Chapter 53
My heart stops. It’s less about Peter’s words than it is the casualness with which he says them. Like I’m a piece of valued property he’s been hanging onto for when the right customer comes along. I know it’s only part of the game—Peter has to stall the captain while he comes up with a plan—but it’s unsettling how convincing he is in this role.
“I asked what’s in it for me,” Peter repeats.
Captain Astor chuckles, sliding the blunt edge of the knife against my throat. “What’s in it for you is that I don’t spill your girl’s blood and force you to drink it.”
Peter’s wings flick with the delight of a challenge. A game. “You plan to spill it either way, don’t you? If you’re going to do it, I’d rather it be done with.”
My heart stops in my chest. “Peter.”
“Ah, so it seems the little martyr didn’t mean all her selfless words, did she?” says the captain with a tsk. “So eager to sacrifice yourself for others, as long as you know the others will never let that happen. This is what happens when children are made to feel as if they’re the most important thing in the world.”
Fear barrels through me, and I search Peter’s face for some sign he’s bluffing. Buying time, that’s what he’s doing.
My Mate crosses his arms. “Again, I’m going to need more persuasive terms if I’m going to let you run off with my Darling little possession.”
Bluffing. He’s bluffing.
“Why do I get the feeling you already have something in mind?”
Peter’s smile has my faith faltering. Greed flickers in his stunning blue eyes. For a moment, I wonder if he’ll ask the captain for an unconditional favor.
When he doesn’t, it hits me that it’s because he doesn’t think the captain is stupid enough to take it. The realization is like a needle to my lungs.
Peter considers the captain for a moment, then says, “Never cause any harm to me or the Lost Boys again, and you can have her.”
Something aches in my chest. It’s exactly what I wanted, exactly what I asked for. So why does it hurt so to hear it from Peter’s lips?
The captain’s bristle scrapes against my cheek as he cocks his head to the side. “I’m afraid that’s a bit too absolute for my tastes.”
Peter waits, the muscles in his crossed arms still tensed.
“How about this?” says the captain, his voice sultry. Calculating. “I’ll never harm you or the Lost Boys again, so long as you stay within the confines of Neverland.”
Peter’s eyes flash with an emotion I don’t recognize. “If you’re putting limitations on my end, I’ll ask the same of you.”
I wait for Peter to make sure the captain doesn’t touch me, doesn’t harm me, but he doesn’t. Instead, he says, “You get her for a month.”
The captain laughs, and it’s dry with the salt air that breezes past my ear. “Five years.”
My heart stops in my chest.
Peter just grins. “Are we really going to waste time like this?” My heart starts back up as Peter offers his hand. “Six months with Wendy.”
The captain pauses. “A year.”
A year. So much could happen in a year. My mind whirls back to my first season out in society. The last year I maintained my innocence, unaware that I should have been savoring it. There had been an entire year of balls and courtships before the parlor became a place of incense-ridden nightmares.
Peter just shakes his head. “You’ll grow tired of her before then,” he says. As if he knows from experience. As if the length of time I’ve been in Neverland has felt never-ending. “Trust me. Six is a mercy.”
His words are barbs in my ribcage, ones I’ll be trying to reason away for the next six months. Reminding myself he’s only saying these things to barter down my imprisonment.
But barbs hurt, whether Peter meant for them to sting or not.
Keeping his dagger to my throat, the captain extends his left hand, his Mating Mark as lifeless as ever as it slithers to converge at his wrist, breaking off into gray fringes at the beginning of his forearm.
“I thought you said you don’t make fae bargains anymore,” I hiss.
“Here’s something about me you should know, Darling,” the captain says. “Sometimes, I lie.”
Their hands meet, and something silky, the silver lace of a fae bargain, snakes up both of their forearms.
My chest aches.
“Always a pleasure doing business with you, Nolan,” says Peter.
The captain bristles, but so subtly I imagine I’m the only one to notice.
Peter turns.
And flies away.
I watch him for a long while, even as the captain wrestles me to the ship. This time, he doesn’t bother carrying me over his back.
I don’t struggle.
I’m too busy watching my Mate fly away, his shadows for wings disappearing into the distance.
I’m too busy expecting for him to turn around, awaiting the crafty side of Peter to have figured out a way around the bargain.
My eyes are fixed heavenward until the two wings turn to spots in the white sky.
I’m still staring when Captain Astor passes me off to the bald man, who heaves me onto the deck of the ship. My feet feel as if they should fall through, as if the shadows, solid as they might feel, shouldn’t support me.
But I don’t fall.
I just sway with the rhythm of the current beneath us.
Chains rattle as the crew brings the anchor on board, and I’m left stunned—an abandoned isle in the middle of the sea, watching the world shift around me. Vaguely, I hear the claps as the crew embrace the captain and slap him on the back. Vaguely, I feel their gazes drag across my body, examining their captain’s prize.
And still, I gaze up at the sky.
No one comes.
A shape appears next to me. I expect the captain to grab hold of me, to drag me to his rooms beneath the ship and humiliate me completely. Instead, he stands with me on deck as the winds pick up the sails and carry the ship away.
We watch as Neverland grows smaller.
I teeter toward the edge, tingling filling my fingertips as the waves grow treacherous below us.
“Try to jump, and you won’t like what happens after I drag you out of the water.”
“Seems fair,” I say, my voice a thousand miles away.
“And why’s that?”
“Because you didn’t very much like what I did to you when I dragged you out of the water.”
The captain grunts at that, but out of the corner of my eye, I catch him glancing at me.
“What are you going to do to me?” I ask.
