Chapter 9

I catch the Captain before he hits the floor. He’s dead weight in my arms and I adjust my stance to keep us both upright.

“Give me a warning next time,” I tell him, scooping him into my arms. He’s lighter than I would have expected. More bone than muscle.

I could break him easily, without thinking.

Crossing the room, I set him on the bed, the old springs creaking with his added weight. I rearrange him to get a better look at his wounds, tearing off his shirt, then the bandage. The cut is weeping again, but it’s not red. Now, in the light, I realize he’s bleeding black.

Well that’s interesting.

I try to think back to the moment I took his hand. Did he bleed red then? The lighting had been dim, the moment full of chaos and triumph and glee. I hadn’t paid attention.

I scan the Captain’s face for any sign of life, but he’s still out cold.

I dip a hand into my pocket and pull out a peanut, crushing into its shell as I think absently about what secrets the Captain might be hiding.

It can’t be coincidence, the fact he bleeds black and he’s terrified of the sight of his own blood.

“Don’t move,” I tell his unconscious body and head over to the tavern.

At this late hour, the place is nearly empty. I find the innkeeper wiping down tables.

“We’re closed,” she calls before she looks up. “Oh. It’s you.”

“It’s me.” I go behind the counter and pour myself a glass of fairy wine. The sweetness blooms on my tongue, mixing well with the saltiness of the Captain’s cum. “I need a needle and thread and some strips of cloth if you have it,” I tell Mills.

She watches me with the kind of cautious distance that only someone familiar with my kind would.

“If you’ve got some mending that needs doing, you can leave the garments with me and⁠—”

“Not that kind of mending.”

She straightens, the wet rag hanging from her grasp. “I see. Your friend? The captain?”

I nod, a desperate yank making me cranky. “I haven’t got all night.”

“Of course. Sorry Jab⁠—”

I cut her off. “No one knows me by that name here. Never speak it.”

The blush that hits her cheeks spreads down her neck, pooling at her cleavage. “I…I didn’t mean…”

“Fetch it now, Mills, before I lose my patience.”

She tosses the rag into a nearby bucket and dirty water sloshes over the rim. She hurries through a swinging door into the back.

I light a cigarette, inhale deeply, the smoke swirling in my lungs.

There’s the sound of hands rifling through drawers in back. I pace the bar, the cigarette caught between my knuckles.

My head is starting to hurt, but I’m not sure why.

I don’t get hangovers. I don’t get headaches.

Mills returns with a small tin of thread, several different-sized needles, a ball of jagged strips of cloth, and a glass jar of red salve. “Put the salve on after you’ve stitched him up.”

“Magic or nature?” I ask her.

“Magic.”

“What kind?”

She taps at the heart stitched over her chest. The Red Suit Caste. It speaks to how distracted I’ve been that I didn’t notice it before.

But it begs the question—what is she doing so far from home?

Not my problem. Not my concern.

“Thank you.” I hand over one of my bars of fairy gold. Her eyes get big, but she doesn’t return it.

“Don’t disturb us,” I tell her.

She gives me a quick nod before I duck out the back door.

When I return to the room, the Captain is still out.

I finish the cigarette and toss the butt into a nearby tumbler of rum. The lit end sizzles and goes dark.

At the table, I set out the items Mills gave me and find the right sized needle. I’m no stranger to mending wounds. Vane and I would stitch each other up more often than I’d like to admit. Being what we are, we healed quickly, but closing the wound shortened the time by half and we were always short on time in the Darkland Umbrage.

Tick-tock. Tick-tock.

It seems so long ago now, when my little brother and I ruled the dark side of the city.

Sometimes I think about going back just to see how much it’s changed.

Thinking about it has my attention wandering to the rock hanging from my neck. A gift from my little brother that still pulses with warmth. The Darkland Dark Shadow. There is no gift that holds more value or power than this.

If I returned to my home island, I could rule it if I took on the power of the shadow. And yet here I am, on an island not my own, with a man who hates me as much as desires me, looking for a woman who rejected me. And for what? To prove a point? To who?

I pull the chair over to the bedside and set the tin on the table, the needle and thread inside.

Leaning over, I slap the Captain on the face and he lurches upright.

“Don’t look down,” I tell him.

He nearly does, until he remembers, until he sees the seriousness on my face.

“I’m going to stitch you up.” I flick my lighter to flame and hold the needle to the heat. “You’re going to shut the fuck up and let me do it. Aye, Captain?”

He licks his lips and drops back to the pillows. He’s pale and sweaty. “Aye,” he says, his voice a husky drawl.

I clean the wound first with a clean cloth and splash of rum and the Captain hisses from the sting.

The cloth comes away black. I toss it to the floor, out of view.

I prep the needle, running thread through the eye, tying off the end into a neat little knot.

“Why do you hate the sight of your own blood?” I ask him, pinching his wound between thumb and forefinger, making him wince.

“It’s a long story.”

“Then shorten it.”

I pierce his flesh and he grits his teeth, hands balled into the sheets.

“My father,” he says on a rush of air when the needle clears his flesh. “He caught me…” He swallows and takes a breath. “He caught me with a servant. He said I was an embarrassment, that I was a stain on the name Hook for cavorting with the help.”

I run back through and he pauses, inhaling, holding it in until I close up another stitch.

“Afterward, he took me to a woman. We called her the Witch in the Woods. She knew magic and practiced it too at a time when most people couldn’t grow herbs without being hung for it. But Commander William H. Hook was fine with using it if it solved him a problem.”

