Page 45 of Stalking Wendy Darling

Which brought me here, languishing in a freezing stone cell where the amenities were shocking, the fireplace non-existent, and the window a square of empty space letting icy sea air blast into the room. The furniture consisted of a bed, a bucket, a clock I was convinced was set wrong, and a mirror missing several pieces. The cynic in me said they’d left the mirror as a means of killing myself. Some had clearly taken the assholes up on the offer.

“Pssst,” I whispered to the woman in the tiny room across from mine, visible through a small square of bars in the door. I was being a little free with my use of the word ‘room,’ but I just wasn’t feeling the wordcell.It didn’t match my vibe.

The older woman sighed heavily. She hadn’t given me her name, but she was willing to talk every now and then. In the ten or so hours I’d been here, I’d learned this was a waiting hall. A dank limbo.

“What are we brought here for?” I asked, leaning against the door and peering into the dark hallway between our rooms. The woman was older than me, maybe mid-fifties, with a tight braid of silver-black hair, a stern, scowling face, and clothes far more ragged than mine.

I hadn’t asked how long she’d been here. It didn’t seem polite.

“He’s called the Collector, girl. Take a guess.”

“But this isn’t the collection,” I pressed. I didn’t know that for sure, but no way would a dick who gave himself a fancy title lock away his prized collection in a basement. This was just where he stashed us until he could get a better look at his loot.

“Most don’t make it into the collection,” she begrudgingly replied, scowling through the bars in her door at me. “We’re found lacking and given two choices. We can be sold to far worse people, or given an instant death. Most choose death.”

“The Collector sounds lovely,” I muttered. “So what do we need to do to make the cut? Be extra beautiful?” Check. “Have incredible prowess with a sword?” Also check. “Know their way around a cow carcass?” Triple check.

“I worry about you, girl,” she sighed, shaking her head. “No one knows what he’s looking for. People go up. Either we hear screams or we don’t. Mostly we hear screams. Only one person made it into the collection since I’ve been on Lightbreak.”

Well, that wasn’t too gloomy a name for an island. Light broke at dawn. That was optimistic. I valiantly ignored the fact thelightprobably referred to us being broken.

“So… we’re left down here to rot until he calls us up?”

The woman laughed. And laughed. When she kept laughing, I took a step back, a chill winding through me. Hairs rose on the back of my neck. That was the laugh of someone who didn’t merely know suffering; they knew it inside and out, every second of every day, until suffering wasn’t a separate thing to endure but a part of their blood and bones, a permanent sliver of their soul. I swallowed hard.

“Left alone? When we need training to make us evenremotelypleasing to the collector?” She laughed again, but I barely heard her, the wordtrainingringing in my ears as loud as cannon fire.

It should have been fear that surged through my heart, but it was fury, as hot and molten as lava, and just as destructive.

Don’t, Eldrick, please—

“What’s his name?” I demanded, my voice low and dangerously calm. “The Collector.”

“Aidan,” she said, barely above a rasp.

My shoulders sank in relief, a full breath filling my lungs, but it froze in my chest when she spoke again.

“Aidan Eldrick.”

The same bastard who traumatised Hook, who allowed him to be hurt and abused and broken for four fucking years, until his only escape was to make a dangerous deal with a god…

That was who had me captive.

Chapter Twenty-Six

WENDY

Whatever weapons survived my trip through the sea monster and then the ocean had been stripped from me upon arrival at this fortress, so all I had were my fists when the lock on my door rattled.

My good friend across the hall had told me enough in fits and starts that I knew what to expect, so I wasn’t surprised to see the unfriendly giant who entered my room1 or the small, diminutive sixty-something woman who followed, her dark hair scraped back from her pale face, her skin almost translucent. This was a woman who spent no time in the sun, who’d always lived in the gloom. I might have pitied her if my new friend hadn’t warned me that she was a sadist far worse than the giant.

Had she met my Hook? Had she helpedtrainhim?

I stood tall, lifted my chin, and looked her dead in the eye. I hoped she saw her own demise there.

The door closed behind the two of them with a clang that echoed down the hall and off every wall in this small room thatsuddenly felt much smaller. My heart drummed against my ribs, but I refused to let them see my unease.

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