Page 134 of Freeing Hook

Something swells in my throat. Not so much the captain’s words, but that I already know them. Already believe them. “I know. Now, if you’d get on with it, please. The anticipation is torture.”

His ivy green eyes sweep over my face. I can’t tell if he’s memorizing my every feature, or simply searching for some wickedness in me that will justify what he’s about to do.

In the end, he has to close his eyes as he presses the edge of the blade to my throat.

I let out the smallest gasp as the cold blade slices through flesh and a sharp pang eddies at my throat. Warm blood wets my skin, but that’s not what really hurts.

I don’t want to die. Not any more than I wanted to die when I grew ill of the plague. I want to live a long and peaceful life. I want to taste happiness for longer than a few stolen moments. I want to live, but perhaps not the way I have been used to.

I wish I had let myself be happy.

I wish I had let go of the shadows. Spent more time playing with Michael. Laughing with John.

There’s a bit of me that knows I’m betraying them by not fighting back. But no matter how much I hate to leave them, I can’t leave Iaso here. Not when she’s given so many years to me.

Not when I wasted every one of them becoming more of a ghost than she is.

The blade trembles, digging deeper into my throat. I cry out. It’s not going to be a clean cut. The captain can’t bring himself to do it swiftly, and he’s going to prolong my suffering.

“Darling, please,” the captain begs, though I’m not sure what he’s asking.

Maybe for me to just die.

“Please. Please, fight back,” he says, eyes still closed as he rests his forehead against mine. “Please.” He’s heaving now, andI don’t understand. Pain trickles, following the trail of blood against my neck. “Beg me. One word, Darling, and I’ll stop.”

“I’m afraid I’m a bit weary of begging you, Captain.”

When he flutters his eyelashes open to look at me, I can hardly breathe. Anguish ripples in my chest at the pain in his expression. Leftover magic from the Mark that binds our souls together in a pitiful twine of dangling string, I’m sure.

He lets out a strangled sound.

And drops the dagger.

In a moment, he’s on his knees, pulling me to the ground with him, cradling me to his warm, heaving chest as he weeps, before the blade even clatters to the ground. “I’m so sorry,” he mutters. “I’m so, so sorry.”

His face buried in my shoulder, relief filling my lungs, I don’t realize he’s not talking to me until Iaso appears behind him, brushing her fingers through Astor’s hair, though he can’t feel her.

“It’s okay, Nolan,” she whispers. “I never expected you to hold on this long.”

If Astor wishes to hear his wife’s response, he must be too ashamed to ask, because he remains quiet, cradling me to his chest. I can’t bring myself to embrace him back. To comfort the man who listened to me admit my love for him, while all the while plotting to trade my life for the dead’s.

But Iaso deserves for her words to be heard. So I whisper into the captain’s ear everything she says, every word of comfort. I let him cling to me as he weeps.

“He loves you, you know,” says Iaso, a smile soft on her freckled face as she watches Astor. “In his own, broken way.” She’s crying now. “It’s all I ever wanted for him. I thought…I thought the Nolan I loved was gone.” She turns to me. “Do you love him?”

When I don’t answer, she grins. “You do.”

“Broken love was what got you killed in the first place,” I whisper, and Iaso’s countenance falls, so I don’t finish my thought.

I don’t have the heart to tell her that I don’t want anything to do with broken love anymore. I could still do it, I realize. I could pick up the blade and bring it to my throat. Trade my blood for hers.

That would be the brave thing to do.

But I only had enough bravery in me for one shot. Now that it’s passed, I’m too weary, too cowardly to pick up the blade on the ground.

As it turns out, I don’t get the chance.

“What have you done to my Darling?” hisses a voice from the edge of the cave. I shoot my neck up to find Peter, swathed in shadows, his wings taking up the entrance of the tunnel. He stalks toward us, and as I scramble to my feet, Astor turns, placing his back to my front as he covers me by reaching his hands behind his back.

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