Page 124 of Freeing Hook

When I reach the beach, I’ve no idea where to start, so I walk down by where the tide is coming in, the onyx sand glittering softly in the moonlight. It reminds me of glass, the way it glistens. Like it would cut my feet were I barefoot.

I’ve made it halfway down the southernmost beach when I hear voices.

One belongs to Wendy and makes my heart skip in my chest. It’s foolishness, but for a moment, I let myself believe it’s her. That she’s back.

I approach carefully. After all, the other voice is Captain Astor’s.

“You haven’t slept with him, have you?” says the captain.

Something clanks against the ground. “Must you always be this crass?” Wendy asks.

“I’m afraid I must, given your love life—or lack thereof, as the case may be—is all I have to keep me entertained during my solitary confinement.”

As I peek in, I hardly see anything. The moonlight skates across the cave floor, revealing the familiar shape of Wendy, hugging her knees to her chest as she so often does. On the cave floor across from her is a massive shadow in the shape of a male. The captain.

He doesn’t move, other than to speak, which strikes me as odd.

Peter said the captain stole Wendy from the island, but they’re sitting together, conversing, the captain hurling insults at my sister. Asking questions.

“Tell me—what about the winged boy revolts you so much?” he asks.

“It’s not for lack of desire, I assure you,” Wendy responds, sounding, for once, smug.

Heat stains the back of my neck. This conversation feels private, but as it’s with the captain, it’s not as if I can afford not to eavesdrop.

Wendy begins explaining why she and Peter haven’t yet slept together. Why she’s waiting until they marry. Again, the brother in me wants nothing more than to flee the scene, but knowing now what I discovered on the cliffside, what the Sister whispered to Tink… I need to know what really happened between Wendy and the captain. Why he waited to take her until after this conversation.

But then Wendy’s story takes a turn. She tells of a scheme our mother conceived. A plan for blackmailing a nobleman into marrying my sister.

My heart stops in my chest. Fills with cement. No. No, no, no, no, no. My mind races ahead of Wendy’s words, toward the only natural conclusion of this story. It pairs up with my memories outside of the smoking parlor that night, multiplying the memory as I realize it hadn’t been a one-time occurrence.

The words deaden the beating piece of muscle in my chest. There’s anger there, ready to brew, but simmering underneath the surface, not yet boiling.

It can’t yet, though I want nothing more than to feel outraged for my sister.

It’s your responsibility to protect her, son.

Wendy, your sister, she needs protecting.

My parents’ words ring in my ears. Flashes of memories, fragments of them, plague my mind, now warped by the truth.

I want to believe it was just my mother, only she who knew. That my father knew nothing of it, but then I remember my father’s billiard games. How he took me to the parlor across the manor. The less nice one. And always during Wendy’s meetings with the suitors.

How he’d play with me until my mother came to signal to him at the door.

She always looked so hopeful, that beautiful smile strewn across her face.

They knew.

No, they didn’t simply know. They planned. Plotted. Schemed. Blackmailed.

All in the name of saving my sister.

Instead, they’d thrown her to the monsters early.

The truth paints itself in sticky, tar-like streaks over the memories of those moments between my father and me. Thosespecial activities that he told me were just for me. Just him and John time.

He was trying to keep me out of the way. Ensuring I never discovered what was happening to my sister on the other side of the manor.

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