Chapter 24
I’m up early the next morning, unable to sleep because of the lost boy Thomas’s face hovering in the corners of my mind, his beautiful smile haunting my sleepless nights. If it were just me who’d been snatched out of my home and brought to this island, I’m not sure I’d want to know what happened to him.
But it’s not just me. I’ve roped John and Michael into my fate.
So I’m rummaging through ideas at the same time I’m walking about the Den, picking up leftover orange peels and trash that the boys left lying around, when an amused voice pricks my ears.
“You really don’t know how to have fun, do you?”
I spin on my heel, surprised to find how close Peter has managed to get without me realizing it. He’s near enough that I can smell the casual scent of amber wafting off of his shadows, his smirk highlighting the dimple on his left cheek.
“Someone has to clean up around here,” I say.
Peter raises his brow. “And that has to be you?”
I stiffen, but I have nothing to say.
“What if…” Peter rolls his words over his tongue as if he doesn’t know exactly what he’s about to say. “You just…didn’t?”
I stare down at the orange peel below my feet.
“Then this is going to rot here.”
Peter shrugs. “Maybe. And why should that be your problem?”
“Because someone is forcing me to live in this space.”
Peter’s eyes flicker. “If memory serves me correctly, you’re the one who brought up the bargain that ended you up here.”
I stiffen. “Yes, and you were quick to remind me that I had little to bargain away, given I already belonged to you.”
His eyes glitter in the torchlight, raking every last inch of me. “I suppose that does sound like me. I’m rather possessive in my shadow form. So I’m told, at least. Given how you looked the night of the masquerade, I’m not exactly shocked that I would have wanted to stake my claim to you.”
The bargain I made with Peter in the clock tower tingles against the crook of my elbow, so naturally, I deflect the pleasant sensation with a snort. “I looked ridiculous. My mother…” A bulge forms in my throat, even bringing her up. “She thought it would place matrimony into the minds of the suitors.”
Again, Peter examines me. It’s like he’s no longer seeing me as I am, standing before him in Simon’s gifted clothes, baggy enough to obscure my curves, but in the silk wedding gown I’d donned that night. A bride prepared. “Well,” he says, voice dropping an octave, “I’d say your mother knew what she was doing. I doubt there was a man who saw you that night who wasn’t contemplating whether life was worth living if he couldn’t make you his.”
A wry laugh escapes me as I consider the captain’s harsh words. “If only you knew.”
“Oh, I know.”
Red blotches swarm my arms. I hug them to my chest to hide my body’s reaction to his words, his lingering gaze, but it’s no use. Peter reaches out, trailing his finger over the fresh blemishes on my skin, the evidence of the effect he has on me.
Lightning courses through me at his touch, sending my hairs on end, further condemning me. Peter must notice, because he flicks his gaze toward my face, staring at my mouth through those long copper lashes of his.
And because I’m afraid of what I’ll allow my captor to do, what I’ll welcome him to do, if I let this moment draw on any longer, I drop the orange peel on his boot. If nothing else, it diverts his gaze, if not his attention.
“What was that for?” he asks, though I can barely hear him over the roaring in my ears from where his fingers still trail the skin of my arm.
“I’m proving you wrong,” I say, voice shaky even as I muster every bit of stability left in me to keep it level.
“You think throwing an orange peel on my shoe proves you know how to have fun?”
“No,” I say. “But it does prove that I’m not content being your slave.”
Peter slips his fingers from my skin, returning his hand to his side as he steps back, putting distance between us. If I expected space to allow me to breathe again, I was wrong.
When he turns to go, my heart is still pounding.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” he says on his way out, placing his hand on the doorway with his back to me. It’s then I realize I’ve made a mistake. Tried to take hold of the reins without considering the repercussions.
“And why not?” I breathe, trying and failing to keep the panic out of my voice.
“Because,” he says, “proving me wrong is dangerous, Wendy Darling.”