The Captain relaxes when another stitch is finished. I stall, giving him a break.

“He told the witch to show me my sins. I don’t remember much of what happened after that. She cut me, then gave me a tea that tasted awful and I remember waking up at home, in my own bed. I thought it had been a dream and I forgot about it for a time. Until I displeased my father again. And he cut me across the face and showed me my reflection.”

He closes his eyes, tension pressing into the fine lines. “I was bleeding black. I thought it was the plague.” He laughs at the ridiculousness. “He told me, ‘Your sins will always leave a stain, boy. Can you do nothing right? Poor form. Poor form, indeed.’”

When his eyes turn glassy with the memory, I run the needle through again and he curses, flinching back.

“So you bleed black when you’ve done something wrong. Is that it?” I ask him.

He exhales, long and through his nose. “That’s it, yes.”

“Have you ever cut yourself when you’ve done something good?” I run the last stitch through and tie it off, biting through the thread to shorten it. “It would be interesting, wouldn’t it? To see what color you would bleed.”

His eyes catch mine. He gives me no words, but I still hear them.

He’s never done something he would consider good. He’s never done anything he believes his father would approve of.

He and I have that in common.

My father was disappointed in me the moment I was born. I still bear that reminder in my true name.

Setting the needle aside, I uncap the glass jar containing the crimson salve. It smells sweet like cinnamon and anise, but I think that’s just an illusion. Magical salves usually smell like sulphuric bogs.

Mills is clearly more powerful than I’d given her credit for.

Dipping my fingers inside, I pull out a generous heaping of the salve and then cake it onto the wound.

The Captain grunts again. “What is that?”

“It’ll help stave off infection.”

When the wound is sufficiently covered, I waggle my fingers at him. “Get up.”

With a heavy sigh, he swings his legs over the side of the bed, moving slowly, avoiding looking down at the wound. He’s done bleeding but perhaps he’s being cautious.

I take a length of the clean cloth and wrap it around his torso, covering the wound. We are inches apart so it’s easy to hear the shift in his breathing, the way the air catches in his throat. I just sucked him off but he’s still apprehensive around me. As if my teeth close to his neck is somehow more dangerous than my teeth raking over his cock.

When the wound is properly dressed, I order him back down and he grimaces with pain as he readjusts on the mattress, trying to get the pillow between him and the headboard. I help him just to end his and my misery.

“No sudden movements,” I warn him. “Or you’ll risk ripping the stitches.”

“I know,” he growls.

I pour him a glass of rum. He takes it happily and downs it quickly.

He holds the empty glass in hand, balancing the bottom on the thin quilt where it dips down between his thighs.

Doubt creeps into the soft planes of his face like an afternoon shadow stretching out with the night.

He is wondering if what he’s done has somehow changed him just as I’d promised.

I am not often at a loss for words, but I have none to offer him now, none that would be comforting.

I devour. I do not coddle.

“Now what?” he dares to ask me.

I collapse into the chair beside the table.

“Now you rest.”

“But Wendy⁠—”

“She’s been here for a very long time. A few more hours won’t hurt.”

His shoulders relax and he sinks further into the pillow. “Have you thought about what you’ll say to her when you see her for the first time?”

“Not really,” I admit. “Have you?”

He nods to himself. “‘I’m sorry.’”

I slouch in the chair and cross my legs at the ankle. “If she is anything like the girl we knew last, she will use your apology like a wild card, pulling it out of her sleeve when she needs it most.”

Wendy Darling was never as innocent as she pretended to be. It’s what I liked most about her.

The Captain sets the empty glass on the bedside table. “What if she tells us to go get fucked?”

I can tell he means it to be a joke, but even I, the Devourer of Men, know the low tenor of worry.

“What if she does? I’m sure we could entertain ourselves easily enough.”

His nostrils flare, imagining all the things we could get up to, but then he remembers himself, remembers who we are and asks, “What are we doing, Roc?”

It’s the first time I’ve ever heard him call me by my name. Or at least the name he knows.

“What do you mean?” I ask, because there is nothing I desire more than making a man uncomfortable.

He gives me a withering look. “Don’t be so difficult.”

“Would you rather I be easy?”

He rolls his eyes.

I sigh. “What are we doing, Captain?” I repeat. “We are having fun. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

When I see the hurt on his face, I nearly take it back. But I can’t really have pirate captains falling for me, now can I?

Especially one as handsome as Captain Hook.

He is like a delicate Pleasureland dessert. Meant to be desired. Meant to make a man a glutton. More and more and more. Just like fairy wine, very rarely can you stop with just one.

He is elegant and refined like a latticed pastry. Tempting and sharp like a lemon tart.

If I’m not careful, I might find myself craving the taste of the Captain on the back of my tongue.

More and more and more.

I stand up. The Captain follows my movements and the worry I heard earlier is now reflected in his eyes and the pinch between his dark brows. “Where are you going?”

“For a walk,” I tell him and pull out my pocket watch, checking the time. “I need a bite.”

Color blooms across his cheeks, but there is a war brewing in his gaze. If there are things he wants to say, he chooses not to say them.

I’m still a few hours off from needing blood to stave off the beast taking over, but if I stay here any longer, I may be sinking my teeth into the Captain.

And that we can’t have.

It wouldn’t be good for either one of us.

“Don’t get into too much trouble,” he tells me.

I smile at him with all my teeth. “But Captain, it’s what I’m good at.”