Chapter 26 The Truth Beneath the Wreckage #2
Shame scorches through me, blistering in its intensity. I grit my teeth and shove his hook away from my face. The metal scrapes my skin, cold and biting.
Hook’s smile fades. His eyes narrow, voice dropping to something vicious. “I’m sure you’ve noticed,” he murmurs, “women are rather scarce in Neverland. And you’re such a pretty little thing.”
I gasp at the implication in his words, a new fear sparking to life in my gut. I would give anything to be back in Peter’s bed. At least there, I know my monster. Love my monster. Peter may not be able to protect me from himself… but from monsters like Hook?
He’d rip them apart—for me.
Hook grins down at me, triumphant, like he’s finally getting everything he’s ever wanted. “Take her to a cell.”
Two pirates appear at my sides before I can even flinch. They seize my arms, yanking me upright. I stumble, legs dragging as they haul me forward faster than I can find my footing.
We pass Thorne, who won’t even meet my eyes, but under his breath, barely audible, I hear him whisper, “I’m sorry, Wendy. I’m so sorry.”
A part of me aches for him. He’d trusted whatever fragile relationship existed between him and Hook to be enough to keep this line uncrossed. He’d believed in Hook. And I understand that all too well.
Loving a monster and hoping—desperately, stupidly—that your love might soften them. That it might be enough. That it might change something fundamental inside them…
My thoughts snag, resisting the next realization even as it presses closer.
Men like Hook—and Peter…
They don’t see the world the way we do. Not entirely. There’s something skewed in the way they justify their choices, the way love and violence blur together until one excuses the other. Until harm becomes acceptable, so long as it serves their purpose.
The thought makes my heart ache. I don’t want Peter and Hook tied together in any way.
The pirates drag me through a side door off the dining hall, down two steep flights of narrow stone steps carved beneath it.
The air thickens, damp and heavy with mildew.
The walls close in around us, jagged stone slick with condensation.
Moss creeps between the cracks. A faint sour smell of rot hangs in the air.
A single flickering torch barely lights the corridor.
Iron-barred cells line both sides, their shadows stretching long and warped across the uneven floor.
“This is usually where we toss the rowdy drunks after dinner,” the taller pirate says conversationally, as if discussing the weather.
The other grins, eyes dragging over me. He leans in and inhales loudly, deliberately. “She sure does smell good.”
A disgusted whimper slips out as I recoil, tears burning down my cheeks.
The taller one laughs and swings open a cell door. The leering pirate shoves me inside without ceremony. I hit the dirt floor hard, palms scraping against gravel and dust. The iron door slams shut with a metallic clang that seems to echo inside my skull.
They linger on the other side of the bars. The first pirate elbows his companion, nodding toward me.
“We’ll get our turn,” he says with a smirk.
“After Peter’s dead,” the other adds, grinning like it’s already done.
They leave, boots fading into silence, until I’m alone on the cold, damp ground with nothing but the stench of decay and the dark pressing in. And I have no one to blame but myself for being here.
Hook is right.
I am na?ve.
I told myself to be brave, that Thorne’s presence would be enough. That I could walk into Peter’s enemy’s lair and demand answers. That I could fix this somehow. But I was an idiot.
Worse—I was arrogant.
I curl against the wall, drawing my knees to my chest, my whole body shaking. I think back to my first visit to Neverland. The pirates frightened me then too, but not like this. Back then, I feared capture, imprisonment… maybe even death. But now?
Now I’m afraid of being violated. Used. Reduced to nothing but flesh in their hands. The thought makes my stomach churn so violently that I nearly gag over the gravel floor.
Peter has taken my body roughly, forcefully even, from the moment we reunited.
But the truth I can’t escape is that I crave it.
Not because it hurts, but because it’s him.
Because I blindly trust the hands that hold me, even when they aren’t gentle.
Because I know whose touch it is. I know who’s watching me.
With Peter, the pain never feels empty. It never feels like I’m fading away. It feels like being seen, claimed, wanted so completely that it should terrify me.
Like Persephone, tasting the forbidden sweetness of the pomegranate and understanding, at last, that there was no going back.
My breath shudders. Twisted as it is, I feel safe in Peter’s arms. Only Peter’s. His hands may hurt me as much as they please me, but he would never let anyone else touch me. Never let anyone else break me.
Tears sting my eyes. And now—because I came here, because I thought I could fix this—I’m going to be the reason he breaks.
I don’t know how long I sit there, knees pulled to my chest, staring at nothing.
Time loses shape. Minutes bleed into hours.
The only sound is my own breathing, uneven and shallow, echoing off the stone walls.
My head aches from crying. My limbs throb from cold and tension. But mostly I just feel hollow.
It had been midday when we entered the pirate village. Here, in the pitch-dark belly of this prison, I have no idea what time it is. And I can only guess at what waits for me when night falls.
I wonder if Peter’s awake yet. If he’s realized I’m gone. He’ll be furious, of course. I can see it: the runes flaring, violent red across his skin, Neverland itself boiling under his rage.
Or maybe—
Maybe he’ll be scared.
That thought guts me. I bury my face in my hands as shame and dread crash through me in waves. I thought I was doing what was right. But now? Now I don’t know anything.
I look up at the dark stone wall before me, Hook’s words echoing like a curse I can’t shake.
He thinks the shadow beasts are part of Peter. His shadow, broken apart.
Everything I’ve seen rushes back at once. The way the beasts move silently, fluidly, more absence than flesh. The red eyes, burning with the same blind fury I’ve seen consume Peter when he loses control. It makes a terrible kind of sense.
I think of how Neverland shifts with Peter’s moods, how the island bends to his desires, trembles with his rage, quiets when he softens. How the gold and red runes blaze across his skin, then echo through the forest itself—the same markings pulsing faintly in the shadow beasts.
They even appeared on me. Just for a moment. Long enough to leave me shaken.
But what is it? What thread binds Peter, the beasts, and Neverland itself?
I curl tighter into myself, a chill crawling over my skin.
Why am I the only one who sees the runes, besides Peter himself? Why do I feel the island’s rage, its grief, as if it’s my own?
An insidious thought creeps through my mind, then.
What do I actually know about Peter Pan?
Not the myth. Not the bedtime story. Not the charming boy from the window who teaches children to fly.
I know the man who lies beside me each night, the one who touches me like I’m the last thing tethering him to this world.
But who was he before the magic? Before Neverland crowned him king?
Where did he come from?
Who were his parents?
What kind of boy slips so easily between myth and nightmare?
If Neverland lives and breathes through him…
Then what kind of being is Peter Pan?