Page 133 of Freeing Hook

Iaso crinkles her brow.

Astor looks confused as to who I’m talking to, but realization soon dawns on his face. “Iaso is here,” he says, eyes scanning the room hungrily for his lost wife.

Somehow, I’m the one who’s never felt so invisible.

Iaso goes to him, clings to his shoulders. “Please, Nolan,” she says, pressing her forehead to his. “Please, don’t do this. This isn’t you. This isn’t the man I love.”

But he can’t hear her, can’t feel the press of her skin against his brow.

“What is she saying?” he asks, staring straight through his wife at me.

I open my mouth to tell him, but something stops me. Maybe it’s the emptiness of the cave. The way Iaso’s voice doesn’t echo. The desperation with which she tries to reach her husband but can’t.

She’s spent fifteen years like this. Alone. Calling out to those who can’t hear her.

I assumed there were more than just her in this cave, and perhaps there are, but I’ve heard no one else calling out to me. Can she even speak to the others who are dead, or do they wander about, unable to communicate?

She’s spent fifteen years trapped, all so I could live. All so my parents wouldn’t have to suffer the pain of losing their daughter. Had I died, I would have faded into nothingness or crossed to the afterlife. Iaso hasn’t been granted that luxury, that peace.

She’s weeping now, screaming at Astor, who still waits for my response. “Please. Please, don’t ruin yourself for me. Please, Nolan. I love you, but this isn’t you.”

My heart aches. Iaso didn’t choose to trade her life for mine when I was a child. That choice was thrust upon her. Even so, when given the chance to take her life back, she’d rather be doomed to the shadows than watch the man she loves slaughter me. A girl she sees as innocent.

Maybe that’s why my mouth produces the lie with such ease. “She says she misses you,” I say, tears bubbling in my eyes, falling down my cheeks. “She says she’s been so alone. That she wants to come home.”

Iaso goes still, hanging off of Astor’s shoulders, her breathing ragged from weeping. Slowly, she swivels her head toward me. “What do you think you’re doing?”

My throat hurts, but I get the words out all the same, craning my neck to the side and shrugging. “I wasn’t supposed to be here. I wasn’t supposed to live. I was supposed to die during that plague, to have spent the last fifteen years at peace. It was wrong, what my parents did to you. I was given years I wasn’t supposed to have. Years I squandered in fear, when you would have used them for good. Think of the children you would have healed while I was climbing towers and hiding from the shadows. It’s okay that you want to go home, Iaso.”

She stands, placing herself between me and Astor. “There are many things I would do to escape this wretched place. But his soul is too valuable a cost.”

I offer her a sad smile. “I know. That’s why I’m giving him my permission.”

Astor goes still, all except for his blade, which is shaking. He paces toward me, straight through his wife, who is back to screaming, tugging at his neck, though to no avail. When he reaches me, he places his warm hand on the back of my neck,pulling me into him. So my body won’t fall when my legs give out from underneath me, I realize.

His ivy eyes shimmer under the gleam of tears as he presses the blade to my neck. When he speaks, his voice is hoarse. “Why, Darling? Why is it that you never fight back?”

“I don’t have to wield a blade to cut you, Captain,” I say with a soft smile, the sting of a tear at my eye.

His blade trembles at my throat, his own throat bobbing. His chuckle is pained. “Is that what this is? Wendy Darling’s last revenge? The knowledge I’ll see your face every time I close my eyes? Are you intending to haunt me from the grave?”

“Come now, Captain,” I say. “You should know better than that.”

“Is that so?” he asks. “Because I would hate to think…” He closes his eyes, breath halting. “I would hate to think…”

“That I’m a fool, so hopelessly in love that I’d let you slit my throat as long as I thought it’s what you wanted?”

The playfulness has left his expression now. He’s desperate. It doesn’t suit him.

“Don’t fret, Captain.” I steal a glance at Iaso, who’s crying, though she’s no longer fighting him. “I’m not doing this for you.”

Astor actually flinches, as if someone’s put a blade through his stomach. But it’s just me and him in this room, and I’ve never been all that good at fighting back. When he closes his eyes and brings his forehead to mine, I can’t tell which one of us is trembling.

“Thank you, Darling,” he whispers.

“An apology and a thank-you in one conversation,” I say. “Careful, Captain, or I might just start to believe you care for me, after all.”

“I don’t deserve the honor of claiming that,” he says. “I shouldn’t…I shouldn’t have been cruel to you.”

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