Page 63 of Chasing Never
My neck breaks out in a cold sweat, and I fight the urge to loosen my collar.
“I do hope you brought the payment we agreed upon,” says the man, voice as familiar to me as my own, even if his has deteriorated with age. “I’ve been told that you like to barter last-minute, after a deal has already been struck. I think you’ll find attempting as much a waste of both of our time.”
The man behind the desk rifles through his set of papers, taking a quill to the bottom of them. His parchment-colored hands tremble, but there’s no sense of concern on his face as he peers through his spectacles.
The overwhelming urge to fling myself through the door behind me before he glances up and fixes those familiar eyes upon me hits me with a ferocity I’m not prepared for. Whether it’s him, or the heat of the fireplace, or the sight of the coals, or the knowledge of my fate with the Sister that has the room spinning before me, I don’t know.
What I do know is that I am no longer a child, and I will not allow myself to faint in this man’s presence.
“Are you slow with the tongue, or just the quiet sort?” asks the man, finally dragging his gaze from his papers to fix it on me.
He blinks, though only out of boredom.
“I have no intention of altering any previous arrangements,” I say, careful to keep my voice even.
I wait for the flicker of recognition on the man’s face. The pairing of my voice with my form.
But no such recognition comes.
“Very well, then,” says the man, “I’ll call the servants to bring the goods.” With that, he rings a silver bell on his desk and goes back to his desk work.
Disappointment, slick and nauseating, slips down my throat as I swallow, souring when it reaches my abdomen.
There has always been little satisfaction when I think of meeting this man again. But part of the satisfaction has always been the image of his eyes going wide, his face blanching at the sight of me.
It is not that he doesn’t fear me that twists the knife in my gut.
He doesn’t even recognize me.
Again, the room seems to close in. Perhaps it was a mistake coming here. I have half a mind to turn around and place my hand on the doorknob. But what is left for me on the other side of it, except for a life slipping out of my grasp and the promise of shackles so like the ones this man once placed upon me?
“You don’t recognize me,” I say, slowly drawing out my words. “Strange. I would have thought your self-preservation instincts were more honed than that. But I suppose age dulls all things, doesn’t it?”
The quill in the man’s hand goes still. His eyes, glazed over just barely with cataracts, peer over his spectacles. They flicker over to my hook for the first time since I walked into this room.
“Of course I recognize you,” he says, setting the quill back into its ink reservoir. “The famous Captain Nolan Astor is difficult to miss. Once, it would have been the Mark on your hand, but now you’ve practically placed a target on your back with that glass hook of yours.”
His hands are still hidden underneath his glance. If it weren’t for my fae eyesight, I might miss the slight movement of his arm as he reaches for a drawer.
I smile.
A moment later, I’m upon him, my reflexes too quick for him in his old age. I wrench his hand out from under his desk.
“Let me guess,” I say, “there’s an alarm there that sounds if pulled. How many guards do you have at your disposal, and how quickly do you think they would have gotten to you?”
The man’s wrists tense under my grip, but his shoulders slacken, and he leans back against the headrest of his chair.
“Are you here to kill me, boy?”
“Would you be shocked if I was?”
The man cocks his head at me. “Only the timing. After you ran off, I thought for sure you’d be right back. That I’d one day find a blade in my spine. And then, when the rumors of a vicious pirate whispered their way over the waters, I waited for a bag over my head and to wake up on your infamous ship. But after a decade passed, well, I realized you never did have the nerve, no matter what the rumors claimed. You are what you’ve always been, what you were when your mother cast you out, a scared little boy picking on those smaller than you. So no, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that you’ve waited until now to come. When I’m old and feeble and can’t fight back.”
Anger spikes in my veins, and I close my hand around his wrist more firmly. “I was the one too small to fight back.”
“Oh, but that’s not true at all,” he says with a sneer. “How many times did you unbutton that shirt of yours, and I didn’t even have to ask.”
Sparks fly in my vision, and so does the warden’s chair. I send it flying across the room, toward the fireplace. He lets out a shriek, but I catch him by the throat the moment before the back of his head slams into the coals at the bottom of the hearth.
