Page 95 of Freeing Hook

“You really must be bored if you think me talking about myself is going to help.”

Tink just stares at me, taking a sip of water from the cup I snuck her from the Den, and waits.

I run my hand through my hair. It’s getting much too long, falling in my face and scratching at my eyes half the time, my glasses too loose to protect them as they slide down the bridge of my nose.

“Okay, then. I’m the second child of a nobleman. I prefer people in books to most of the people I’ve met in the real world.” My gaze lingers on Tink’s face. “Only excepting a select few,” I say, clearing my throat. “I don’t think my father ever loved my affinity for the library. Not that he opposed it. I just think he hoped to have someone to spar with in the courtyard, but…well, look at me,” I say, gesturing to my narrow frame. “Still, he didn’t mind so long as I kept watch over Wendy and Michael. Keptthem safe. I know you’re thinking that a more brawny son would have been better equipped for that. You’d be right.”

I glance back at Tink. I’m not sure what I’m hoping for from her. She just blinks.

“I tried,” I say. “I really did. It was my responsibility. Wendy had her curse, Michael his condition. I was the only one of the three of us who didn’t need safeguarding. That left the protecting up to me. But I wasn’t built for it, I guess. I tried to make up for it by learning as much as I could about Wendy’s curse, by reading all the books I could about Michael’s language and learning patterns. A whole lot of good all the knowledge did for them. Wendy’s lost, and Michael…” I shake my head, squinting my eyes like that will somehow expel the headache that’s coming on. “He keeps asking for our mother. I can’t even explain what happened to her. He’s just stuck in a nightmare where his mother and sister are gone, and I can’t convince him that he’s awake. Don’t know that I’d be brave enough to, even if I thought he’d understand. You know, I spent all those years educating myself about the Shadow Keeper, when I should have been digging through my father’s books, taking note of who his enemies might be. If I’d been looking at the appropriate data, I would have seen Captain Astor coming.”

Tink scoots closer. My heart races.

“I told Wendy I wanted to kill him—the captain. I was so angry with him. Thought I’d accounted for every last variable, and there he went, stealing in through a blind spot and ripping my life apart. And now he has Wendy, and I can’t keep my mind from traveling down the logical path of what he must have been doing to her all this time she’s been gone.”

I shake my head, feeling sick as the truth of the matter spills out. Why I’ve been so hesitant to believe Tink’s and Peter’s accounts of what happened to Wendy. It hits me in the gut—the realization that it’s easier for me to believe my sister dead,murdered for witnessing something she shouldn’t have, than alive and tortured, abused by the ruthless captain.

I’m not sure what that makes me.

“I love my sister,” I say, though I’m not sure who I’m trying to convince. “She’s smart, intelligent, but that’s not always enough. She sees the best in people, and she lets that seep into her evaluation of them, warping her perception. It’s like her mind erases the evidence against them. So the conclusions she draws make sense, but only because she’s omitted much of the truth. I walked in on her and Peter one time. It was after she’d freaked out and attacked Michael—some stress response to killing that man on the beach. Peter had drugged her to calm her down. I thought he was just sedating her so she wouldn’t hurt herself or anyone else. But when I came to check on her…”

My mouth goes dry, and I glance at Tink. She’s no longer looking at me. I’d forgotten for a moment why she ended up on this island. Because she loved, possibly still loves, Peter.

“He said she was alert. That the drugs had already worked their way out of her system.” The question lingers on my tongue. It’s harder than it should be to push it out. The truth justis. It’s not something we should fear; it remains immovable regardless of our knowledge of it. Our knowing it doesn’t change it. “You know him better than I do. Should I believe him?” I ask.

Tink watches me carefully, then pushes tiles forward. “YOU FRIEND HOME?”

I grimace. “Not really. I had friends when I was young, before Wendy got sick. Before her curse. After that, my parents didn’t let many people near us. Even when they did, it was for Wendy to snatch herself a husband. I tried to befriend some of the suitors. But it’s hard to make friends when you don’t share similar interests. Besides. I don’t really need friends.”

Tink cocks a brow. “MY FRIEND?”

My heart stops in my chest. “Well, if you’re looking at the strict definition of friend…”

Tink smiles and shoves me, quite hard, on the shoulder.

“I don’t think you want to be my friend,” I say, though this must warrant further explanation, because she presses on the question mark tile. “I’m not very likable.”

Tink makes a conceding expression and shrugs, which isn’t exactly comforting. “YOU SAY…” She bites her lip, searching for the correct word. Eventually, she puts “RIGHT” forward but appears less than pleased with it.

“I say…correct?” I squint, trying to interpret her meaning. “I say…the truth? Oh, I tell the truth.”

She nods.

I laugh, and it’s the dry sort. “Yeah, well, people don’t like the truth all that much.”

Instead of responding, Tink looks into the distance, outside the cave where the overhanging pines jitter in the wind.

“What?” I ask.

She picks up a tile. “PENSIVE.”

I let out a surprised laugh. This one’s not so dry.

The smile she offers me would knock me off my feet if I weren’t already on the ground. She’s beautiful. When I first met Tink, I’d thought her feral, crazed. But maybe she’d meant for me to think that. Staring at her now, her soft cheeks and intelligent eyes, it’s wild to think I ever thought her duller than me.

I thought she was insane. But maybe she was simply choosing to be exactly what everyone already expected of her. Perhaps it’s simpler that way.

A question forms on my tongue, but as I’m a rotten coward, I mold it into something else. “Do you like the truth, Tink?”

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