Chapter 41
There’s no sleep to be had that night. Not when I have to dose the captain again, lest his rushweed wear off. I don’t stick around to feed him, not when the sight of him summons a lump in my throat as I remember how he took my pain and adulterated it, molded it into a justification for murdering my parents.
Not that I would have slept anyway. Joel’s murder hangs over the Den, leaving the Lost Boys irritable and sullen. I’d have thought they would suspect each other more than they do, and at first they did, some of them refusing to go off in pairs for chores like usual. But Peter has been meeting with each of them individually, talking them down from their panic.
“Are you certain you’re doing the right thing?” I ask Peter one afternoon in the garden as he and I pick the vegetables Joel once tended to.
The feel of fresh soil on my hands is comforting, though it shouldn’t be. Not when Joel should be here, nurturing this garden, not me.
“What do you mean?” Peter says, plucking a tomato from the vine and biting into it, somehow managing not to spray juice all over his clothes. He’s not wearing his leathers today. I suppose that would be impractical for gardening. Instead, he sports a fitted black shirt that makes no attempt to hide his muscular form and matching pants.
Staring at him when he’s not paying attention has been a welcome distraction from my racing thoughts, to say the least.
“Wendy Darling?”
I blink in an attempt to reassemble my thoughts. “By convincing the boys not to be afraid of each other. What if…what if they let their guard down?”
Peter shakes his head. “Fearing one another will only make them vulnerable. They’re safer trusting each other than they are letting the killer drive a wedge between them.”
When I don’t answer, Peter cocks his head to the side. “What’s going on in that mysterious mind of yours?”
“I just…” I bite my lip, hugging my torso, my wicker basket nudging my hip as I do. “What if the killer truly is one of the Lost Boys?”
He goes back to picking tomatoes. “It’s not.”
“But if you’re wrong—”
“It’s not one of the Lost Boys.”
Sensing that’s the end of the discussion, I don’t push any further. The idea of allowing the boys to continue to wander off in pairs fills me with unease. It’s selfish of me, but I’m glad John was clever enough to demand Smalls be his partner in watching Michael at the Den. I don’t exactly consider Smalls a suspect, and I feel the three of them are safer together. So far, the killer hasn’t dared strike within the Den.
I trace a circle in the soft, damp soil with my big toe. “Can I ask you something?”
“If you’re wondering why the onions are kept separate from the rest of the garden,” Peter says, gesturing toward the patch of ground across the field, “it’s because they’re an invasive species.”
“Kind of like fae.”
Peter offers me a grin. “I was going to say humans are the invasive ones. We fae don’t reproduce often enough to be considered invasive.”
“I wasn’t going to ask about the onions, believe it or not.”
Peter runs his hand through his hair. “I don’t know, then. I might have to demand something in return.”
“And what is it I’m agreeing to?”
“Not sure. I’m sure I’ll be struck with a marvelous idea,” he says, gaze landing on my mouth.
I blush, tucking my hair behind my ear and rubbing dirt into it in the process. I’m still not over the way he looks at me, but I won’t be deterred. “How did you know Captain Astor?”
Peter’s smile falters, but he manages to catch it before it slips away. “Why do you ask?”
“I figured if you knew him, you might know something about why he killed my parents.”
Peter frowns. “Don’t you think I’d tell you if I knew?”
I laugh to hide my frustration. “Of course. But you didn’t know my parents. Perhaps if we put our knowledge together…”
Peter appears in front of me, dangling his mouth in front of mine. “Together? Now, that, I like the sound of.”
“Peter…” When I turn away, his lips brush my cheek, trailing a path to the fleshy part of my ear, which he bites playfully. Delight ripples through me, competing with my exasperation. “Peter,” I manage through giggles, squirming out of his arms. “Be serious. I want to know more about you.”
He places his hands on his hips, cocking a brow. “I thought you said this was about your parents. Had I known it was about me…” He winks, flooring me.
