Page 35 of Freeing Hook

She shows no sign of fear. Not even when I brandish my still-glowing dagger.

“Talk,” I say.

I’m met with a defiant smirk. She doesn’t think I’ll do it.

That’s because she doesn’t know me.

When I place the blade against her—a long line tracing her clavicle—I feel nothing but the lackluster protest of the outer layer of her skin, which sutures immediately after the blade punctures it.

She doesn’t scream, choosing the clamp her jaw instead, but her eyes fling open, tears welling in them. She’s a tough woman, and she’s fae, so I imagine the tears are more from shock than anything.

There’s a bright red mark left behind.

When I touch the blade to her again, she spits in my face.

I keep going.

The second branding is more difficult. Straight across her thigh. I know it’s a relatively safe place to burn her. More fatty tissue to absorb it. No vital organs to damage. That’s why I chose it. But it feels intimate, and as Tink whimpers, I don’t hear Tink, but Wendy, crying softly from the parlor after a suitor readjusts his cravat on the way out the door.

The thought makes me ill, and for a fleeting moment, the panic begins to set in. The doubt.

I can’t do this.

But I’ve failed Wendy one too many times. I won’t fail her again.

I make another mark, and as Tink cries, I remind myself who I’m doing this for.

Who I’m protecting.

It’s only laterthat night as I’m lying awake in bed, considering what more I could possibly do to break her, how she could be sostubborn in spite of such pain, that the realization hits me in the gut.

As I cooked Tink’s skin, she didn’t refrain from telling me because she wouldn’t.

It’s because she can’t.

CHAPTER 13

JOHN

When I visit Tink the next day, I come prepared, a journal I snuck from Freckles’s now-empty room and a quill in hand. A bottle of ink tucked into my pocket.

Tink’s asleep when I enter, curled up on the floor, her limbs all sharp angles and bones.

It looks terribly uncomfortable. I wonder if it’s painful, sleeping on the floor when you have so little fat to guard your bony edges. Guilt taps at my conscience, so I pull the wrapped food out of my pocket before I bother with the writing utensils. Logically, I know it’s not my fault that Tink is so malnourished. I wasn’t the one who brought her to this island, and a night spent in a cage isn’t nearly long enough to have had a long-term effect on her health.

I repeat these facts to myself. But it’s just like writing a word over and over, until it no longer looks as if it’s spelled correctly.

Funny how even facts can appear false when we dwell on them too long.

Of course, the fact remains that I tortured her last night.

“I brought you breakfast,” I say, unwrapping the jerky I snuck from the kitchens this morning.

Tink stirs. It takes her a moment to register I’m here and pull herself out of slumber. But her ears flick, and she jumps from the floor, the rushweed clearly having worn off.

I don’t miss the way she adjusts the bottom of the flimsy sack covering her body. Like she’s worried about what I might have seen while she lay sprawled and asleep.

“I wouldn’t have looked, even if there was something to see,” I say. My intention is to comfort her, but all I manage to do is produce scarlet blotches on her face. I’m used to the reaction from Wendy, who is rather easily embarrassed, but what I’m not used to is the rage blazing in Tink’s blue eyes.

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