Emma turned toward the hole in the wall Anton had made for her, fully intending to get the hell off this beanstalk, but a sudden thought arrested her.
Hook.
He'd kept his word, helped her more than once. There was no question without him, she wouldn't have the compass. He deserved for her to keep her part of the bargain.
But she couldn't. She couldn't.
She tried to tell herself it was because he was a pirate, that he couldn't be trusted, but in her heart, she knew that wasn't the reason.
It wasn't that she sensed she couldn't trust him; it was that she sensed she could, and that terrified the hell out of her.
There had been something between them from the moment she first pulled him from the pile of bodies down in the refugee village, and that something had only grown and strengthened the more time they spent together on their beanstalk adventure.
Her mind went to the moment when they'd first reached the top, the moment he'd noticed the cut on her hand and insisted on bandaging it himself. Her face flamed and her breathing hitched at the very sight of those blue eyes looking up at her from beneath hooded lids as he took the makeshift bandage between his teeth and secured it with his mouth.
It had been sexy as all hell, there was no denying that.
But it was more than that. She'd felt a deep and inescapable pull to him in that moment that went far deeper than carnal desire. Soulmates. The single word had echoed in her mind as he finished his ministrations, and it continued to echo as he told her of his past heartbreak and then continued to assist her.
She hadn't felt a pull like this to a man—to anyone—since Neal, and therein lay the problem. She'd given Neal her entire heart and soul, trusted him with every fiber of her being, and he'd betrayed her in the most painful way. It wasn't just that he'd left her, wasn't even just that he'd sent her to jail for his crime.
He'd given her a son, and through his actions, taken that son from her before she'd even had the chance to hold him. That moment, chained to a hospital bed in the prison infirmary, had shattered the last bit of her innocence, shattered her heart so completely it could never heal again.
It was at that moment she'd promised herself she would never again let herself be so vulnerable, never again give another man the power to destroy her.
Her intuition told her she could trust Hook, but her intuition had been wrong before. She couldn't take a chance that she was wrong about him.
And so, she knew what she needed to do. She didn't need to harm Hook, only to detain him. She tamped down the guilt at what she was about to do and turned toward Anton.
"Actually, I get two favors."