No. No. I’m not letting him charm his way out of discussing this. “Please.”
The playfulness finally drains from Peter’s face. “I’ve already told you everything you need to know about my past. Everything else is irrelevant.”
I huff. “The past is always relevant. It shapes who we are, whether we ignore it or not.”
“Not here,” he says, the twinkle returning to his eyes. He gestures around him toward the tree line of the forest, then toward the beach in the distance, the rolling waves. “Not in Neverland. Our pasts can’t find us here.”
Oh, how very wrong you are, my love.
“What if they already have?”
Peter’s pointed ears twitch. “What are you talking about?”
Realizing I’ve said too much, that I’m still not ready to hand the captain over to Peter, lest he destroy the vessel holding the secrets of my past, I pivot.
“Thomas? Freckles? Joel? Were their pasts irrelevant? Did they manage to escape?”
Peter takes a step back. “You’re upset.”
“Of course I’m upset!” I cry, tugging the hair at the base of my skull. “We’re going to be married, and there’s so much about you, about this place, that I don’t understand.”
Peter’s silence threatens to gag me as well, but when he speaks, his voice isn’t spiked with anger as I expect, but gentleness. “Do you tell me everything, Wendy Darling?”
My jaw works as I struggle for a response. “Peter, I—”
My fiancé shakes his head, cupping my cheeks in his strong hands. “It’s alright, my Darling little thing. You know why? Because I have a lifetime to figure you out. All I’m asking is that you offer me the same patience.”
Salt stings at my eyes, and I can’t tell if it’s the wind or tears, and I nod. “There’s only one problem with that.”
“Tell me so I can fix it.”
I trail my thumb across the back of his hand, still cradling my cheek. “A lifetime with you doesn’t seem nearly long enough.”
Peter’s ears pivot, and I find myself turning to gaze down the path toward which they’ve rotated.
“Seems like we have company,” says Peter, nodding toward John, Michael, and Smalls, approaching us from the tree line. My heart falters, considering what dreadful news they might bring, but Smalls offers me a friendly wave that assuages my panic.
The relief is only momentary, because as they draw closer, I notice how John and Smalls are positioned on either side of Michael, each clutching a hand while Michael wriggles between them.
I race across the field toward them. I’m about to fall on the ground in front of Michael and scoop him into my lap when I remember I can’t.
Because my brother is still terrified of me.
I stop short, the balls of my feet scraping against the earth.
Michael lurches, protesting with squeals as he tries to free himself from the others’ grips.
“He wouldn’t stop scratching himself,” explains John. Indeed, streaks of blood line my youngest brother’s neck and cheeks. “I know he doesn’t like it when we restrain him like this, but I didn’t know what else to do. He started clawing at his eyes, and I couldn’t…”
“I know,” I whisper, aware my reassurance is hardly enough to assuage John’s guilt.
“Did something in particular upset him?” asks Peter, lowering himself to a perch. It’s a simple gesture, but the way his instinct is to avoid towering over Michael lest he overwhelm him further makes my heart balloon in my chest.
“No, we were just playing with the train set,” says Smalls. “Then he started asking for your mother. I tried to tell him she wasn’t here right now, but I don’t think he could hear me, because he wouldn’t stop asking.”
John’s shoulders slump, his eyes magnified through his thick, smudged lenses. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Give me a moment,” I say, returning to the garden and searching the area for anything Michael can hold to keep his hands busy. There are the vegetables, but I don’t want him thinking I’m trying to make him eat anything while he’s this worked up. In the end, the best I can do is scoop a handful of wet, cool clay from the earth.
When I offer it to Michael, the whimpers stop as his gaze fixates on the lump of mud in my open palm.
“Here you go,” I say, nudging my gift forward.
Michael shrieks, his foot colliding with my nose, and he tries to escape John’s and Smalls’s grips.
