Bash and I like to run the perimeter of Pan’s territory. We do it nearly every day. And inevitably, when we skirt the fae territory, our pace slows and our eyes wander.
We can’t see the palace from our favorite trail, but we can sense it through the forest.
Today we stop, panting loudly, sweat pouring down our backs. Day has nearly broken across the sky and the nocturnal animals of the Neverland forest have gone quiet and still. Except for us.
“I have a question for you,” Bash says, his hands on his hips. He’s pacing back and forth in front of the foot path that leads from Pan’s side of the island to our sister’s land.
“I’m listening,” I say and bend over so I can wind my hair back up into a rubber band. Some days I consider cutting it like my twin so we can be identical once again. He cut his as soon as we were banished.
“If our family doesn’t want me any longer, than I don’t want the custom,” he’d said.
Long hair is a symbol of many things for the royal family—strength, virility, power, status. But to our nani, it was the infinite symbol of the island and the earth, much like the sweetgrass that grows around the palace.
“We touch the grass,” Nani had said to me when I was a boy, as she’d drug her fingers through the feathered heads of the blooming stalks, “and the grass remembers. If we cut the grass, it will forget who we are and we never want the island to forget.” She’d turned to me then and patted the top of my head. “The same is said for our hair. It is a physical manifestation of our memories and our experiences. We touch our hair with our fingers and we will remember who we are.”
She died when Bash and I were just seven years old.
Sometimes I wonder what our life would be like if she’d lived longer.
Course, Nani hated our mother too. If Pan hadn’t killed Tink, Nani might have eventually.
Nani didn’t like that our father married a common house fae.
“Did you get the sense,” Bash says now, “that our dear sister was plotting when she came to the loft? Not the part where she tried to scramble our Darling’s brain. Something else. Something beyond that.”
I straighten and sweat drips down my forehead. I swipe it away with the backside of my hand. “Maybe,” I admit. “She seemed far too eager to get her hands on the Darling’s head.”
“That exactly.” Bash’s hands are on his hips as he turns a circle and thinks. “How much you want to bet she already knows Pan’s shadow has returned to the island?”
“I only bet what I know I can win.”
Bash nods.
I’ve been thinking about our sister a lot lately. About her lies. About our truths.
Does she know why Bash and I killed our father?
Could she ever forgive us and allow us to come home?
It’s hard not to tether myself to the hope that she might change her mind. The hope is the buoy and I’ve treading water for too long, the sea dragging me out.
I can’t let it go.
I won’t.
But Darling has changed things.
For one, our sister was going to scramble her mind just like she did Merry’s. She knew what she was doing and she did it anyway.
And two…
If we leave Peter Pan and the Treehouse, we leave Darling. Pan would never let us take her with us. The thought of that makes my shoulders knot up and my stomach twist.
Beyond all that…Tilly hasn’t felt like my sister for a very long time and I don’t know how to grapple with that feeling.
When I look at her, it’s like looking at a stranger. Is it that we’ve changed and she hasn’t? That we’ve become something dark and untenable?
Or is it the distance between us? If we went home, would that change? Would proximity breed familiarity and all would be well again?
I stop at the mouth of the path home. It’s overgrown now. There aren’t many who travel back and forth between Pan’s land and Tilly’s. Not since he killed Tink and we were banished.
“I have an idea,” I say.
“A good idea or a bad idea?” my twin asks.
“Perhaps both.”
“My favorite kind. What is it?”
“Let’s go visit our dear sister.”
Bash raises the line of his brow. “I have to disagree with you, brother. That is mostly just a bad idea. But I like it just the same.”
We walk to the palace, sweat still running down our backs, soaking our t-shirts. Maybe if we wanted to break the rules and show our faces in the fae palace once again, we should have put in more effort and better preparation and dressed accordingly.
But I suppose we are who we are, regardless of how we dress, and if the grass remembers, the palace will too.
By the time we reach the end of the footpath, the sun has risen and the sky is tinged in bright shades of yellow and orange and pink. A flock of birds flies in a V beyond the palace and I immediately ache for my wings.
