Chapter 30 His Twisted Love
Chapter Thirty
His Twisted Love
Wendy Darling.
Brighter than any star in the sky. Eyes clear as a cloudless day. And a smile I would do anything—anything—to see again.
She sews my shadow back to me, quiet and patient, taming its wild heart with needle and thread. She steps into Neverland like a force of nature and closes the void inside me with astonishing ease. Not with force, but with memory.
Memories I buried so deeply, I told myself they were gone forever.
Not of the pain or of the beatings. But of a window ledge across the street.
Of lamplight spilling warm and gold over a parlor.
Of a mother’s arms wrapped around her child as she reads him stories, her voice soft against the night.
The thing I have wanted more than anything else.
Love.
It isn’t that I see Wendy as my mother. No, quite the opposite.
I name her mother for the Lost Boys so they can glimpse it too, that fleeting comfort, that impossible promise of safety and warmth.
If I am their father—guide, protector, king—then Wendy is their mother.
The one who soothes scraped knees and bruised hearts, who scolds and comforts in the same breath. The one who loves without condition.
She tells us stories, just as mothers do. She brings order to our chaos, sets rules, and brings warmth to the wild home we built. She scolds the boys when they grow too rambunctious or shirk their chores, but warmth always burns beneath her voice. She makes Neverland feel… lived in.
As the days pass, something new takes root in me. It’s raw and feral, a feeling I don’t have a name for. It burns when I see her smile at a boy who isn’t me. When her hands soothe cuts that bleed blood that isn’t mine. When others lean close, eager for the stories spilling from her lips.
I don’t like this feeling. I know it’s wrong, that it’s dangerous, and still, I cannot smother it.
My shadow thrashes against me, restless, clawing. It wants Wendy. It wants to wrap her in darkness, keep her where no one else can see her—where no one else can touch her. Where she belongs to me.
To us.
When Hook takes her from me, something inside me finally breaks open. The chains snap, and a dark thing uncoils that will never be caged again. Rage blooms, hot and blinding. I want to kill him. I want to watch the life drain from his eyes.
Bloodlust thrums in my ears as I fly toward them, a drumbeat beneath the wind.
My chest tightens when I see her on the plank, fear bright in her face.
I strike. The world narrows to steel and motion.
To the hiss of my blade and the tearing of fabric and flesh as it finds its mark. The sword slides home.
It feels—awful.
Amazing.
A wild, terrible joy surges through me, and for one breath I want to laugh. Then I see the boys. A father does not revel in violence before his children. A father is steady. Controlled.
I wipe my blade on the rail and gather Wendy close. The Lost Boys cluster around us, wide-eyed and shaking. With her at my side and the boys safe around me, the world settles, righting itself again.
Then her blue eyes find mine. Her hand slides soft as a whisper against my cheek. She leans in and presses her lips to mine in a kiss that is sweet, brief, and utterly devastating.
My heart soars higher than I could ever hope to fly.
She pulls back only a hair’s breadth and, in that gentle, sing-song voice that has undone me from the start, she says: “Peter… I want to go home. I miss my mother.”
Pain.
It flares, hot and violent, searing through me like a brand. My shadow rages against my skin, claws scrabbling, hungry. Wanting her. Wanting to take her so no one else can ever have her. I can feel it coiling, answering to some deeper, fouler part of me.
I will not let it hurt her.
So I take her back.
I take her and her brothers and a handful of Lost Boys who beg for a mother, who mouth the word with hollow hope. I bring them to the mortal world because how could I deny anyone that? How could I refuse them what I myself wanted most?
Warmth and belonging.
The void inside me opens into a chasm, so deep and endless I can no longer pretend it isn’t there.
I think about it every second of every day, time suddenly feeling tangible again.
The runes etched into my skin flare and twist. The same runes blaze across Neverland, mirroring my turmoil.
My shadow rages at me for letting her go, for being weak.
Me.
My shadow.
Neverland itself.
We are no longer aligned, and it feels like I am being ripped open from the inside out.
I bring other girls here, trying to fill the hollow. Their faces blur together—smiles and hopeful eyes that never quite reach me. None of them are Wendy Darling.
Each time I return to London, I slip through her window and watch her grow older without me. I steal small things—a ribbon, the thimble, a page torn from her books—just to pretend she’s still mine.
Captain Hook returns with no memory of his death.
I slaughter him again.
And again.
And again.
It doesn’t make me feel better. It doesn’t appease my shadow. Neverland resurrects him each time, whole, cruel, unchanged, as though nothing ever happened.