“You won’t like that much either.”
I turn to him. “Is it better not knowing?”
The captain examines me, and for once, he doesn’t seem cruel. Just tired. But he says nothing. I suppose even cruel pirates feel shame.
He opens his mouth to say something, but the ship gives a tremendous shake, throwing me into the captain’s chest. He catches me in his arms, holding me tight as my heart pounds. I struggle out of his grip, and he actually lets me go as the ship reels and shakes.
“I knew it,” I whisper, flashing the captain a quick grin.
The one he offers back is one of pity.
I spin around, gaze toward the heavens. Waiting for the shadowed wings to appear. For evidence of what rocked the ship to come barreling out of the sky. But the heavens only grow closer, glimmers of golden smoke painting them above us. When I turn toward the ocean again, I watch as the hull breaks from the grip of the waves, floating above the surface. Twin pipes stand tall in the center of the deck. That’s where the golden plumes are coming from.
“It’s the faerie dust,” says the captain. “We use it to power the ship when the wind proves obstinate.”
My heart feels as if it’s being plucked from my ribcage like meat off the bone.
We’re flying, but it’s nothing like flying with Peter. Nothing like falling, hurtling through the heavens. There’s the gentle sway of the boat in the wind, but it makes me feel unsteady, not free.
“I thought…”
But what do I even say? That I thought, even if it turned out Peter’s love wasn’t enough, at least our Mating Mark would compel Peter to fight for me? The same Mating Mark that compelled me to dig into the chest cavity of the man who tried to lay a finger on Peter. The Mark made me a murderer for him, so why isn’t it forcing him to fight for me?
The words escape me, melding in on each other, and I have to wrangle the last of them in.
“He’s not coming for you, Darling. Best get used to that idea.”
I stand and watch at the hull, hope wavering, until it becomes as small as the dot that is the Lost Boy’s island below us. We sail through the clouds, the heavens, until even the island isn’t visible through the fog. Until everything I have left to love is gone, my brothers just a faint memory.
Suddenly, the captain’s grip closes around my wrist. I realize then I’ve been stroking my Mating Mark absentmindedly. Slowly, he pries my fingers away from it.
“I thought…”
“You’ve believed plenty that’s not true.”
As we fly, the morning moon sets, bidding us farewell. I have a feeling about where we’re going. The second star to the right. Though I suppose it’s to the left from this angle. It’s not as if my human vision can locate the stars now that it’s morning anyway.
I feel it when we hit the distortion, because that’s when the pain hits me, strong and swift. Like being punched in the gut or having your fingernails plucked from your flesh one by one.
I fall to the deck, writhing in agony, my Mark searing hot against my flesh as I leave the world that is Peter’s.
“It hurts,” I say, cracking beneath the weight of the pain.
“Get up,” says the captain.
I don’t.
Instead, I let the pain take me, let it sear the edges of my mind. And for a moment, I hope it connects me to Peter. Hope he felt that same ripping as my body left Neverland. Hope that pain tethers us to each other like the Mating Mark didn’t.
Like his love for me didn’t.
That’s probably a silly thought.
But I’ve always had an abnormally high pain tolerance.
I laugh, and it’s the maniacal sort. Because as the pain hooks into me, twisting through my sternum, I know exactly what Peter will do.
He’ll tuck it away. Pretend it doesn’t exist.
He’ll go and visit our favorite places and remember me for the happy times we spent together, and he won’t give a second thought to my pain.
Pain.
The memory floods back to me of stitching Peter’s wound, while all the while, he didn’t tremble or shake. Not once did he cry out, not even when my hands quivered as they pierced his skin with a makeshift needle.
I have an abnormally high pain tolerance.
Even when the Sister drew blood from his cheek with a scratch, he didn’t flinch.
The Sister had offered him a gift. To do what’s necessary. That’s what she’d said. What his journals had said.
At the time, I’d thought it was Peter’s shadow powers she was referring to. Lethal weapons that would make killing easier.
Except that was never going to make killing easier for Peter. For Peter, who loved the Lost Boys like his own. Peter, who bargained his own life away to protect them.
I’m not the kind of Mate you want.
There’s something in me that’s missing.
When I asked him if he was referring to his shadow form, he’d said it amplified his worst qualities. I hadn’t realized the nuance in his words at the time, but what if he was saying that the Sister’s curse remained with him all the time? That his shadow form only made it worse?
“Get up,” says the captain, but I’m laughing now, laughing so hard it hurts my ribs.
“Great,” he says. “You’re as crazy as you are weak-minded.”
“He can’t feel pain,” I gasp.
The captain stills, staring down at me.
“He can’t feel pain. That’s the gift she granted him. She wanted him to be able to kill the Lost Boys if he needed to, even though he loves them. I can…I can take away your pain…” I cry, tears pouring out. “She took away his pain. That’s why he didn’t tell me I was his Mate. Because he can’t feel it like I can. He can only feel the high bits, not the agony. He knew I’d end up hurt.”
“I fail to comprehend why you find this funny.”
I just smile at the captain, the stabbing feeling in my chest finally numbing. Above us, the wistful clouds reflect the vibrant hues of a new day in a realm that might as well go back to sleep for all I care.
For a moment, I think the captain will kick me, but in the end, he just walks away, leaving me wallowing on the deck in a cold sweat.
Peter’s not gifted; he’s cursed. It’s not that he chooses not to love me, it’s that he can’t. Because when the Sister took away his pain, she inadvertently took part of what it is to love.
But that’s the thing about curses.
It’s in their nature to be broken.
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