Page 136 of Freeing Hook

Astor tenses, but he waits for Peter to cross the room.

When Peter presses the stone into Astor’s Marked hand, he offers the captain a feral grin. “You shouldn’t have touched what was mine.”

Shadows, silky as ink, drip off of Peter’s hand, coating the stone like tar.

“No!” Astor bellows and yanks the stone from Peter’s grip, but it’s too late. Across the room, Iaso’s bluish veins have turned black, jettisoning inky streaks across her face. Her hands go to her throat, and she gags as tar pours from her open mouth, coating her front in black blood.

My hand finds my mouth to cover my gasp, but it’s too late. Astor’s gaze snaps to me at the wretched sound, distraught recognition overcoming his face.

“What’s happening to her?” he snarls.

“Peter, stop. Please,” I say, racing over to Iaso. She’s on her knees now, and though I try to comfort her, there’s nothing I can do when my hands sweep through her. She turns to me, her eyes as black as Peter’s, though they’re wide in horror.

“Peter,please!” I scream, but my pleas are drowned out by the captain.

He’s on his knees in front of Peter, begging. “Please, just don’t hurt her,” he says. “I’ll do anything. She’s your friend, too,” he says, confusion swarming in his eyes.

“What’s to say you wouldn’t try to hurt Wendy again to bring her back?” asks Peter, staring down at Astor in cruel delight. “What’s to say you wouldn’t keep trying to take her from me? You can’t give a present, then expect it back, Astor. But you never did realize that as a boy either.”

“This isn’t you,” I say, as Iaso’s skin starts to fade from silvery blue to gray. She’s trying to mouth something, but I can’t make it out against the bubbling black foam. “Once you’re yourself again, you’ll regret this.”

Peter ignores me, staring down Astor.

“Whatever you want,” says Astor. “Just don’t hurt her.”

“That’s the thing,” says Peter, black eyes flashing. “What I wanted was for you not to touch my things.”

The stone in Astor’s hand explodes in a flurry of shadows, sending orbs of magic shooting across the room. They light the abandoned torches lining the cave walls, casting an eerie burning glow across the cavern.

Iaso screams, a wilting cry of anguish that must pierce through the veil of the dead, because Astor snaps his neck toward where she’s kneeling, his eyes wide in terror. He runsto her, but it’s too late. Shadows are pouring out of her mouth, her nose, her eyes, ripping through her chest, her fingertips, her belly. They’re eating her from the inside, writhing worms of darkness.

They consume her until there’s nothing left.

Astor’s crying, reaching for a wife who’s no longer there. He doesn’t realize it until he turns to find the look of shocked horror on my face.

We exchange one last glance. I don’t school my face in time.

He looks as if he’s been speared in the stomach, and then something in him shifts. He blinks, then kneels, brandishing his sword from its scabbard.

When he fixes his gaze on Peter, there’s nothing of the kind man I thought I knew in his eyes. Nothing of the tenderness I was beginning to recognize.

“There,” taunts Peter, “problem solved. Aren’t you grateful that I put your wife out of her suffering? She’ll probably thank me in the next life. I bet she’s grateful that you’re no longer imprisoning her here.”

Astor bellows, then lunges. Sword clashes with shadow as Peter parries the captain’s attack with a whip he’s conjured of shadows. The shadows curl around Astor’s sword, attempting to wrestle it from his hand. But Astor is schooled in combat. Rather than attempt to regain control of his sword, he releases the hilt, spinning and striking at Peter from behind with a spare dagger he unsheathes from his boot.

Peter dodges well enough, sensing the attack without having to see it. When he whips around to face Astor, there’s unadulterated malice—the amused sort—in his expression. Astor thrusts his dagger toward Peter, but it’s deflected by Peter’s shadows. This time, Astor’s prepared, and brings the dagger back to his chest before the shadows can wrap theirtendrils around it. When he swings again, the tendrils aren’t ready, and he manages to nick Peter’s shoulder.

The gash cuts through Peter’s leathers. It’s nothing, really. A simple slice of flesh. The kind of wound someone like Astor or Maddox would likely not even notice during battle.

Not Peter. Peter gasps.

It’s a quick inhale, coupled with a flash of shock on Peter’s face. He hides it almost immediately.

Not fast enough.

“Thought you said he couldn’t feel pain,” says Astor, eyes brimming with a hunger for blood.

Peter blinks, stepping backward. He looks unsteady, like the bit of pain he’s experienced has rattled him. And why shouldn’t it?

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