Page 21 of Freeing Hook

“Is that why you decided to take a plunge?” Peter tsks. “Really, you should consider bolstering your emotional fortitude.”

Sparks flare within me. Peter’s one to scold me about my emotional fortitude, when he has the option of not feeling the most unpleasant of them. But I swallow my anger. It’s no use anyway, not when this version of Peter isn’t him.

Not when the version of Peter I love isn’t really him either.

“When we get back, please don’t tell John about this,” I say.

“I won’t,” Peter muses. He smirks, then with a beat of his wings, pushes me up against the hull of the boat and presses his mouth to mine.

Dizziness overwhelms me at the way he claims me with his lips. “You came,” I say, my voice almost lost under the hunger of his kiss. “I thought you wouldn’t come for me.”

Peter responds with a playful bite at my ear. “I’ll always come for what’s mine.”

“As much as I’m enjoying this,” I say, nudging my head up against the side of the boat and blushing. “We’d better leave before they realize I’m gone.”

Peter brushes my hair from my face and tucks it behind my ear. “You know I can’t do that.”

My heart stops in my chest. “But—”

“I wanted to see you. Make sure he hadn’t touched you. He hasn’t touched you, has he?”

I shake my head.

“Good,” Peter says. “And it’s a good thing I came too. What had you despairing, my Darling pet?”

My throat hurts, still reeling from the disappointment that Peter didn’t come to take me away. Though now that the adrenaline of the past few moments has subsided, I understand why. Peter made a binding bargain with Astor. He might be able to bend the rules by visiting me, but he can’t whisk me out of Astor’s clutches.

“There was a woman on deck,” I say, though even as the words come out, I recognize how strange they are. “She knew about…” I catch myself, remembering I haven’t yet told Peter about the parlor. I doubt it would deter him from wanting to marry me, but now isn’t exactly the time. “Some things from my past. And she told me that John and Michael were safer without me. I don’t…I don’t know how she knew. Or why I even believed her.” Panic rises in my chest as the gravity of what I’d almost done slams into me. “Peter, Peter, if you hadn’t been here…” My lungs tighten, and I can’t breathe.

Peter’s inky eyes examine mine. “When was the last time you had faerie dust?”

I blink. “Astor cut me off. It was awful for a few days, but it’s out of my system now.”

Peter nods. “It wasn’t a woman on deck with you. It was a wraith.”

I frown. “I thought you said wraiths were made when someone experiences pain strong enough that the nearby shadows drink it up and come to life. If that’s so, why did she know about…Oh.” My jaw works. “When we left Neverland, it felt like I was being ripped in half. I guess that was my end of the Mating Mark knowing we were being separated. That’s why her voice seemed so familiar, but not. The wraith came from me…from my pain.”

Finally finding logic, I school myself not to expect Peter’s pity. Not when he can’t feel pain, and especially not when his eyes are still inked over. “Peter,” I say, meaning to tell him that I know what the Sister cursed him with. Before I can get the rest of my sentence out, he puts a hand over my mouth and nods toward the deck. I can’t hear anything, but his ears swivel, homing in, so I assume someone is nearby.

After a moment, he takes his hand from my mouth. Before I can resume, he plucks a pouch from his pocket and tucks it into my hands. My heart skids to a stop.

“I want you to ration this for yourself,” he says. “I’m limited in the time I can come keep an eye on you. I have to time my visits around the Sister’s errands so she doesn’t grow suspicious. I don’t want any wraiths convincing you to off yourself while I’m gone.”

I open my mouth to protest, to tell him I don’t have the self-control to ration it for myself, but already my mouth is watering. I can almost taste the honeysuckle flavor on my tongue. Almost feel the pain being washed away for a moment.

“Now,” says Peter, tucking me against the hull again, and pressing his mouth into the crook underneath my jaw. “Where were we?”

Sparks go off in my head, but it’s short-lived, because above us something rustles on deck.

“Did I ask where you last saw her? Or did I askwhere she is?” Astor’s voice booms from above.

Peter lets out a quiet groan of annoyance against my neck, then presses his finger against his mouth, his other hand still firmly steadying my waist against him.

My heart races, not so much that the captain will catch us—Peter’s not foolish enough to get caught. But I anticipate Peter’s gentle ascent before his wings even beat us upward. The path he courses around the curve of the hull, his ears locating the footsteps of the shouting crew members on deck, searching for me. They’re no match for his stealth, and I spend my last few moments in his arms drinking in the scent of amber and pine, trying to memorize it before it flees my mind for good. Before I’m left with nothing more than a fading memory.

When Peter deposits me on deck, he doesn’t waste time with a goodbye kiss. He disappears into the shadows so quickly, I’m left wondering if I imagined it all. If his appearance was nothing more than the ravings of an addict, the same one who believed her own wraith.

My heart aches. Not just from my separation from Peter, but the knowledge of how easily I’d let the part of me that hates myself talk me over the edge. I’d almost left John grieving his sister, Michael without an understanding of why I never came back for him.

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