Pain spots my vision, stinging in bursts all over the inside of my skull. I drop the clay, mud staining my face from what’s leftover on my palm as I bring my hand over my nose to catch the blood streaming out.
I turn away, a sob swelling in my throat, but I can’t weep in front of John. Not when he’ll internalize it, think he’s only made the situation worse.
“Wendy Darling.” Peter appears in front of me, Michael still screaming behind us. “Let me fix it.” Gently, he extracts my muddied hand from my nose. I can’t imagine what I look like with mingled blood and clay and tears smearing my face. Peter slides his forefinger and thumb down the ridge of my nose. “Well, the bright side is that it’s not broken.”
“That’s…that’s good,” I manage between sharp inhales.
Peter pulls a roll of bandage cloth from his satchel and uses it to wipe the grime from my face. Thankfully, the bleeding has already subsided by the time he’s done.
“I ruined everything for him,” I whisper to Peter. “I ruined his life, and now he’ll never see his mother again, and I can’t even explain to him why. He hates me, and I can’t make him understand…”
Peter watches me closely, then flicks his eyes over to the boys. “What if you could give him something familiar? Show him you still love him in a language he understands?”
“I don’t know how to do that,” I say, soul heavy with resignation.
“He likes games, does he not? Play? Is there a game that’s familiar to him? One that might make him feel like he’s home?”
My head snaps up so fast I’m shocked it doesn’t trigger another nosebleed. “Peter, I’d kiss you if my brothers weren’t standing right behind us.”
“I could always ask them to leave.”
Playfully, I swat him on the shoulder before spinning around to face the boys. Michael is kicking at the ground, but he’s not screaming anymore, so that’s encouraging.
“Michael,” I say, my heart lurching a little when he flinches at the sound of my voice. I summon up the will to continue. “Michael, last one to the top is dead meat.”
Michael’s foot halts its course in the earth. He doesn’t look at me as he whispers, “Last one to the top’s dead meat.”
He doesn’t have to look at me. The iron doors weighing on my chest unfold.
“Smalls, let go,” says John, dropping Michael’s hand. Smalls frowns but obeys. For a moment, Michael does nothing except stare at the ground, flapping his now-free hands. John is still tensed and at the ready in case Michael tries to scratch himself again.
But then Michael looks me straight in the eye and says, “Last one to the top’s dead meat!”
He runs.
John flashes me a dazed grin, but I’m already dashing after Michael, soaking in the lovely feel of moss underneath my feet once I reach the wooded area. I race through the underbrush, not a care in the world for the bruises that are sure to appear on my heels later.
I can’t hurt as long as Michael is laughing.
And my brother is laughing, his breathy giggles chiming in with the birds perched above, a melody unlike any a harp or lyre could ever aspire to play.
High above, a dark figure cuts off the rays of light from drifting through the canopy—Peter, watching after Michael from above, ensuring he comes to no harm.
I adore that man.
Smalls zips past me, his fae agility and speed allowing him to maneuver over fallen logs with ease.
Soon enough, I sense John stumbling through the forest behind me, his heavy breathing giving him away before even the pounding of his footsteps.
“I really thought you would be faster than me by now,” I huff as we scramble over a mossy boulder, John holding a twig out of my way. “And here you are lagging behind.”
John flashes me a grin. “I am faster than you.”
A second later, my brother releases the twig, allowing it to flick me in the throat. He chuckles as I yelp, then picks up his speed. He shoots a triumphant glance behind him, glasses askew, then checks the sky, making sure Peter still has an eye on me before he disappears into the brush after Michael.
I’m the last to arrive at the reaping tree, which I suppose Michael chose as his clock tower substitute. Peter’s got him in his lap as together they perch on a coiling branch high above us. Smalls races around the base of the tree, wound up by the competition. John is at the base of the tree, hands on his knees, heaving. I assume a similar posture, my heart pounding with exertion.
