever committed, but I can’t bear to tell him the truth about Thomas and Victor’s father. That I killed a man whose only crime was searching for his children. Not with the way the captain’s posture makes his rickety wooden stool look more like a judge’s bench.

“I was having nightmares. They were making it dangerous for me to be around my brothers at night.” Memories of choking Michael assault me, filling my stomach with nausea as the ship rocks. The chain holding me to the bed clatters. “So he gave me another dose. It was supposed to help. It did help,” I correct myself. “So he kept me on a low dose, just to keep me safe. To keep everyone around me safe.”

“I’m certain it was all with noble intent,” says Astor in a tone that would suggest otherwise.

I don’t fight him on it, not when I’m remembering the day I wandered off to the storehouse and ended up in the rafters. Nettle murdered Joel that night, and I’d unwittingly handed him the opportunity. The only reason Joel was outside the Den was because he was searching for me after I didn’t show up to help him with kitchen duty. I’m afraid if I respond to the captain, the truth will burst out of me, just like the night I told the captain about the men in the parlor.

“And the nightmares?” Astor asks. “What were those about?”

The question takes me off guard, like I was expecting the captain to dig up my worst secrets, not the content of nightmares I couldn’t help.

“Mostly just nightmares about the Lost Boys’ murders. My imagination running away with me,” I say, but then reconsider.“Rather, the shadows running away with my imagination, I suppose. That night, I saw visions of Thomas’s murder.” My heart stutters as I remember the scene the shadows played out for me—the silhouette of a man choking Thomas from behind.

I hadn’t realized until now how accurate that vision was. Had the shadows replayed for me the event exactly as it had happened, with Simon choking his friend on accident?

“Mmm,” says the captain.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Before I can press him, the captain shifts topics, which I’m secretly grateful for. “Tell me about Peter.”

My mouth goes dry, but I remind myself that I’m the one in control of the narrative here, not Astor. As much as he’d like to make me doubt Peter, as much power as he has over my whereabouts, he doesn’t get to dictate my thoughts, my feelings.

“There’s something you have to understand about Peter,” I say.

The captain flicks at a beetle that’s just landed on his knee. “I know Peter. Or have you forgotten that I knew him before you did? The boy who refuses to grow up. The boy who would rather fly than land.”

I shake my head, unable to hold back the gentle smile tugging at my lips. If it were up to me, my voice would remain cold, harsh. But it’s not up to me, not when I’m talking about Peter. “No, but that’s just it. Peter doesn’t just fly. He soars.”

Astor takes a golden coin out of his pocket and runs it sidelong up and down his knee. “And what about you, Darling? Do you soar?”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Call you what?”

I grit my teeth. I’m not sure why it bothers me so much. Perhaps because Darling feels like it should belong to my parents. “You know what.”

“Darling?” Astor’s scrunching brow is all innocence. “That is still your name, isn’t it? Or did you end up wedding Peter after all and taking his? What is the winged boy’s surname, by the way?”

The question hangs in the air between us, a taunt I have no response to.

“I see,” the captain drawls, returning to playing with his coin, glistening in the lamplight. “My apologies. I didn’t mean to offend.”

When I don’t answer, he gestures for me to continue. “You were talking about Peter.”

“Life’s been difficult for him, you know.” A dampness settles over my heart when I consider the torment he must have endured at that wretched orphanage where he grew up.

The edges of the captain’s lips lift in a close-lipped smirk. “Has it?”

“If you’re going to laugh, I…” I hug the sheets to my chest, like I think they’ll keep me restrained, prevent me from telling the captain more than he deserves to know. Peter’s trauma is his own; it’s not my place to share. “You know what? Never mind.”

The captain shifts his stool, dragging it closer to the bed so that his knees graze the mattress, almost touching my thigh through the blanket. When I instinctively pull my knees to my chest, Astor looks me up and down, then props his chin in his hands expectantly. “Alright, alright. I’m finished laughing now. Promise.”

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