Chapter 28
“So you think the same person killed Thomas and Freckles?” John asks, tapping his fingers against his knees as he sits at the side of his cot, directly across from me. An hour of trekking down the bluffs and across the forest to reach the Den had left me exhausted, but that had done nothing to deter John from bombarding me with questions about Freckles’s murder.
I bite the inside of my cheek. “It seems that way, doesn’t it? With the way the killer carved Thomas’s favorite constellation into Freckles’s cheek?”
John shrugs. “Sure, but technically, there are other explanations. It could simply be a coincidence. It’s not too far-fetched to think someone who murders for fun might take on the Reaper’s fox as their symbol. Though now that I’m thinking about it, one would think a killer would prefer the symbol of the Reaper himself. Another option is whoever killed Freckles might wish for us to believe that his murder is connected to Thomas’s.”
“Like if he killed Freckles out of anger?” I ask.
John reaches across the cot and scratches Michael’s back, our youngest brother sleeping soundly in his cot. “You did say Freckles didn’t keep his disdain for Thomas a secret. It’s likely Victor knew about it.”
“Yes, but is that really a motive for murder?” I ask.
“It would make me mad if I overheard someone bad-mouthing our parents,” says John, somewhat distantly. “Besides, if Freckles wasn’t sorry that Thomas was dead, Victor could have gotten it into his head that Freckles was the one who killed him. Maybe he lured Freckles out to the cove and stabbed him in revenge.”
“I don’t know,” I say. “There’s also Joel. He seems to have an affinity for torture.”
“Carving a constellation in someone’s face is a bit of an escalation from coaxing rats into the fire, don’t you think?”
We let that settle between us for a moment, gooseflesh prickling my forearms. John reaches out, placing a hand on my shoulder. “Hey,” he says. “You okay?”
I blink, despite the fact that my eyes are dry. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.”
John crinkles his brow. “You know that’s just as concerning, right?”
I close my eyes and nod. “Does it make me a freak?” I ask. “If I didn’t feel anything when we found Freckles today? I mean, he was my friend…”
John stares at me, his brown eyes magnified by his thick spectacles. “Wendy?” He says my name like it’s a question in and of itself. “Can I ask you something?”
No!my mind screams, dread rattling me at the idea of what secrets of mine my clever brother might have unlocked.
“Of course,” I say, and it’s my mother’s tenor I hear in the words.
John isn’t looking at me anymore, but at my hands, folded in my lap in front of me. “One time, during your second season out in society, I passed the smoking parlor, and I thought I heard—”
“No,” I lie. “It wasn’t what you think.”
My brother looks at me, cocking his head to the side as sorrow and pity crinkle in folds around his eyes, his brow. “I didn’t say what I thought it was.”
He says it like my reaction is answer enough, but I can’t allow it. Can’t allow John to know what happened in that parlor, not when he wouldn’t understand. Not when he’s just lost our parents and knowing the truth might give him the wrong impression.
“Don’t worry about me. I’m fine,” I whisper, pleading with him not to press further.
John frowns. Opens his mouth, then shuts it again.
Michael lets out a violent snore, causing John and me to spring off of our respective cots, shaking.
“Goodnight, John,” I say, retreating into my blankets like they’re impenetrable enough not only to protect me, but also John’s memory of our parents.
He’s quiet for a minute. When he speaks, I fear he hasn’t dropped the subject, but then he says, “We’ll see if anyone saw Joel around the time of the murder.”
I spendthe evening soaking my sheets with tears. I wish I could say I shed every one of them for Freckles, for Thomas, for the Lost Boys. For the boy whose love of the stars surpassed any magic worked on his mind. For the boy whose hand sketched the features of others with such love and precision, yet barely knew his own.
For the freckled boy who longed for nothing more than the attention of his peers.
Grief might not have assaulted me on the rocky beaches of the cove, but only because it was stalking me from the shadows, waiting for the darkness to descend.
My mind tortures me, trying to replay every interaction I’ve ever had with Freckles. I clutch his journal to my chest like it contains the soul of my sweet friend. Like, if only I keep it close, I won’t forget the already fading chime of his laugh.
I cry for myself, for witnessing the bloodied wounds that sing of the way my parents died, that carve themselves into the backs of my eyelids as sleep evades me. For the fact that I have to live with the answer to John’s question of what used to happen in the parlor. I cry because of what my parents felt they must do to save me.
I cry for John and Michael too, for trading their safety from the pirates for life on an island that craves their blood.
But I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was hoarding some of the tears for myself. For the stinging bits of flesh flaking off my heart as Peter’s words pierce my soul like tattoo needles into the flesh.
I don’t want you at all.
I don’t want you at all.
I don’t want you at all.