Peter thuds next to me, setting a humming Michael on the ground next to him.
Breathing becomes easier when Michael waltzes up to me, grabbing my hands and spinning us in circles, singing “First one is dead meat,” cheerfully.
I take that to mean that he won.
“You’re shaking tonight.More than usual. You were last night, too.”
“I’m surprised you care enough to bring it up,” I tell the captain, mostly because I’d prefer to avoid discussing the fact that my body is not handling my daily dose of faerie dust well. Not after the quantity I took the day of Joel’s murder. I’ve been jittery ever since racing after Michael today.
“I care inasmuch as it causes you to slosh stew all over my beard. Bits of meat don’t simply evaporate, you know, especially in a humid climate like this one. Unless you’d like to help groom it, of course.” Captain Astor’s eyes glitter as he says it, and I turn away, not wishing to think about my hands on his face. Not wishing to think about how his prickly stubble has grown out into a short black beard that complements his jawline perfectly.
I’ve been liberal with my rushweed doses lately, meaning I still have to spoon-feed the captain like I’m his nurse. I’d like to think he’s humiliated by the experience, but as with everything else, he seems to consider it an opportunity open for exploitation.
My mind is still on Joel. On what John said about the possibility of it being one of the Lost Boys who killed him. Of the possibility that it’s Tink stalking me, and picking off the Lost Boys instead.
Or that it’s someone else entirely.
Someone on this island we’ve yet to meet.
Peter’s been on the lookout for Tink. He agreed with John that she’s the most likely suspect, but Peter has made it clear he will never believe it’s one of the Lost Boys who killed their own.
“Wendy Darling, you’re off in your own little world again.”
I blink, and when my gaze focuses back on the captain’s, I find his expression to be curious rather than cruel. “Where do you go,” he asks, “when you’re not here with me?”
My heart snags on those last two words. The foot of a rabbit, only just too slow to escape a snare. The loose thread of a sweater on a nail someone forgot to hammer all the way into the wooden boards of the countertop.
With me.
“Don’t worry about it. It’s not somewhere you’d like to follow, I’m sure,” I say. “It’s rather dark,” I add, hastily.
“Being in a dark place with you?” the captain muses. “You’re right, I can’t think why I might enjoy that.”
My tongue might have loosened around the captain in the time I’ve spent trying to pluck information out of him about my parents, but becoming used to his brazen demeanor has done nothing to keep my cheeks from heating in his presence.
This time, his smirk as he catches my embarrassment incites me rather than silences me. “I can think of a reason,” I say brightly.
He cocks his head, though it’s a rather sloppy movement given his lack of muscular control at the moment.
“Because you couldn’t possibly be interested in a—what was it?—Oh yes, ‘a spoiled heiress who looks as if she’s hardly been weaned.’”
The captain curdles his lips in concession. “Can’t argue with that. I appreciate you for reminding me though. All these days with you being the only woman in sight must have gone to my head.”
I shouldn’t pocket the fact that he’s stopped calling me a girl and started calling me a woman.
I shouldn’t, but I do.
“Girl, remember?” I say. “Or was it child?”
“Is that not what I said?”
I bite my lip, fighting the urge to remind him that I’m twenty, well into womanhood by human standards. I figure reminding someone that I’m not a child will only make me sound more like one.
Besides, I’m not sure what I’m hoping to gain by convincing him.
We spend the next few minutes in silence as I pack up the utensils. Without the captain’s conversation to drown it out, the spoon rattles against the bowl as I maneuver both into my satchel.
When the captain speaks again, his voice is a low growl. “Tell me why you’re shaking, Darling.”
I bite my lip and focus on teasing the captain, if only because it keeps my tears from spilling over. “Only if you say please.”
“I’ve only ever said please to one person in my life. You, unfortunately, do not rank as high as her.”
We stare at each other a moment, and I fight the urge to glance at his severed Mating Mark. I find myself examining it sometimes, but I only let myself when he’s not watching me.
