Chapter 50
Peter’s tent isn’t difficult to find.
With the circus in an uproar, I’d been able to peep under the circus tent flaps until I found the one most cluttered with trinkets.
I’m unsure whether he’s brought these over from Neverland—probably not, which means he’s acquired these stacks in the months since I last saw him. When we first met, I thought it was an endearing quality.
Now, I can only see the need to possess.
I siphon through the mess, eyes peeled for the artifact. I’d seen it so many times back in Neverland. I can only hope Peter brought it with him. But back in Neverland, he carried it with him everywhere. Perhaps he had it on him the night I slashed his wing from his body.
I’m curious as to how he acquired it in the first place. Did he steal it from the Eldest Sister, or did the Middle Sister steal it on his behalf?
Time slips away from me, but sweat beads on my arms as I search. The only object of use I’ve found is a dagger, which I slipped into my belt. Soon, I’ll run out of—
“Hello, Tink,” says a voice from behind me, as familiar as my nightmares. Except this voice isn’t the Nomad’s. It isn’t the voice of visions. It’s the one of my past.
Peter stands before me, his gaze raking over me. He has his hands tucked into his pockets innocently, and I’m struck by how much he still looks like the boy I first met at the circus, the youth whose broad smile warmed something in me that I’d thought had gone cold forever.
“I see your wings have been healed as well,” he says, and I realize the invisibility salve must have worn off. “Does this make us even?” His new wing flexes, the brandished metal shining in the lamplight.
My hands are shaking. Not that I could speak to him with them anyway. He never learned signs. Never learned a way to communicate with me after I lost my voice.
I used to think it simply never crossed his mind. Or that he thought it was impossible in Neverland, where we had no access to tutors. But John hadn’t had access to tutors, yet he’d found a way.
Now I know it’s because Peter simply didn’t want to hear what I had to say to him.
“You look surprised to see me. Especially for someone who is currently wanted for being in cahoots with the most notorious thief in the world. He didn’t tell you I was your target, did he?”
I swallow, my throat dry, but I don’t answer. After all this time, he’s not getting one from me now.
Instead, I look at his hands. The hands that once caressed my cheek. The hands that took a blade to my wings until they hung in limp shreds. The hands that took the same blade to my skin, to my thighs, to drain the blood.
The hands that strangled John, then tied him up for Wendy to find, swaying from that horrific reaping tree.
And I wonder how I used to love him. Love those hands.
As if reading my mind, Peter takes a step forward. “Let me guess—the Nomad’s seduced you, too.”
I’m not sure what that “too” means. That I, like other women, have been seduced by the Nomad? Or that I’ve been as easily seduced by the Nomad as I was by Peter? I’m also not sure which makes me more livid.
Peter laughs. “Do you even know his name?”
When my hand flinches at my side, intending to answer, but again realizing that it doesn’t matter, because Peter won’t understand, he says, “I didn’t think so.”
And all of a sudden, I’m silenced again. No pen or parchment in sight. No tiles. No one to understand my signs.
I’m face-to-face with the man I’ve dreamed of telling off so many times, memorized what I’d say to him if I ever saw him face-to-face again.
And he can’t even read my signs.
I realize then that this is the answer to the Nomad’s question, to what I was planning on doing after I found my voice.
I was going to confront Peter. I was going to tell him all the things I’ve spent years bottling up, unable to release.
But we’ve come face-to-face too early, and I’m as silenced as ever.
Peter begins pacing me in a circle. “I do wonder what he promised you,” he says. “Tell me, what is it that you think I have? What is it that you’ve come to steal?”
I frown, tears smattering my cheeks despite myself.
When Peter approaches me and reaches out his hand, I freeze. And though I wish I were less affected by his nearness, when his finger trails my throat, I flinch all the same.
He doesn’t smile, and there’s no pleasure in his eyes at my fear.
“I always liked you, you know. I know you don’t believe that.
I know you think it was all an act to lure you to Neverland so the Sister could use your voice to bind the realm.
And I suppose, at first, it was an act. But the acting was so easy.
You were so funny, you see. So interesting to talk to. I miss that about you.”
The barb lands, and the worst part is that I’m not certain it’s an intentional blow. Knowing Peter, he could very well mean it as a compliment, overlooking that what he misses is the very thing he stole from me.
“That’s what he promised you, isn’t it?” he says. “He promised you your voice back.”