They’re the same words whispered on sneering lips as eligible men take in my Mating Mark for the first time. The same javelin to my chest as when Captain Astor scoffed at the idea that he might wish to dance with me, when I’d hoped perhaps my Mating Mark had finally found its match.
They’re tears not only for the lack of being wanted, but for the guilt of letting such a petty thought scrape the emptiness from my soul. It’s not as if I grew up loveless, the unwanted daughter that so many of the old faerie tales paint alongside disappointed fathers who wished for a son as an heir. Never did my family act as though I was any less worthy of their love than John or Michael. In fact, they protected me more fiercely.
In their own misguided way.
So why do Peter’s callous words sting like adders’ fangs at my sternum?
Shouldn’t I be rejoicing that the villain whose attention, whose wanting I dreaded for years, isn’t interested in inflicting evil upon me?
It hits me that all this time, Peter was the one person I never counted on losing interest in me.
It’s sick and repulsive and I hate myself for letting a man who’s never cared about me delve his claws so deeply into my identity.
The girl who men never wanted, but the shadows always did.
What does it say about me if even the shadows turn away?
Despite myself, I find my fingers trailing my cheek. The spaces between the freckles of my Mating Mark are marred by the scars from where Tink dug her fingernails into my flesh, her jealousy lining my skin. I’d laugh at the irony if it wouldn’t wake my brothers.
Tink clearly has nothing to be jealous of.
Still, as my hands trace the raised golden mark, I allow my thoughts to wander. I let them off their leash and toward a past rewritten by a foolish heart. Let them daydream of a future that was never to be mine.
I wonder where he is, the male who owns my heart. Not Peter, who owns my body and freedom, but the man whose soul is knit with mine.
It’s not as if I ever expected to meet him. Sure, with every suitor my parents picked out for me, I allowed that little sliver of hope lodged in my chest to jut out, like a buried splinter being expunged by the body as it slowly reknits itself.
I’d never as much as laid eyes on another Mating Mark until I met the captain. And that man had dashed my hopes in more than one way.
As I think of the captain’s face, of his coarse voice masking the pain, but not nearly as well as Peter, I think of his hand on my waist, the flicker of warmth and connection that had fired there.
I think of the captain, and that beautiful, perfect moment, and I hate him for it. I hate him for stealing my attention away from my misery, just for a moment. For making me feel safe, even in the wake of his brusque words and blunt temperament. I hate that we shared a moment of agony together, both victims of our own lost loves.
I hate him for making me like him, then shattering me.
And I hate myself right now for allowing my mind to wander to the man who killed my parents.
My fingertips become wet where they linger on the Mark as tears slip down my cheeks and the quiet sobs start. I muffle them with my blanket, my body shaking and trembling.
It’s not long before tiny footsteps pad over to me in the dark, a drowsy Michael wiping his eyes of sleep before slipping onto my cot with me, curling up with his head on my chest.
“Don’t cry, Michael,” he whispers. “Mama’s got you.”
I shake harder, clutching onto my brother as if to life itself.
When sleep finally overtakes me, it’s with the nightmare of Captain Astor’s voice in my ears, quietly seducing me to slit my parents’ throats.
“You looklike you got stung in the face by a wasp,” says Smalls, looking across the breakfast table at me as he scoops a spoonful of berry-speckled oats into his mouth.
Next to him, Benjamin elbows him in the side. Hard. “That’s from crying, stupid.”
I can’t help but note how they don’t mention the way all of their eyes are puffy underneath the lids, too. How scarlet veins thread the whites around their irises.
I suppose for them, it’s easier to focus on the crying girl.
I might take more offense if I didn’t know they’d been mourning along with me, separated only by the roots of this wretched tree. I’d wept myself to sleep, and when I woke, it was to a puffy face and constricted sinuses. But it was also as if someone had poured chilled water over my soul, washing the pain from my heart like a stain from cloth.
Of course, exhaustion lingers, making my muscles heavy. I might have stayed in my cot today, slept until noon, except that Michael’s internal clock had him up before the sun and trying to tiptoe on my back.
Next to me, John nudges me ever so slightly. When I glance at him, there’s a silent question in his thoughtful eyes. Are you okay?
I give him a soft smile and nod quietly.
It doesn’t feel like as much of a lie as it is.
Simon gives me an apologetic glance, then opens up discussion around the table about when the boys think the frostbugs will first appear.
It’s a clear attempt to distract the conversation away from their pain. The kind of thing Peter would do. The kind of thing Simon has likely learned from Peter.
I’m asking what the frostbugs are when Peter strides in from the hall.
He stops in his tracks when he sees me, the same blankness in his expression that was there yesterday. His eyes linger on the deep lines cut into and below my eyelids, the blotches that must remain around my cheeks, the shine of my eyes that deepens their blue hue.