The Lost Boys watch me with worried eyes.
Their whispers scrape against my nerves.
Their pity is unbearable. One by one, I send them away, back to the mortal world where they will grow old and forget me, where Neverland will soften into something like a dream.
And that’s when I realize—I want to grow up.
The thought feels forbidden, like speaking blasphemy in a sacred place.
Tinker Bell tries to stop me. She clings to my arm, wings buzzing, her voice shrill and trembling as she warns me I no longer belong to that world. That I can not live a mortal life. That I am Neverland now, it’s magic stitched into my soul.
I don’t listen.
I return to London and take my place in an orphanage.
Things are different this time. No one beats me.
No one makes me scrub floors until my hands crack and bleed.
I sleep in a real bed. I eat until my stomach no longer aches.
But my shadow pulls at me still, restless and enraged, demanding Wendy.
It takes every scrap of my will to keep it leashed, pressed tight to my skin.
Weeks pass in the mortal world, and I begin to fade. I grow weaker. Paler. The runes flicker, unstable, like dying embers. One morning, I wake with the knowledge lodged deep in my mind, clear and undeniable: If I stay here, I will die.
With the last of my strength, I tear myself back into the sky and fly toward the second star to the right, fighting my way home to Neverland. But I am not willing to give up.
Wendy is aging, growing more beautiful by the day. I can’t let her grow old without me. I can’t let her build a life where I do not exist.
Pain cracks through me like lightning. The gift of Neverland curdles into a curse.
I am trapped, chained to a world that was once my dream and is becoming a cage.
My emotions collapse into a single roiling storm, rage and sorrow braided so tightly I can no longer tell where one ends and the other begins.
And yet the truth remains, stubbornly real—I want to grow up.
Each night, I stare at the second star on the right and wish to age. Each day, I sink deeper into the chasm inside me.
The change comes slowly, cruel in its patience.
Neverland dulls. Colors bleach. Laughter thins.
The trees harden at the edges, their silhouettes sharpening into something ominous.
The runes across the land mirror me—dimming, flaring, warping into shapes I don’t yet understand.
My shadow becomes a thing with teeth. It scrapes and snarls at my skin, furious that I let her slip away.
It wants Wendy. It wants to possess her.
It wants to devour her. And by some magic—my magic, I suppose—I age.
The change is a shock at first, but a mercy nonetheless.
And a double-edged sword. What should feel like relief only widens the void.
Aging doesn’t sate the hunger; it refines it. Makes it clever.
As I grow older, the way I want Wendy changes. My longing turns carnal. Desire darkens, edges itself with cruelty, with something almost sadistic. I don’t recognize myself anymore, and my tightly held control frays.
I keep a watchful eye on Wendy as the years pass and we both grow older.
Boys who linger too close to her laughter wake in the wrong part of London with bruises they don’t remember earning.
I send Tinker Bell when I can’t trust myself.
And sometimes—when even she cannot contain the thing raging inside me—I let my shadow loose.
It moves like quicksilver, teeth sinking into skin, claws tearing flesh. It delights in cruelty.
I am ashamed of it.
I am terrified of it.
I learn slowly, painfully, that I can no longer command it completely. It answers to something darker, some horrible desire buried deep inside me. Wanting Wendy is easy. Understanding what that want makes me is something else entirely. It demands a price I am not yet willing to pay.
My shadow and I go to war.
Runes flare in answer to our argument. Trees recoil or surge forward like beasts obeying rival kings. I sleep less. I wake drenched in sweat with Wendy’s voice splitting my skull—I want to go home.
She wants to grow up. She wants a life I cannot give her without destroying everything I am. So I break.
Rage and grief fuse until they are indistinguishable. Love warps inward, twists, and becomes something possessive and corrosive. The magic carved into my body, carved into Neverland itself, bleeds red.
I lose my hold on my shadow completely. With a sound like tearing tendons, it rips free of me, severing the last thread of my control.
It swells and twists before my eyes, grotesque and shifting, until it stands on its own.
Razor claws. A maw of ragged teeth. Red mist oozes from runes carved into its black hide. A beast of shadows. My shadow.
Neverland shudders, crying out as if I have wounded it beyond repair. The creature snarls low and feral, then bolts into the woods. I watch it go, almost relieved. I’m finally free of it, free of the poison flowing through my heart.
My love for Wendy is pure. I want her happiness. I want her safe. And I know, without doubt, that the only place she can be truly happy is beside me. In Neverland.
I am not a monster.
I am hers.
And she—
My Darling.