I can’t help myself. I’m shaking. Hanging on Peter’s every word despite myself.
Something like pity crosses Peter’s face. “Oh, Tink. And you believed him?”
A fissure makes its way down my heart. Not quite a crack. Not with me suturing it together with the reminder that Peter is a liar. But still, I don’t move. Just listen as Peter feeds my fears exactly what they’ve wanted to believe all along.
Peter shakes his head. “I asked the Sister once, if it could be returned to you. She told me it was gone, interwoven into the Fabric of Neverland itself. There is no getting it back, I’m afraid.
Not even the Nomad, the Fates’ favored pet, could unweave it.
Not even if Neverland itself was destroyed.
I’m afraid, my dear, that you’ve believed the wrong man. ”
No. Peter is a liar. Always has been. From the day he stepped into the carnival and saw me in my cage, he’s been lying to me.
When I wrench myself from his shadowy grasp, he has the audacity to look hurt.
Then he turns and searches his rooms, opening drawers and rifling through clothes, until he pulls out a small yet ornate box. When he goes to pull something out of his pocket, he frowns.
“My key is missing. Would you believe it?”
He turns the latch on the box anyway, and it clicks open.
I hold my breath, but when he opens it he says, “Figures.”
He tilts the box toward me, the interior lined with red velvet upon which nothing sits.
He chuckles, running his hand through his hair.
“I’ve always hated that man.” Then he turns his gaze toward me.
“Let me guess, you thought you were coming in here to steal this. He didn’t let you in on the fact that while you two were watching me from the circus seats, he’d already sent someone in here to take it? ”
The lump in my throat swells. Acel. There has to be an explanation. It’s just an empty box. There’s no reason to believe the artifact was ever in there in the first place. Peter saw us at the carnival. He could have easily taken out the artifact before I arrived at the tent.
As if reading my thoughts, Peter says, “I recognize that look. That disbelief. You’re still defending him.”
How I hate that I can’t bite back at him with the question of why exactly he recognizes the look.
“Do you know why the Nomad needs what used to reside in this box?” asks Peter.
He goes and sits on the edge of his bed, patting it to invite me to sit next to him.
When I remain where I am, he shrugs and continues.
“Surely you’ve heard the legends surrounding him.
That this is not his home realm. That he hails from somewhere so far away, it cannot be reached by land or sea or even death.
Only by manipulating the Fabric that divides the realms. Oh, yes.
There are worlds beyond this one. Complete worlds, unlike Neverland.
And the Nomad has been gone from his for a long, long while.
What was in this box, well, it was his ticket back home.
Back to the world he once tried to conquer. ”
My mind flashes back to the story the Nomad told me about his childhood.
About the land his father had conquered, had taught him to conquer.
About how, at the height of his power, his mother had killed him, and then, regretting it, had brought him back.
But he’d never told me how he’d ended up here.
The question now raps at my mind. If his mother succeeded in bringing back her dead child, why had he still been banished to this realm?
I am a very bad man. That’s what the Nomad had told me himself, had he not?
A shudder runs through me.
Still, it isn’t news to me that the Nomad wants to use the artifact to return to his home realm. He’d been open with me about that from the start. Even invited me.
“You know what’s back in that realm for him, don’t you?” asks Peter.
When I don’t move, he laughs. “Oh, come now. What’s always at the bottom of a man’s obsessive endeavors?”
I can’t help myself. I tilt my head to the side.
“Why, a girl, of course.”
This time, the fissure in my heart does crack. My thoughts race to the rescue, to sew it back up. It’s not true. The Nomad cares for me. He wants me to come away with him when this is all over. In the future, he even marries me.
Right before he kills you, an unwelcome voice in the back of my mind whispers.
And then there’s the evidence standing before me.
If anyone had tried to tell me years ago that Peter was only using me to get to Wendy, I would have laughed in their face.
I would have argued vehemently that when this was all over, Peter wanted me to come away with him, to a world that was better than this one.
Peter must notice the crack in my faith, because he says, “The Sister never told me her name. What I do know is that he’s been roaming the worlds for lifetimes now, searching for a way to get back to her.
Can you imagine? Living and dying over and over again just to get back to the life your beloved is living? ”
It occurs to me that it doesn’t matter that I can’t answer. Peter would fill the silence anyway. “Oh, and she did tell me one more thing. That, however he plans to get back to her, you’re the key. Don’t believe me? Let me ask you this—where is your new lover right now?”