He turns back around and disappears down the hallway.
“Frostbugs are like fireflies, except they come out when it’s cold,” says John.
Benjamin almost smiles. “Joel and I were looking for their dens yesterday. They’re easier to catch when you can find them sleeping. If you can trap them in a glass jar, they’ll bring you good luck.”
I’m about to ask why frostbugs would bestow luck upon their captors when John asks, “How long did it take you to find any?”
Joel cuts his eyes to John, but Benjamin just laughs. “I do wish we would have found some. We spent all day looking. Well, early in the morning until…” He trails off, eyes going glassy.
I try not to make eye contact with John, but I can tell he’s staring at me.
It seems Joel has an alibi.
The weakness broughton by yesterday’s murder has yet to leave my limbs by the day’s end. Simon pestered me about what was bothering me during our hunt today, but I found it didn’t feel quite fair to complain to him about my before-Never when he has no memories of his.
I’m sitting by the fire in the Den, curling the corner of Thomas’s sketch in my hand, when I hear a voice.
“Winds?”
I get the strangest sense that this moment in time has overlapped with a moment from the past, but when I turn around, of course it’s not Freckles I find.
Because Freckles is dead.
Nettle approaches, hesitantly, his blond hair, usually combed neatly at his forehead, mussed. “Can I ask you a question?”
I’m too exhausted for questions, but I don’t feel that I can say as much, so I nod.
“That night you helped me cook,” he says. “Remember how I told you about my father being a duke?”
The muscles in my hand tense. I don’t think I can bear telling Nettle that the memory he clings to with all his might is the remnants of a nursery rhyme.
“Of course I do,” I respond, trying my best to sound chipper.
“It’s okay,” he says, kicking at the corner of the rug. “You don’t have to pretend. I heard Michael singing earlier. And as it seems a little far-fetched to assume that your little brother made up an entire song about my family…” He offers me a pained wince.
“I’m sorry, Nettle,” I say. “I should have told you.”
He shakes his head, his blond hair rustling as he does. I suppose I now know why he’s stopped bothering to comb it like he’s an aristocrat. “No. I’m glad you didn’t. It was nice getting to believe something spectacular. That I have a family out there missing me. Thanks for letting me hold onto that just a little bit longer.”
Tears well at my eyes, and he offers me a sad smile.
“Does this mean you can eat onions again?” I tease.
He lets out a startled laugh. “Not a chance,” he says. “Aristocrat or not, it doesn’t change the way they taste.”
Nettle sits with me by the fire for a while. By the time he leaves, I feel as if I’ve given him the last bits of my dwindling energy reserves, he at least leaves smiling.
I’m about to return to my room, when someone speaks.
“Get your coat.”
I spin around, stunned a little by the enthusiasm in the voice. It’s almost as if I expect it to be Simon, though I know better. My eyes check for me, but there he is, propped against the doorway, his entire body giving off an aura that hums with adventure.
“Pardon me?” I ask, not at all attempting to hide the disinterest in my tone.
“Come on, Wendy Darling,” Peter says, offering me a smirk. “Get your coat.”
My mind buzzes, whiplash overtaking me at the sudden shift in Peter’s mood. Though, I suppose I haven’t seen him since this morning, so it might not be as sudden as it seems. “What for?”
His eyes twinkle with amusement. “It’s a surprise.”
I quietly fold the sketch and tuck it in my pocket. “I’m not sure you and I like the same kinds of surprises.”
I expect hurt to flash in his eyes, but he’s undeterred. “I apologize for being cruel yesterday, Wendy Darling,” he says. “I’m not often challenged in my way of thinking.”
I bite my lip. It’s nice that he’s at least acknowledging what a scoundrel he was yesterday. How unnecessarily cruel.
“I’d rather you not be angry with me forever. We are, after all, doomed to inhabit this same island.”
When I say nothing, Peter shrugs, though not dismissively. “I’ll be at the mouth of the tree,” he says.
I wait for the pounding of his feet to echo into silence down the hallway, my heart racing as I listen for him. I shouldn’t go. Shouldn’t trust the fae, in general. Isn’t that lesson number one in being human? And I especially shouldn’t trust the Shadow Keeper, especially not after how he treated me yesterday.
Then again.
I suppose I dredged up the pain he’d been suppressing. Obviously I could have done nothing about his loss of Freckles, but it’s clear how much he cared about Thomas, how much it pained him to lose both boys. People deal with pain in different ways. Some embrace it, wallowing in it. Others shut it out completely.
Who am I to judge the way Peter handles his grief?
Sure, he could have been kinder about it, but as much as it stings, he wasn’t entirely wrong about my intentions—my insistence that he was grieving incorrectly. Now that I think of it, sitting in the spot where he once shared wonderful memories doesn’t seem like an inappropriate way to treat the boy’s memory.
