Page 100 of Freeing Hook

Confused, I shrug. “Unseelie. She had wings.”

“What type?”

I scramble for the words. “Similar to a butterfly’s, but the texture and color was more like a dragonfly’s.”

“Did they glow?”

I nod. “A little. Why?”

A sly grin overtakes the Nomad’s face. “Faerie dust is a rare commodity, Miss Darling.”

I blink. I’ve never considered how faerie dust is harvested. The memory of the dust goes sour on my tongue. Not that I hold much sympathy for Tink when she’s tried to kill me twice.

“Hm,” says the Nomad, who then turns to Astor to work out the arrangements.

Sensing I’ve been dismissed, I wander away from the desk, worn out from the Nomad’s taunting. I’m pretty sure he’s just stringing us along, waiting for his opportunity to wheedle something out of us. Besides, I’m drained from my brief lapse, from where I let my mind go just now.

I’m tryingto find something for my hands to do to make sense of my conflicting feelings when I come across a sketchbook laid out on the nearby mahogany counter.

I’m not sure whether I’m allowed to rifle through this or not, but as the Nomad is still talking to Astor and doesn’t seeminclined to stop me, curiosity gets the better of me. Inside the sketchbook are drawings of the ancient ones, the fae who took to the stars in death, the ones who still look down upon us.

There’s not a tale depicted in this sketchbook I haven’t read to John and Michael at some point or another. The first I find is a dreadful tale about a man who hunts down and brutally murders his Mate after discovering she’s rejected him in favor of his brother. Michael always loved that one for some reason. Then there’s the story behind a winter constellation called Ranger’s Tears. In that one, a man sacrifices his wife to bring back his mistress, trading the lifeblood of the murderer for that of the victim after his wife slaughtered her in a fit of passion.

I flip through the pages until, finally, I find what I’m looking for. The Reaper and his lover, a miserable oak reaching into the heavens to grasp for him. I’m not sure how old this sketchbook is, whether it’s the work of the Nomad or if he’s simply collected it from someone else, but I let my fingers trace the charcoal grooves of the drawing. The dots that make up the Reaper in the sky—the ones that match my Mark—down to the rest of the drawing. The Reaper’s body and the oak that make up the Mating Mark on Peter’s back.

Guilt pinches my chest at the thought of my Mate. I’ve been off gallivanting with the captain, losing my focus on freeing Peter from his curse. The lies I tell myself aren’t all that convincing—I know how close I was to letting Astor sweep me into his arms the other night, allowing myself to melt into his kiss. Denying it doesn’t change the frequency with which I’ve returned to that moment in my mind, letting myself play out what might have happened had I leaned in rather than away. I’m betrothed—yet I turn my head for whoever is nearby. Whoever is willing to offer me a breadcrumb of attention. Even if that person ruined my life, destroyed my family.

No. I belong with Peter.

It’s written in the stars. Written on my skin. Stitched to my heart. A bond as eternal as the story of the Reaper and the Oak. I trace my fingers down, finding the tombstone through which the oak burst, sure that even the grave couldn’t keep her from her lover.

In the end, the expanse between the earth and the heavens was always going to be too far.

The fox digs at the base, searching to find a soul in the roots. As my fingers caress them, searching for the oak’s soul, too, something strikes me as odd, but I can’t quite place it. There’s something about the drawing that feels both unfamiliar and familiar.

“Come on, Darling,” says Astor, placing his hand on my shoulder. When I turn to look at him, my gaze lands on his hand instead, lying gently but protectively on my shoulder. His sleeve slips down, revealing his wrist.

Across the back of his hand swirl golden tendrils, coming to a point at his wrist before being cut off from any circulation, lifeless bruises extending the length of his forearm.

Except they aren’t tendrils, like I’ve always thought.

They’re roots.

CHAPTER 38

WENDY

My gaze snaps back to the book, sure that I’m reading a pattern into Astor’s Mating Mark that isn’t there. Because his Mark matched his wife’s. And my Mark finishes Peter’s. Because Peter is my Mate, and I can’t…

But when I scour the roots on the sketch, a wave of nausea froths in my stomach as my mind overlays its tendrils on top of Astor’s Mark. And then he’s reaching from behind me, his arm grazing mine as he runs his fingers over the sketch, the trunk and leaves of the tree.

It confirms my every fear. My every fleeting hope.

His Mark is a mirror image of the roots, and then I see it—where the trunk and branches of the oak would have once stretched, now blanketed in dead skin and bruises.

I think I’m going to be sick.

Chest grazing my back, Astor pauses, practically holding his breath, until slowly, softly, he closes the book. When I turn to face him, he’s not looking at the book.

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