Page 62 of Freeing Hook

It’s no use. He can’t even feel pain, I whisper back.

The captain’s voice again.Your mother taught you that if you screamed, no one would come. She taught you not to fight back.

I scream.

It’s shrill and sounds like a cat dying, like someone’s picking my fingernails off one by one. It’s a noise that’s never come from my mouth, one I wasn’t aware I was capable of making.

I scream, and he comes for me.

Astor barrels through the door, green eyes glowing with panic, black hair disheveled across his forehead. His gaze dips to the scene in front of him, and I witness it unfolding through his eyes. Peter above me, pinning me to the couch, my legs and undergarments exposed from where he’s tossed my skirts aside, the tops of my breasts on display from where Peter—not Peter, his shadow self—became frustrated and ripped my bodice.

I’m not sure what I’m expecting. For Astor to slam into Peter’s side, perhaps. But he stands there, hands flexing at his sides for a moment, mouth agape in horror as he takes in what’s happening.

Something snaps the captain back to reality, and his eyes focus in on mine. It’s the briefest glimpse, but it’s drenched in sorrow.

I think it’s the first time he sees me and doesn’t imagine his wife’s blood staining my lips.

When the captain speaks, his voice is hard. Eerily calm. “Touch her again, and mark my words, I’ll pick apart those wings of yours and use the bones as toothpicks.”

Shadows swathe Peter’s face again, so when he smiles, his teeth are blindingly white.

My stomach turns over. Not him, it’s not him.

“Peter, please don’t do this. I know you’re in there,” I whisper. “This isn’t you.”

When I reach up to touch Peter’s cheek, the captain flinches, but so does Peter. When he turns back to face me, the shadows melt away. The ink drains from the whites of his eyes, until it’s Peter—just Peter, staring down at me.

He blinks, then flexes his hands, like he can’t remember how they got tangled up in my skirts. His eyes go wide at the sight of the tops of my breasts, and he gapes for a moment before swallowing and turning his gaze away. In a blink, he’s off of me, then throwing the nearest blanket over my body to cover me.

“Wendy Darling, I’m so—”

“Don’t speak her name,” says Astor, his voice as sharp as the dagger glinting in his hand.

Peter opens his mouth, but the captain cuts him off again. “You will not look at her again. You will not address her again. You will notthinkof her again. Not unless she asks you to, and only then after our six months are up. Which,” he says with a cruel grin, “I don’t believe is anytime soon.”

I bite my lip, wanting to reach out to Peter, to tell him I forgive him. That I know it wasn’t him. That I know there’s a curse eating away at his soul, stealing away his control. Butthe captain’s face is painted with murder, like he’s eager for an excuse.

Which he now has.

“Peter,run,” I yell, just as a dagger comes flying. A dagger Astor is allowed to throw according to the terms of their bargain, since Peter has left Neverland.

My warning is just timely enough, because Peter dodges, but the knife grazes the leather of his wing all the same. He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t cry out, but of course he doesn’t.

Still, he shifts into shadows, and in the blink of an eye, he’s gone. Out the window, swirling in a shapeless mass as he disappears into the stars.

“Leave it to you to warn the man who was about to rape you,” says Astor, crossing the room and grabbing his dagger from where it lodged itself between the wooden slats of a side table.

The words sting, sharp as the glinting dagger he wipes off on his pants and sheathes.

“Get up,” he says. “We’re leaving.”

“But we haven’t learned what the Carlisles know about removing Marks yet,” I say, hugging the knit blanket around me.

Astor keeps his eyes averted, probably because the blanket is knit with a loose stitch that doesn’t completely cover me. “And whose fault is that?”

I jerk my chin back as I sit up. “Now I’m really curious how you intend to pin this on me.”

Astor grits his cheek. “Last I checked, I wasn’t the one doing the pinning.”

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