In a warped way, it makes sense he’d clung to an older pain, the loss of the first boy. I’d learned from the alienist that grief is felt first as denial.
Again, not an excuse for cruelty, but a reason.
And it’s nice to be apologized to.
That’s something my father never quite got down. He was a kind and cheerful man, most always, but on the rare occasion he did treat us unfairly, he never acknowledged as much.
As much as my heart still stings when I think of Peter’s words, I never wanted you, it’s not as if the words are untrue. Not as if I’ve earned his wanting of me or am entitled to it. The simple apology does wonders to soothe the aching.
And besides.
My other option is curling up on my cot and facing nightmares where the devastatingly beautiful captain steals my heart, then makes me slit my parents’ throats.
So I dash down the hall to get my coat before I can convince myself otherwise. I’m grabbing it from where I left it folded on my cot when John speaks up from where he’s sitting in the corner.
“Where are you heading off to?”
I bite my lip, slipping my coat on slowly so I have time to collect my thoughts before I turn to face him. “The stove fire burned out, so it’s freezing in the kitchen, and I’ve still got half the dishes to wash.”
The lie tastes foul, like vomit staining the back of my teeth. It’s not even my night to do the dishes. I’m not sure why I lied, except that John is so protective of me, and I worry he’ll talk me out of letting go for once.
John pushes himself from his chair. “Let me help you. It’ll go by much faster.”
I wave him off. “It was your duty last night. Besides, I don’t want us to have to bring Michael in there. You know how much he detests the cold.”
John frowns, but there’s no suspicion in his face when he sits back down.
My gut is still sour with the lie when I slip into the hall.
When the treedeposits me out in the cold, my heart sinks as I realize no one is there.
I search back around the wide trunk, wondering if perhaps Peter meant the other side, but he’s nowhere to be found.
Did I take too long and he left on his adventure without me?
Or worse, was inviting me up here just another one of his cruel little games? Like threatening to drop me from the sky or waiting for me to fall from the cliffs. My stomach turns over.
“I was starting to think you’d never forgive me, Wendy Darling,” says a voice, and my heart jumps into my throat. I jump too, stumbling over a root in front of me. There’s a carefree laugh echoing from above, and I glimpse Peter peering down at me from where he’s perched in the branches above.
“I’m still debating,” I say, and I can’t help the way my heart thumps at the pleased smile that spreads across his beautiful face.
“Is this the adventure, then?” I ask, gesturing up toward the reaping tree. My heart lights with anticipation at the idea of scaling it. I hate the tree for what it did to John, what it assumed about Michael, but that doesn’t mean I don’t long for the feel of its bark underneath my fingertips.
“This?” Peter says, glancing around. “Have you not already climbed it? I would have expected as much from a girl who makes a habit of climbing things she wasn’t supposed to.”
I shrug. “In all honesty, I’ve considered it. But I wasn’t sure the tree would tolerate it. Forgive me if I’m hesitant of climbing into the branches of a tree that…” I stop, thinking of John’s pinkie left to rot upon the stump.
My throat goes dry.
“That’s probably wise of you,” says Peter, jumping down from the high branch as if he’s hopping off the railing of a bridge onto the walkway. His wings expand ever so slightly, slowing his descent. “But no, we won’t be climbing the tree tonight. Unless that’s what you have your heart set on, of course.”
I shake my head, curiosity threatening to eat a hole in my gut.
Suddenly, he’s close, and his gaze flicks to my shoulders. I wonder then if he’ll slip his arm around me, but he doesn’t. Instead, he tilts his head to the side and beckons for me to follow him into the dark night.
I do.
When we reach a clearing,he spins on his heel and extends a hand to me.
I keep my hands clasped behind my back. I’m hoping the stance comes across as casually disinterested, but really my fingers are twisting around one another, fidgeting with excitement.
I shouldn’t be thrilled to be out alone with the Shadow Keeper. Not when I belong to him. Not when he holds a blank bargain over me.
I try to swallow that thought down, push it to the back of my mind. So far Peter’s shown no indication that he intends me harm.
“You act as if we haven’t done this before,” he says, his grin wicked in the shimmer of the moonlight. I’m transported back to my little window, the shadows beckoning me. To the night in the clock tower when Peter extended his hand, and I took it without deliberating.
I’m deliberating now, and when I place my hand in his, it’s intentional. Immediately, he whirls me around, spinning me in a pirouette. I let out a laugh, but he stops me as my back faces him and pulls me close.
Anticipation whirls under my skin, not just from his touch, but from the realization of what he’s about to do.
“Are you ready, Wendy Darling?”
He doesn’t wait for a response before he shoots into the sky.