In this staring match, I’m the one who loses, who gives in and averts my gaze.
I’m always the one who breaks first.
“One of the Lost Boys was found dead. Right outside the Den,” I whisper, hardly able to get the words out.
I wait for the scathing comment, the cruel words that will probably scrape my insides out, but it doesn’t come. Instead, the captain just utters one word. “How?”
I can’t look at him, can’t look at a living person while I’m discussing such awful acts. “They stabbed him in the gut, then removed his pinkie.”
“With what?”
The question startles me. “I don’t know. A dagger, I assume.” Now that I consider it, I suppose I didn’t get close enough to Joel’s wound to check. Even if I had, would I have been able to distinguish between the wound of a dagger and a hatchet?
“Hm,” says the captain, allowing his head to rest back on the rock now that he’s done eating. “So who did it?”
I stare at him slack-jawed. “Don’t you think if I knew…” I trail off, realizing I’m not sure what I’d do. Tell Peter so he could have the killer executed for their crimes? Drive the dagger into their heart myself? I don’t think I’d mind so much if the killer turned out to be Tink, but if it truly is a Lost Boy, would I want them to meet the same fate?
And does it make me unjust that I would show partiality like that?
“There’s a faerie on the island who has a bone to pick with Peter. It’s possible she killed the boy to punish him.”
“That doesn’t seem particularly logical.”
I snort. “Does a woman riddled with jealousy have to operate logically?”
The captain’s eyes glitter with amusement. “Have you ever met a female murderer?”
“No,” I say, because I refuse to count myself among them.
“That’s because they don’t have a tendency to get caught. They bide their time, and they generally don’t leave a mess behind, either.”
I stiffen. “My brother thinks she was hoping to find me, then killed Joel when she stumbled across him instead.”
The captain’s brows lift. “And do you believe that?”
I say nothing.
“You said you’ve never met a female murderer, but don’t I remember you telling me you’ve killed before?”
My heart stutters, my mouth dry. “That was in self-defense.”
The captain waits patiently until I give in to those piercing eyes of his and relay the account of Thomas’s murderer’s death.
“You said it was self-defense,” he says once I finish.
I bristle, my pitch soaring. “It was.”
“No, it wasn’t. You were defending Peter, were you not? Was the man coming after you?”
“Peter’s my…” I swallow my words, training my hands at my sides to keep them from stroking my Mating Mark. That doesn’t stop Captain Astor’s eyes from fixing upon the smattering of golden flecks. “He’s my fiancé. Murdering him would have been no different from ripping my heart out.”
The captain stares at me for a long time. Long enough that I have no choice but to avert my attention to the foggy night beyond the cave. “I guarantee you it wouldn’t. If Peter had died, you’d still be right here, heart beating whether you wanted it to or not.”
“That man deserved to die.” I sound like I’m convincing myself more than the captain, so I turn toward him and add, “He killed two more of the Lost Boys.”
At this, the captain’s fae ears perk. “How do you know?”
“We found a bracelet belonging to one of the boys on the man,” I say while I give him tonight’s dose of rushweed.
The captain winces at the taste. “Forgive me; I’m not aware of the rules. Is possessing a piece of jewelry enough to charge and execute a man for murder in this realm?”
I fist my fingers into the charcoal sand. “He did it. I know he did.”
“Whatever you say, Darling,” says the captain. He closes his eyes, looking much too peaceful for a man being held captive. “Say, how well do you know that fiancé of yours?”
My heart thuds. “Better than you.”
The captain’s grin is painted on. “Oh, I highly doubt that.”
“You keep saying that, but you refuse to offer any evidence.”
“Well,” he says, lolling his head to the side lazily. “I don’t have a bracelet to hand over, now do I?”
Anger slices through my veins, but I rein it in. “Why don’t you just tell me what you know?”
“Would you believe me, Darling, if I did?”