Chapter 43
I’m staring at the parchment the next morning when Peter slips into my room.
Immediately, I pull my coat collar up to hide the bruises on my neck from where Tink held me down last night. The wounds between my knuckles I tuck underneath my sleeves.
“There’s my utterly traditional fiancée,” Peter says, sliding on the bed next to me, then saying “Oops” as he scoots further from me.
My stomach twists in me. I don’t particularly find the joke funny, so why does my laugh come out so genuine?
He’s been teasing me incessantly about choosing not to move into his room quite yet. I can’t quite explain why I’m not ready for that. Not when I already made the mistake of telling Captain Astor. Not when I can still feel the sting of his taunts scraping at my throat.
You shouldn’t have told me that.
Besides, I find comfort in the fact that Peter doesn’t expect me to open those wounds for him until I’m ready.
Peter leans in, sweeping me into his arms and pressing a kiss to my lips, drowning away any of the gnawing in my stomach I feel at his jesting. I melt into his arms, though I swat him away when he starts to play with the buttons of my dress.
“You know, you could have already been my wife,” he says, “considering that matters to you so much.”
“It wouldn’t have counted,” I say. “You wanted to marry me in the sky.”
Peter presses soft kisses against my jawline. “I would have thought you’d have found that romantic.”
“There wouldn’t have been any witnesses,” I laugh.
“Wendy, Wendy. Always so beholden to everyone else’s rules.”
I bite my lip and try to focus on how nice it feels to have him close, on the way I’m utterly astounded every time Peter kisses me, every time he tells me he wants me.
“We could have had the Lost Boys be witnesses, you know.”
“They will,” I say. “Just not yet.”
Peter pulls away, though he’s gentle. “Why wait?”
“Because,” I say, searching for the words. When I find them, I discover they’re not something I want to admit to myself, so instead I appeal to Peter’s nature. “Don’t you think anticipation is half the fun? The dreaming and planning and hoping? I just need a little time.”
Peter cocks his head to the side. “To convince yourself you’re excited?”
“No.” My heart turns over, and I grasp at his hand. “No, I don’t have to convince myself. I’m already plenty convinced. I’d just like some time to savor our engagement, that’s all.”
Peter’s eyes betray him, glancing over to the shimmering freckles on my left jawline.
My breath catches, guilt plaguing me, though I can’t seem to pinpoint why. “Peter.” And because I don’t know that I’ll have the strength to deny him if he keeps looking at me like that, I ask, “Would you tell me more about Tink?”
The desire in Peter’s eyes runs cold, his shoulders tensing. “What would you like to know about her?”
I shrug, running my hand over the sheets. I can’t exactly tell Peter about the attack last night, not without him asking questions about why I was out so late to begin with. “We’re betrothed,” I settle on, twisting my emerald ring around my finger like it’s a costume ring and I’m a leading lady putting on my best performance. “It’s natural for me to be curious about your history. And it’s okay. I know you have parts of your past you don’t want to talk about. If this is one of them, I’ll drop it. But I figure if this is a topic you’re more indifferent to than the others…”
The tension in his shoulders releases. “You’re jealous.” He says the word like it’s honey on his tongue.
“I am sharing an island with my fiancé’s previous lover.”
He scratches behind his ear. “I’m just not sure what there is to tell you other than what we’ve already discussed. We came here together. It didn’t work out. Now, she won’t leave.”
I crinkle my brow. “Oh, I don’t know. There’s the question of how you met. Was it at the orphanage? Was she from your hometown? I’m also curious as to why it didn’t work out between the two of you. Or why you let her stay here terrorizing your guests.”
A sly grin quirks on his mouth. “When you put it like that, Wendy Darling, it’s like you’re trying to make me sound suspicious.”
I flick him on the shoulder and he laughs. “Tink and I didn’t meet at the orphanage, but I was employed there when I met her. I was out on an errand. She was traveling with a merchant’s caravan. We did what foolish youths tend to do and fancied we were in love. When the merchant’s caravan went ahead, she stayed behind, working as a tavern maid in town. After I met the Sister, I asked Tink to accompany us to Neverland. She said yes.”
“And the Sister allowed that?”
“The Sister thought a female touch would do the Lost Boys good.”
I frown. “But the Lost Boys acted like they’d never met a woman until me.”
A shadow overcomes Peter’s face. “When Tink awoke in Neverland—well, it was too much for her. The boys were ill for a time when they first arrived. By the time they came to, Tink’s mind had already fled her.”
The blood drains from my cheeks. “Because she’s a shadow-soother? Because the shadows drove her mad?”
