Page 137 of Freeing Hook

Peter’s not supposed to be able to feel pain. He likely hadn’t remembered what it felt like.

My mind whirls, trying to make sense of it. Slowly, as Astor approaches Peter, backing his shocked opponent into a corner, my attention pivots to the place Iaso Astor withered away.

Spirits only have a limited amount of magic to offer after they die. What you and the captain want—there won’t be enough magic for both.

She’d overheard me tell Astor that Peter couldn’t feel pain. Not only that, I’d admitted that this was my original intention in visiting the Seer, to heal my Mate.

So when he’d ripped her from the inside out with his shadows, when he’d torn her spirit apart, she’d used up her well of magic to break his curse.

Something tells me she hadn’t meant it as a gift.

Grief mingled with renewed vigor propels Astor, all brute strength. Peter, usually nothing if not quick, precise, falters with every dodge.

He doesn’t realize he’s trapped until his back hits the cave wall.

Something within Astor splinters. All the rigid restraint he usually carries in his firm shoulders, all the rage channeled into purpose—it’s unleashed now, the last remaining bolster of the dam snapped.

I remember my alienist telling my mother that when humans undergo more stress than their minds can handle, they revert back to a shadow of who they were as a child. Regress into the comfort of the person they’ve built the rest of their persona around.

When Iaso was banished from this realm, when her spirit was destroyed, magic had spewed out of her, lighting the abandoned torches on the walls of the cave.

There’s one over Peter’s head. Astor removes it from the wall, its flame flickering in panic, as if it knows its end is near. Astor snuffs it out.

Then steers it toward Peter’s chest.

I gag, though I don’t know if it’s from the scent of burning flesh that hits the cave air, or the way Peter screams, his body writhing in agony. Perhaps it’s the way watching Peter, my Mate, suffer feels as if Astor has taken the brand to my own chest.

Or maybe it’s just that as Astor tortures Peter, I don’t see Astor, but Nolan. And I see the little wraith who ran for help in the village. The little boy who was concerned not for his own safety, but the newcomer’s. The child who, after being tortured, forgave, knowing it wasn’t Nolan who’d hurt him—not truly.

It can’t end like this. Not between the two of them. Peter had been kind once. Forgiving. He’d befriended little Nolan Astor, even after being tortured by him.

This can’t be how it ends.

As I make my way toward the garish scene, I kneel, retrieving Astor’s abandoned dagger—the one he dropped after slicing my throat—from the ground.

They start out pure, my intentions. When I go to fasten my fingers around the hilt, I intend to save both of them. Peter, from the torture and the death surely to come at Astor’s hand. Astor, from murdering his oldest friend, the boy who had shown him kindness.

But when I stand, the weight of the dagger in my hand, I realize I’m already holding something else.

Astor was right, that night in the crow’s nest.

I’m so very angry.

I think perhaps I’ve never recognized it, because it doesn’t match the anger I’ve seen in others. It doesn’t burn hot, only to consume itself quickly, fizzle out because it’s guzzled more oxygen than its environment contains.

No, mine’s been fed slowly. So slowly, I hadn’t noticed it growing. And as I’ve never attempted to put it out before—why put out a fire you don’t know is burning?—I find I have no way of containing it. No blanket to throw over it. No basin of water nearby.

With the dagger’s icy hilt in my hand, I feel Astor’s betrayal over again. Except this time, I let myself feel it. Iaso is gone, so there’s no use in tempering my feelings on her behalf.

Astor slipped Peter’s ring on my finger, knowing exactly what it would do to me as he kneeled. Then he used the very same hand to pick up this dagger with the intention of killing me. The same hand he used to cup my cheek the night in the crow’s nest.

It happens in a flash, but my mind slows it down. Possibly because of where I’ve been fixating.

I watch as Astor’s desire to make Peter suffer burns out. I can see the moment it changes in his face—when his face falls and he just wants it to be over.

I watch as Astor brings his dagger down with his Mated hand.

Later, I’ll tell myself all sorts of reasons for why I did it. I’ll tell myself I was saving my Mate, that my Mark drove me to it. I’ll tell myself I was keeping the captain from killing his first friend, saving the little boy Nolan from growing up to murder the one person who showed him forgiveness. Later, when my dreams torment me by replaying this moment, I’ll convince myself it was because I wanted to get back to John and Michael. That Peter was my only way back to Neverland, to my brothers.

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