“What, because you don’t like to be proved wrong?”
When he turns to look at me over his shoulder, his eyes flash. “Just the opposite.”
Later that day,Smalls and Benjamin get into an argument over who ate the last of the pine nuts Benjamin harvested. The matter has since devolved into a wrestling tournament under the canopy of the reaping tree, the Lost Boys eager to avoid their chores for as long as possible—all but Simon, who sits out.
After brushing aside the twigs littering the ground, I settle cross-legged beside him. “You don’t like wrestling?” I ask.
Before Simon can answer, Victor, who’s cracking his knuckles in preparation to wrestle Nettle, says, “Simon thinks he’s outgrown having fun.”
Simon’s tanned cheeks redden, so I nudge him softly. “That’s okay. I prefer it that way.”
He lifts a questioning brow.
“It means I have someone to talk to,” I say, to which Simon flushes again.
In truth, I’m thankful to have a few moments to speak with Simon while the other boys are distracted. The image of the missing boy berates my mind, but as Simon seemed so unwilling to talk about him last time, I try a different approach.
“Simon,” I whisper, hoping the boys’ hollers will obscure our conversation, “why are you here? You and the Lost Boys, I mean? I know you don’t remember your life before, but surely there’s some explanation for where you all came from.”
Simon shrugs. “I don’t know. None of us know. Well, Nettle says he knows, but you’ve met him.” He shoots me a knowing look.
I bite the inside of my cheek, shrugging noncommittally. Hopefully Simon has more of an idea about their past than the clinging fragments of a nursery rhyme.
“That doesn’t bother you? Not knowing who you are?”
He flashes me a pearly grin. “Who says I don’t know who I am?”
I smile softly at that. I suppose he’s right. Sure, Victor’s comment clearly embarrassed him, but typically he’s about the most self-assured person I’ve ever met. Except for perhaps Peter, but Peter seems steeped in something much less stable than Simon.
“I still think it would bother me, not knowing,” I say.
Simon just picks at a twig on the ground in front of him. “Only Peter knows. He keeps it to himself so we don’t have to bear it.”
I swallow. “So you think it’s something that might bother you if you knew?”
Simon goes quiet. After a few moments, he rubs his hands down the length of his thighs. “Well,” he says, standing up, “some of us actually have to get work done today.”
When he strokes the bark of the reaping tree and disappears into its tendrils, I maneuver my way over to Freckles, who’s the first to be cut from the tournament after being pinned by both Nettle and Benjamin.
“Hey, Winds,” he says, offering me a bright smile. The brown of his freckles has deepened with exposure to the sun on this uncharacteristically sunny day, where even under the shade of the reaping tree, light filters in through the leaves. “How’s that memory of yours?”
I let out a small laugh and wrap my knuckles against my skull. “Still there, as far as I know.”
He shrugs, a goofy smile on his face. “Entirely my doing, I’m sure. You’d probably have lost them now if it weren’t for my journal. Don’t worry. You can repay me by doing my chores for a month.”
I flick him on the ear, and he swats me away dramatically.
“Hey, Freckles, did you finally find an opponent you actually have a chance of beating?” yells Joel from the center of the ring of boys. He’s drenched in sweat after having pinned one of the twins.
I turn around, expecting to find Freckles red and fuming. Instead, he’s shrugging, palms to the sky, a mischievous look on his face. “What do ya say, Winds? Winner does the other person’s chores for a month?”
The laugh that escapes my lips surprises even me. The freedom of it. “You’re delusional if you think I’m going to agree to that.”
“If you go for his ankles, you actually have a decent chance of winning,” concedes Benjamin.
I’m not sure what comes over me—perhaps this island is messing with my head after all—but I lunge for Freckles’s ankles. He sidesteps me with a shocked laugh, and I end up with a mouthful of earth.
Motivated now by the boys booing me, I push myself up.
“That was pretty pitiful, Winds,” says Freckles. “Come on. Try again,” he says, beckoning me with his hand.
