Page 78 of Freeing Hook

“My sister is missing.”

“She’s been missing for three months. The shaking is new.”

“Maybe I’ve just now come to terms with her not coming back.”

Peter watches me, eyes observant. “I’ll get her back, John. You and I are united in that.”

I watch my sister’s fiancé, her predator, her monster, and wonder where the truth is hidden behind his cool facade. If he cares for Wendy at all. Or if he’s angry to have had his favorite toy stolen.

If she was stolen at all, or if he stuffed her away.

I don’t know who to trust.

I used to be able to trust Wendy, before he came along and changed her. But it’s not as if I haven’t changed too. I have pain on my hands. Tink’s pain.

“You can talk to me, you know,” says Peter. “Whatever it is, I likely understand it more than you would think.”

“I was supposed to protect her,” I say, more to myself than to Peter. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted, ever since the night she came to my room and cried and told me about the bargain our parents had struck when she was sick. She was still so youngwhen she found out. And I swore to myself I wouldn’t let you take her. That I’d exhaust all resources to make sure nothing bad ever happened to her. But it wasn’t enough. In the end, you took her anyway. Worse, I’d devoted so much energy into being suspicious of you…”

Peter gives me a knowing but patient look.

“That I never saw Captain Astor coming,” I say, suddenly aware of the possibility that Peter could very well be telling the truth. Have I been so blinded by my hatred for him that I’ve neglected to acknowledge the other enemy?

“You’re not the only one who failed her, I’m afraid,” says Peter, though he’s not looking at me anymore. Instead, he stares out at the frothy sea.

I can’t help but wonder if he’s talking about losing her to the captain, or something else entirely.

“It’s cruel, you know,” says Peter after a long stretch of silence.

“What is?”

His face is as unaffected as ever, his tone even apathetic, but I recognize the ability to separate oneself from one’s emotions. “That sometimes, the price for protecting those you love is losing that bit of yourself that was good enough to want to protect them in the first place.”

My chest rattles, my mind flashing back to branding Tink’s flesh. How her whimpers—silent as they were—had reminded me of Wendy’s from that night I hid outside the parlor. I’d had to close my heart off to my love for my sister in order to torture the information out of Tink to save her. At least, I’d thought I’d had to do it. To protect Wendy, I’d sacrificed not only Tink, but the part of myself that still cared.

I’m not entirely willing to accept that, though. I’m not willing to accept that the part of me that would die for my sister is gone with my innocence.

“Did you hurt her?” I ask.

Peter doesn’t look at me. “Not in the way you’re asking.”

I think of Wendy whimpering from inside the parlor. How I was too stunned to run and ask my parents for help.

My throat stings. Peter might be laden with guilt for getting Wendy addicted to faerie dust, but he only gave it to her to protect her from the shadows, from herself. I’ve done worse to my sister.

“Do you think she’ll forgive us?” I ask, though I don’t specify for what. For not calling for help when she was being abused. For not seeing the captain coming. For letting my obsession with protecting her go so far that I tortured an innocent person, someone who had likely been abused just like my sister.

Peter doesn’t answer.

I’mon my way back to the Den when, in the dark, something bumps into me, nearly knocking me over. Panicked, I search the nearby forest for any signs of an assailant, but no one is to be found.

When I slip my shivering hands back into my pocket, my right hand curls around a set of wooden tiles.

I pull them out and examine them in the moonlight.

Three tiles. A sun. A downward-facing arrow. And a cave.

CHAPTER 31

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