“I tried to help her,” says Peter. “She wouldn’t let me. It was clear she couldn’t be trusted around the boys. Not without lashing out.”
My mind flashes back to attacking Michael in the night, and my spirit wilts.
Peter must notice my reaction, because he interlocks his fingers with mine. “You’re not like her, Wendy Darling. You let me help you.”
The illusory taste of faerie dust buds on my tongue, cloyingly sweet. I think of the entire day I lost to the dust, floating in the rafters of the storehouse while Joel was being stalked and brutally murdered.
Tink’s choice isn’t the one I would have made, but I’d be lying to myself if I said I didn’t understand it. Still, I’d take the daily doses of faerie dust over Tink’s crazed violence any day.
“What’s that? A love letter for your fiancé?” asks Peter, the cheerful disposition returning to his face as he snatches the parchment out of my hand. Lost in thoughts of Tink, I’d forgotten I was holding it. Immediately, his eyes widen, then his face softens. “I haven’t seen one of his sketches like this since—” He flicks his blue eyes up at me. “Where did you get this?”
His tone is about as casual as my laugh just now. All effort. Each note meticulously placed.
“Just found it stuffed in a dresser. He sure did leave his artwork all over the place, didn’t he?” I say.
What a Darling little liar, I hear the captain’s voice taunt.
Peter stares at me for half a moment, then breaks out into a gentle smile. The kind that melts my heart and pinches it with guilt for lying to him. I don’t particularly want to tell him about the events of last night. If I explain how I was attacked by Tink and ended up at the dead man’s grave, I’ll have to explain why I snuck out at night, and I still haven’t gotten the information I need out of the captain.
Or you don’t want him dead, a voice—a very stupid, foolish voice— whispers in my ear.
As Peter rises to go, I ask him, “What were you going to say earlier?”
Peter’s ears flick as he spins back around. “When I was going to say what?”
“When…” I let out a laugh. “You trailed off earlier. You said you haven’t seen one like this since…?” I circle my hands around each other in question.
Peter scratches at the back of his head. “I was going to say since before…” He peeks out into the hallway to check none of the Lost Boys are around. “Before Neverland. That looks like one of the sketches Thomas drew in his early days at the orphanage.”
My blood runs cold. “That wouldn’t make any sense, though.”
Peter shrugs. “He probably had it in his pocket when the Sister brought him to Neverland.”
“Right. I suppose that’s a reasonable explanation.”
Peter just smiles, and it’s the type that would typically melt me. “Can you think of a more reasonable explanation? Actually,” he laughs, “can you think of another explanation at all?”
I shake my head, and it’s the grandest lie I’ve ever told.
At breakfast,I can’t keep my eyes off Victor.
Off the structure of his cheekbones, the slight curve of his nose. My morbid mind takes his face and flashes it upon the skull of the dead man’s corpse, trying to make any of the features match, begging them not to.
The more I stare, the more my mind plays tricks on me, lures me into the worst possibility imaginable. But I can’t think of a more rational explanation for why the man I killed had a sketch in his pocket that predates Neverland.
I tell myself Peter’s right, that Thomas just happened to have it in his pocket when he came to Neverland. It’s easier to believe he kept it with him at all times—his only memory of a life before. The life that was snatched from him.
That’s the simplest explanation.
But it’s not the one my mind grasps onto.
It takes a morsel of evidence, and instead of drawing logical conclusions, it crafts a story. One where it wasn’t Thomas who brought this sketch of his into Neverland. One where it traveled to Neverland in the same pocket from which I plucked it last night.
Meaning the man came here looking for Thomas and Victor. Meaning he knew them before, and was motivated enough to traverse realms to find them.
Even down that path of logic, there’s a place the signs lead. One where I could put all this to rest and remain somewhat innocent.
Peter’s made comments about the warden of the orphanage that make me question the type of relationship he had with the children. Perhaps the warden was obsessed with the boys he lost, and his own wicked inclination drove him to seek them out.
Perhaps he killed Thomas and Freckles, angry that they’d escaped his control. If he already had Thomas’s sketch, he could have hired a seer to use it to track him to Neverland, much like Captain Astor had done with my pocket watch.
In this version of the story, I get to be the hero.
I get to be the one who saved not only Peter’s life, but Victor’s and Simon’s and Nettle’s and Benjamin’s and Smalls’s and the Twins’.
But the man wasn’t going after Victor when I killed him.
He was going after Peter.
Perhaps that’s why my mind fixates on a single moment. Victor, in sheer hatred, spitting upon the corpse of the man, who now that my mind has run off with me, shared Victor’s forehead, his cheekbones, his nose.
My mind weaves a story that doesn’t leave much room for me to be the hero.