Chapter 25
Dark, wet sand pounds against the bottoms of my feet, slugging through my toes as I run.
It’s not quite climbing. I don’t get the same high that I do from scaling a tower or edifice, but since I fear that climbing the cliffs will end in another encounter with a nightstalker, running it is.
It’s not as satisfying as I’d like for it to be. The sand on the beach is packed in from the tide last night, but it’s still soft enough against my feet that every step feels as if I’m expending way too much effort for how far I’ve traversed.
Still, it’s better than nothing.
It’s better than the tightness in my chest. The exertion, the gasping for breath, unravels the cord wound around my ribcage. At least when I’m running, I have an excuse for why my heart pounds, unlike when I lie awake at night, my pulse accelerating wildly despite being sedentary.
It’s not climbing, but it makes the images of my parents’ deaths not seem so vivid. It leaches the crimson from their bloodstains, douses their gargling underneath the lapping of the waves. It takes the touch of Peter’s hand against my skin, the way it lights me on fire, and allows me to blame the sensation on the burn of my body gasping for air, my muscles tearing and rebuilding themselves.
Mostly, it just makes everything go quiet.
Over the horizon peeks the sun, coming up from the nighttime bath in the salty water, reinvigorated and ready to start anew.
The waves are frigid when they bounce against my feet, but there’s a part of me that wonders if that would help, too. Submerging my aching body in the freezing waves. Allowing them to chill the rot threatening to decay my muscles. Do to my throbbing heart what a physician might do to a wound before it’s amputated.
These are the kinds of things I get to thinking about when I’m alone.
“Have you ever just lain?”
I hear the voice just in time to go crashing into a set of firm arms, to feel the weight of a sturdy chest. I know who it is before looking up, recognize the scent of amber and shadows, the casual amusement in his voice.
I stop, staring up at Peter’s beautiful face, lit in orange from the rising sun as he smirks down at me. His hands coax my shoulders, though as soon as his eyes land on my Mating Mark, it’s like he remembers I belong to someone else. He drops his arms, stepping back and placing space to breathe between us.
My pulse races, my head spinning. I tell myself it’s from halting mid-run.
“Excuse me?” I ask.
“Have you ever just lain? Out on the beach, maybe? Or even in bed until the sun was already high in the sky?”
The answer is yes. The answer is that I’ve lain in bed with the covers pulled over my head, praying for just a few more moments before I had to rise, foolishly pretending my blankets into a set of armor, ready to protect me from the assaulting demands of the coming day.
“It’s too cold to lay out on the beach,” is what I say instead.
“I’d keep you company,” says Peter, his voice tinged with teasing. He flexes his wings. “Laying in these makes for great protection against the wind. Then there’s the body heat…”
“I thought you were staying away from me.”
Peter cocks his head. “Somehow, I don’t remember saying that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
It’s true. Peter’s been avoiding me since the moment we shared in the Den, the memory of which still lingers, tingling my skin where he traced the blotches on my arm.
“Where would be the fun in staying away from you?” he asks, still avoiding my question. It drives me insane the way he does that. “Though it seems you’re inviting adventure by running out here by yourself. I seem to recall a golden-haired faerie about who’s thirsty for your blood.”
I gesture to my waist, where I brought a knife I borrowed from Simon.
“Now that, I’d love to see.”
Irritation swells in me. I don’t much like being interrupted in the middle of a run. There’s something about having the feeling of peace swept away from me before I’m finished that leaves me in this heightened state. It feels suspiciously like teetering on the edge of a cliff.
“Seems to me you’re running from something.”
“I’m not running from anything. I’m just running to run.”
Peter quirks his brow.
“It’s become a popular source of entertainment among the aristocracy,” I say.
Among the men, I neglect to add.
“You cause yourself literal pain and call it entertainment?” says Peter. “And here I was, thinking you might have a point about me having a warped sense of what makes for good fun.”
I cross my arms over my chest, shivering as my body temperature cools and the wind from the waves laps up my sweat.
“This isn’t pain,” I say, letting my eyes avert to the dark sand beneath my feet.
I can take away your pain.
“If you say so,” says Peter, eyeing me warily. Then he leans in and whispers in my ear. “But it’s not fun, either. I’d be happy to teach you my ways, if you’d let me.”
He pulls back but extends a hand all the same. The same hand I took out of desperation in the clock tower that night. The same hand whose shadows seeped in through the windowsill for years. The same hand that pulled me to his chest and flew me high above Estelle, where the city lights speckled like dewdrops on the ground and the whirl of the wind stole the air from my lungs and took the pain out of breathing.
The same hands that threatened to drop me in the name of fun.
That thought sobers me right up. I need to get Peter away from me before I succumb to his allure, his tempting promises. Pain has planted its roots in my soul. If I allowed him to pluck it out, he’d shred the very muscle that keeps my blood pumping.
So instead of taking his hand, I slip mine into my pocket, withdrawing the soft, leathery slip of parchment I know will wipe the teasing from his voice. Will remind me just who it is that wants me to entrust him with flying me above the ground.
Peter still appears amused, and he snatches the parchment from my hand playfully. “What could this be? Wendy Darling’s list of painful activities she convinces herself are pleasurable? Do you also include passing a bladder stone on this lis—”
Peter’s voice disappears. He snaps his gaze to mine, peering over the now unfolded parchment. “Where did you get this?”
There’s no anger in his voice. No emotion at all.
“What happened to him?” I counter, repeating the question he refused to answer the night I found him playing his flute by the hearth.
A cruel smile overtakes Peter’s lips. “Maybe he went running by himself.”
Anger stings at my heart, riling me. When I speak, my voice warbles, which only makes me more frustrated. “Is that what you told the other boys?”
Something odd overcomes Peter’s body. A sort of laxness where I would have expected tension. It’s like watching a sink drain of water.
Peter quietly folds the sketch in his hands and tucks it back into my palm, closing my fingers over it gently. “Thomas wandered too far. Too far for me to protect him,” is all he says.
Judging by the way his eyes glaze over, go unfocused, by the way his voice doesn’t change in pitch, I get the feeling I’m not the only one who has strategies for drowning out the pain.
I’m debating whether to mention as much when Peter’s ears flick. My gaze follows his, curious as to what has snatched away his attention.
Simon approaches, feet bare and kicking up the steely sand. When he reaches us, he bends over, catching himself on his knees. Strange, considering he’s fae. I can’t imagine how fast he must have been running to get winded like that.
He gulps in the salty air, and at first I think that’s what has the whites of his eyes tinted red.
“What’s wrong?” asks Peter, wings going taut, readied for flight at his sides.
“It’s happened again,” Simon says, panic trilling his voice. “We found him over by the cove… His face…” Simon’s eyes go in and out of focus.
“Who?” Peter and I shout at the same time. The plea in his voice is for his Lost Boys.
Mine’s for my brothers.