Page 51 of Stalking Wendy Darling

I forgot how everyone was afraid of my ship, my captain. Love for the Banshee swelled behind my breastbone.

“But, consider!” I said, giving the crew an excited look. “I’lloweyou. You’ll be best buds with the captain and crew of the Banshee. No one will ever mess with you again. Plus, I really, really want to go home. My whole body hurts and I just want my captain.”

Strangely, the sandy-haired man’s eyes softened. “You really mean us no harm?”

“None at all,” I promised, giving him a winning smile and hoping he didn’t see the blood seeping through my shirt from a welt I’d just reopened. “I just need a lift home, that’s all.”

He exchanged a long glance with the other crew members. “I want your word that you’ll leave us the second we’re within sailing distance of the Banshee. And you leave our captain unharmed.”

“Done.” I held out my hand for a shake, admiring his bravery as he strode closer and shook my hand firmly.Motherfucker,that hurt. I did a valiant job of hiding it if you ignored my gasp. “I’m Wendy Darling.”

A laugh burst from him, startling me. “Phillip,” he told me, shaking his head as he released my hand. “Phillip Darling.”

My eyes shot wide, shock blasting through my agony. “You’re one of us? You’re a Darling?”

He must have left Mama’s house before I got there. But what were the chances of meeting another Darling in the wild?

Phillip rolled his eyes, stepping back. “Tell me you don’t have a head in that bag, sister.”

I widened my eyes, all innocence. “Nope. No heads. Just a… steak. Yeah, a steak. My captainlooovessteak.”

Phillip sighed, shaking his sandy head. “Crew, meet Wendy. She’s insane but she’s family. Now, who has recent news of the Harbinger’s location?”

A woman with long braids stepped forward, eyeing me warily. “Last I heard, it was circling the Swordfish Isle.”

My heart skipped. The island where I boarded the Banshee, where I first joined the crew. Aw, fuck, I was gonna cry.

I swallowed the lump in my throat and said, “Then we sail for the Swordfish Isle.”

Laurette gently patted my shoulder, giving me a look loaded with both longing and understanding. “You’re going home, girl.”

I was. I was really going home.

Chapter Thirty

HOOK

JUST OFF SWORDFISH ISLE

“You’re signing your own death warrant,” I muttered, glaring across the stern of the ship at the glossy black schooner that had stalked us from the edge of Alabaster to this black stretch of water framed by a chain of abandoned islands. The perfect place to wreck a ship with no witnesses.

“Sterling,” I barked, the tall man falling over himself to reach my side. The crew had always had a healthy wariness of me, had never wanted to test my orders and earn my wrath, but these past weeks had taught them true fear. None would meet my eye, not even insubordinate Vea these days. Something had snapped in me, a line crossed with Wendy’s death, and while I’d always been a nightmare and terror to the residents of the Chain of Saints, my crew had enjoyed a sort of immunity.

That immunity was dead, much like anyone who so much as glanced at me wrong. My temper was a tripwire, but that was easier to face than the nights, the quiet. The people—friend, foe, innocent—I killed were easier to think about than what filled my mind alone at night. I was glad for the schooner stalking us. I needed a distraction, needed the destruction.

I dragged a slow breath of salt air into my lungs, cooling my airways even if it didn’t cool my head.

“Yes, captain,” Sterling said with careful deference.

“Get the cannons ready. Wait until the ship’s almost alongside us and then disable its rudder. I want as much of it intact as possible.”

“We’re scavenging,” he realised with a grin.

I nodded tightly. A ship like that could be stripped, its parts sold. It was the people I was more interested in, how they would scream and cry and bleed and beg. My heart quickened, a beat of desperation. I needed it. Ineededto feel bodies break under my bare hand so I didn’t think about the wayherbody must have broken when the god devoured her.

I should have moved faster across the deck. I should have got to her before that fucking monster took her from me. If I’d run a few seconds earlier, could I have saved her?

I couldn’t get the vision of her eyes locked on mine, so bright with enjoyment and thrill andlifeout of my head. She was haunting me. Tormenting me. And I deserved it.

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