It’s been far too long since I took to the air.
“You think we’ll be shot on sight?” Bash asks beside me. There’s levity to his voice, but I know he’s serious. We very well could be.
The path spills out at the top of a grassy knoll and the palace comes into view.
Bash and I are silent as we take in the sight of it.
It was made of white stone quarried from far underground by an army of brownies. It was constructed into the hillside, so half of it is above ground and the other below. There are numerous spires that twist up toward the sky like the shell of a ladder horn snail.
In the early morning light, the stone glitters.
The sight of our royal home makes my eyes ache.
“This…” Bash clears his throat. “I wasn’t prepared to see it,” he finishes.
“Neither was I,” I admit.
“We could turn back now,” he says, his gaze still on the palace. “No one would know.”
“We would.”
“Suppose we would.” He starts forward. “Then when we walk in there, let us walk with our heads held high. We are the fae princes, after all. Banished or not.”
We are not shot upon arrival.
“Small victories, eh?” Bash says and waggles his eyebrows at me.
“Not getting shot in the ass. That’s the win we’re celebrating?”
He laughs as we come up on the gate. There are two guards there, battle swords strapped to their backs.
They look soft around the middle though and bored beyond measure.
That is, until they notice us.
“Your Royal Highnesses,” the taller one says and gives us a deep bow. “What a pleasure.”
“We’d like to see our sister,” Bash says. “Would you be so kind as to let us in?”
The guards share a look.
“If you need to ask permission to conduct your duties,” I say, “then go on. We don’t have all day.”
They mutter and mumble and stumble over themselves. “Of course not, sir. Let us get this open for you.” They unlatch the gate and the lever clangs loudly. Each man takes a side and has to manhandle it to swing it open. If I remember correctly, the gate was made by the brownie we killed, the very same that had plotted against Peter Pan.
An excellent craftsman, apparently, but shit at plotting revenge.
Inside the gate, we follow the cobblestone path to the arched double doors that will lead down to the receiving room, and beyond that and underground, the throne room.
When we shove the doors in, they groan loudly on ancient iron hinges. The halls are full of life just as I remember it. Fae with wings and fae with horns and fae with green skin to blend into the vined walls.
They all look at us as we enter, and then look at us again.
Everything is the same and yet everything has changed.
We’ve yet to be here under our sister’s rule. We were banished and removed from the palace within hours of our father’s death. Our sister was crowned the next night.
“Who has entered my palace and caused a stir?” Our sister’s voice booms through the halls. Bash and I look at one another, slightly impressed.
“It’s your handsome older brothers,” Bash calls back.
The crowd goes silent.
There are a few more guards here stationed at the entrance to the throne room, but they too look fragile and unprepared. Certainly too distracted by our arrival to be quick on the draw of their swords.
Just what has our sister been doing these last several years? None of her warriors look ready for war.
Bash and I wouldn’t have let them get this soft. Never in a million moons.
Tilly comes down off her throne and starts toward us. Her wings are iridescent in the glittering orbs of light that hang from the vined ceiling. She lets them flutter as she nears, as if she’s rubbing it in.
Even growing up, our sister was conniving and cruel. She learned from the best, after all. Our mother was the queen of cruelty.
“Leave us,” she tells the courtiers and they scatter like flies. The hall and the throne room is empty within moments. I have to admire my sister’s hold over them. They may be soft, but at least they obey.
“Get in here,” she says, “and shut the door.”
As if we follow her commands.
But Bash and I are here on a mission and perhaps it’s best to play our parts—for now.
We enter the throne room and shut the inner set of doors with a loud bang. It’s a sound that reminds me of my childhood, when Bash and I would sneak into the throne room and hide beneath the tables while our father conducted business. Sometimes he would find us and shoo us away. Sometimes I think he knew we were there and let us stay.
Tilly goes to the bar and fills three goblets with faerie wine. She doesn’t serve them to us, though. She leaves them on the bar top. “You’re not supposed to be here.”
Bash circles the throne room, his hands hanging at his side as if he means no one any harm. “What are you up to, dear sister?”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“Your brownie is dead,” I say and take several slow, deliberate steps her way.