This time, when I launch myself at him, he catches me by the waist and tosses me over his shoulder, spinning me around before setting me giggling back on the ground.
“I’m not doing your chores, though,” I say, to which Freckles feigns outrage.
“She’s right,” says Benjamin. “Technically the rules state that you don’t win unless you pin her.”
Freckles snorts, a flush climbing his neck. “Yeah, well, I’m not doing that.”
I’m still laughing, dusting my pants off, when I notice the emptiness in my pocket. Panicked, I slip my hands into my pockets, but it’s no use. I spin around to find Victor plucking the folded parchment from the dust.
“Oh. What does Winds have here?” he asks.
There’s no time to snatch it from him before he unfolds it, the shadows underneath his dark eyes deepening as soon as he glimpses its contents.
His hands tremble as he snaps his gaze up to me. “Where did you get this?”
“I—”
He doesn’t wait for me to respond as he wads it up and chucks it at me. I have to shield my face, the edges of the parchment stinging as they make contact with my forearms.
When Victor storms off, the rest of the boys remain wide-eyed. Freckles shoos them off before picking up the parchment and pressing it into my hands.
“What’s in it?” he asks.
When I show it to him, he nods knowingly.
“Oh, that’s Thomas.”
“What happened to him?” I ask.
Freckles shrugs. “We’re not really supposed to say. Peter warned us when you first got here. Well, right before he went to fetch you, I guess.”
“Can you tell me what Thomas was like, at least?”
Freckles pinches his forehead, considering whether this technically breaks Peter’s rules. Something tells me it breaks the intention, but I’m not about to make that argument to Freckles.
“Everyone practically worshipped him,” he says, blandly.
I raise my brow. “And you didn’t?”
“He was just an orphan like the rest of us. There’s nothing special about any of us. Not sure why everyone acted like he was, except that he was the oldest.”
The acid drips off Freckles’s tongue with such ease, I’m somewhat shocked. Even among the aristocracy, the dead were always much more amiable than their living personas. Death turned a drunk into a “jolly ole fellow, always up for a good time,” a cheater into a charmer, a miser into a conscientious businessman.
But I suppose jealousy is sharp enough to cut through even the flattering haze that lingers over our memories of the dead.
“I wouldn’t go around saying that,” I say.
Hurt flashes across Freckles’ face, the playful boy who just pretended to wrestle with me replaced by a sullen adolescent. “It’s not like they don’t already know. It’s not a secret that I wasn’t exactly an admirer while he lived. And I’m not going to go around shedding fake tears just because that’s what everyone expects. Everyone acts like they have the right to dictate how I feel about his death. If I bring up anything negative about Thomas, Simon says I’m being insensitive. The Twins just stare at me like I’ve grown an extra set of eyes. Nettle acts like I’ve transgressed some ancient ducal code of conduct.” Freckles rolls his eyes. “Smalls…well, it makes him cry, so I do feel kinda bad about that.” Guilt pinches Freckles’s features, red creeping up his neck. “You probably think I’m awful, don’t you?”
Because it’s difficult for me to imagine sweet Freckles, the boy who found me crying and gifted me his journal, being truly awful, I shake my head. “I’m sure you have your reasons for not liking him.”
Freckles shrugs. “I never could put my finger on it. Something about him…well, he just seemed…off, I guess.”
“Off how?”
Frustration rims Freckles’s brow as he struggles for the words and fails. “Too friendly, too likable to be real, I guess. I dunno—that doesn’t make any sense, I know. Forget I said anything.”
I offer him a gentle smile. “Just maybe don’t mention that around Victor,” I say. “He and Thomas must have been close.”
“Close?” says Freckles, snorting. “Victor practically worshipped Thomas. But I suppose I can’t blame him.”
“Why not?” I ask.
Freckles scratches the back of his neck, actually looking sympathetic. “Because they were brothers.”