Page 35 of Stalking Wendy Darling

I pointed a sharp finger at him. “Don’t evade the question. What is Feeding Day?Whydo you have to give a sea monster a sacrifice?”

Hook sighed so heavily I doubted he had any air left in his lungs. He dragged his hand down his face, his eyes going distant again. “Because I made a deal with a sea god,” he said quietly, gravely. “That’s what the sea creature is. A god of bargains and deals.”

My eyes grew bigger in increments as I processed each word. “We’re being hunted bya god?”

“Not hunted.” He waved off that word. “But the god is owed a sacrifice, and we haven’t paid. If we don’t give it blood soon, it’ll draw ours.”

“Well,” I whispered. “Shit. I see why you asked me to kidnap a woman now.” I’d been ready to stab him a few times for even the suggestion, but… damn. You couldn’t exactly say no to a god. “Do they have to be a good woman? Pure and virginal and innocent, all that bullshit men are obsessed with?”

He almost smirked, but his face was still drawn, his eyes distant. “No, as long as they’re young and female I don’t think they have to be good and virginal.”

A smile bloomed across my face, tugging at my cheeks. “We’re about a day from Summer Isle, right?”

Hook frowned. “We are. I was planning to sail us to Nova; there’s a larger city there, more chance we’ll be successful kidnapping someone.”

“Oh, we don’t need a large city. We need the Drunken Squid.”

“The Drunken Squid,” he echoed, meeting my eyes with heavy cynicism. “Please tell me it’s not an actual squid. I don’t think the monster will take payment in squid.”

I snorted. “It’s a pub. With a really foul barmaid. She’s no older than nineteen, and gorgeous. As pretty as any princess.”

“There’s a catch, I’m sensing.”

“She’s a Darling. We’re not supposed to kill other Darlings, but god, I hate her.”

“Darlings being…”

“Me. Joanna. Michael. Our family. We’re all from Mama Darling’s Home for Children. Out of all the children Mama took in, Gisele was the only one I ever hated. She always thought she was better than the rest of us, a righteous stuck up bitch, and—” I dragged down air. “That twisted excuse for a human sent my sister to her death.”

I never spoke about it, had buried it down so deep that I couldn’t eventhinkabout it, but with the chance to kill Giselle, to get justice for my baby sister, it raked up all the memories.

“Not Joanna,” Hook guessed, his voice strange, unfamiliar. It took me a moment to realise it was softer.

“No. My biological sister and I were both abandoned together. She was three and I was ten. She didn’t even live a year after we were taken in by Mama.”

“This Giselle killed her?”

“As good as,” I spat, lost in the past, the terror and screams that came from me, the blood that poured from Aymee. I fought against the memory, trying to claw my way out, but therewasno way out. I’d held back these memories for so long that they’d grown power. “Giselle hated us all. I never found outwhy. Superiority complex, probably. Jealousy, maybe. She hated Aymee the worst because she was the youngest, and she spent the most time with Mama.”

“Aymee’s your sister?” Hook asked, in the same hushed voice.

I nodded, not looking at him. “She was young, and trusting. She trusted Giselle when the bitch told her I was waiting for her outside, down by the shops. She said I wanted to buy her a gift, lied to get her out of the house. I don’t know if Giselle was just trying to scare us, or make Mama realise Aymee was too much trouble so she sent her away, or if she wanted Aymee to get lost forever or—”

I dragged air in through my nose, grinding my teeth. “A gunfight broke out between rival gangs. Aymee was caught in the crossfire. She died there in the street.”

I dragged myself out of the bloody memory by my fingernails, focusing on Hook’s face, the roughness of his stubble, the fleck of a white scar on his cheek, the slope of his nose, the sharp edge of his jaw, the way the collar of his well-worn shirt laid against his throat, curling at the edges.

“So that’s why I’d absolutelyloveto throw Giselle into the mouth of a sea creature.”

“I can think of no better sacrifice,” Hook agreed, a little roughness to his voice. “I’m sorry you lost your sister so young. I’m sorry you lost her at all. I never had blood siblings but there were—others like me, where I was raised.”

“More show-off captains with annoying smirks and great hats?”

His mouth flickered at the corner, not quite a smile. “Stock. Things to be trained and sold.”

Shock snapped my mouth shut, and I regretted the joke. “Shit,” I breathed. “I’m sorry.”

I’d heard about traffickers. There were none on the island where I grew up, but some of the kids who passed through Mama’s had been their victims. Hook shrugged off my sympathy like oil on water.

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