Chapter 27
PETER PAN
Hansel is telling us about his sister and her determination to wipe witches off the face of the earth in every realm when Vane stands up suddenly, his body rigid.
I push off the doorway. “What is it?”
“Something is wrong.” He shoots across the room, hurries down the hall and pushes through the cracked doorway of Darling’s room.
My stomach sinks.
“What is it? Is she worsening?” I push past him into the room and find the bed empty, the sheets tangled at the foot of it.
The window is shoved open, the curtains caught by the wind, tangling up outside.
The energy in the room is frenzied, desperate, and filled with despair. But it’s all Darling’s. No one else has been here.
“Where did she go?” Bash shoves past Vane.
“Darling?” Kas yells through the house.
I snap my fingers at Vane. “Outside. Go.”
The Shadow takes him out into the night.
In the hallway beyond the room, the twins have let the magic come undone, their wings now firmly on their backs, flexing as if they are desperate to open.
“Go,” I tell them and they burst out into the night.
Hansel is making his way to the open back door, strapping his crossbow to his chest.
“They’ve been watching your house for days. If she’s out there, they already have her.”
“Fuck.” I turn, raking my hand through my hair. “Where will they take her?”
He shakes his head. “Nowhere I would know of. My sister knows I’m trying to stop her. It’ll be somewhere new.”
“What’s their end goal? If they have Merry and Darling, will they —” I can’t get the words out.
I’m not one to turn my face from death. But the thought of losing Darling…
“Their first objective is to end the Darling line with Winnie, yes. Their second objective is to tie up loose ends, and you and the jabberwocky and the fae kings, you’re all a liability.
My sister isn’t dumb. She knows that once she kills Winnie, you’ll come for her and destroy the entire Order.
So the end goal? Kill Winnie and you, too. All of you.”
“Christ.”
Apprehension is spinning in my head. How the fuck are we going to fight the Witch Killers when we are powerless? Kody fucked us over and we have no fire stones, no weapons. Our power has always been our defense.
And now they have Darling.
If I have one vulnerability, it’s her.
And they know that.
“There’s one more thing you should know,” Hansel says, stopping me as I leave the house. “I think my sister is working with someone from Neverland.”
I turn back. I don’t have to ask to know who. All of the pieces fall into place. The reason Doren met the twins on Marooner’s Rock and pretended they were in accord. The undeniable coincidence that Merry Darling disappeared the very same night, despite Doren having never left the fae palace.
He was just buying time. Because he’d already made a deal with the Witch Killers.
“Then I know how we find Darling,” I say as my power lifts me from the porch and into the night air. “I’m going to find that son of a bitch and tear his limbs off one by one until he tells me where she is.”