She goes rigid and her knuckles turn white as her grip on the glass tightens.
“I wondered where he’d disappeared to,” she says, pretending that we haven’t just gutted her.
I have to imagine that after she banished us, she was sorely wanting for friends. The brownie was probably the only one she could trust. The fae follow their leaders, until they don’t. All it takes is one misstep, one accidental show of weakness, and someone will be challenging our sister to a duel. I’m shocked she hasn’t been challenged yet. She’s young and inexperienced compared to our past leaders. And she was never meant to rule. Bash and I were to be co-kings. We were born to the throne. She was born to be married off.
“The brownie told us what you were plotting,” Bash lies.
Technically, the only thing the brownie told us was that our sister wanted what was best for the island and when we confronted him about our dear sister purposefully scrambling the Darlings’ minds, he didn’t outright deny it.
Tilly considers us from behind the glare of her wine glass.
Along with being cruel, our sister was also ridiculously competitive growing up. More than once, she beat Bash and me at a game of Bones and Blades. But sometimes, Bash and I let her win just so she wouldn’t throw a tantrum.
She has that look on her face now, like she’s about to toss the game board across the room.
“You think I don’t know what you’re doing?” She sips from her glass and then sets it aside. The wine was for us, not her. We’d always had the reputation of being partiers in court. Maybe she was hoping we’d guzzle her wine and get sloppy.
“What are we doing?” Bash asks innocently as he makes his way to the throne and stops at it. Our father had promised us he’d have a second one made so Bash and I could rule side by side. But as the years went on and the second throne failed to appear, Bash and I started to wonder if our father had other plans.
It turned out he did, though it’s hard to say how serious he was about it until our mother died. Tink changed everything.
“You’re trying to get me to admit something, though what, I don’t know. Whatever the brownie told you, it wasn’t true,” Tilly says. “But if there’s something in particular you want, just ask for it.”
She takes a few steps to the left, putting equal distance between her and us.
“We want our wings back,” I say. “But you already knew that.”
“I can’t do that. Not when you’ve been banished.”
“We could be unbanished.” Kas takes the three steps up the dais and then drapes his arm over the back of the throne and smiles.
I’m not exactly upset that a second throne never appeared, considering this one is ugly beyond reason. It’s large and overwhelming and cast of bronze. It has a sunburst as its back, the rays shooting out in shiny bronze. If it had only been that, I might have appreciated it and its simplicity. But whoever designed it must have looked at the sun and said, “More. I need more.”
Twining around the sunburst, also in bronze, are vines and squirrels and bees and snakes and frogs and beetles. The feet of the throne are made to look like the paws of a bear, and the curved arms were molded to resemble the talons of a bird.
It’s all too much. Just like the fae court. Always too much.
“I can’t just rescind your punishment,” Tilly says. “Not without a greater reason.”
Ahhh, and there it is.
The bait.
Bash and I share a look. We can’t use our fae language here to have a secret conversation. Tilly speaks it, after all.
But my twin and I don’t always need words to communicate.
“We have nothing to offer you,” I say, when really, we have two very big things—two runaway shadows.
Our sister would kill to claim one. I’m sure of it.
She turns to Bash, her long braid sliding over the silky back of her royal blue robe. “You came here for a reason,” she says to him. “If it’s not to negotiate your return with something I can use, then I fear you’re wasting your time.”
“The brownie said you wanted Peter Pan dead,” Bash says.
She freezes.
That one was also a lie—the brownie told us no such thing—but we know it to be true.
“He killed our mother,” Tilly says as if she needs to defend herself. “He lost his shadow. Peter Pan retiring has been needed for a very long time.”
“And by retiring you mean…” I let the sentence trail off.
“Dead,” Bash fills in.
Tilly somehow manages to look ashamed of this suggestion.
“And if we were to help with this mission,” I continue.
“Then you, our dear sister, would…” Kas adds.
“Give you back your wings,” she says quietly.
There is nothing I want more than that.
Well…perhaps also my rightful place at the helm of the fae court. Not because I want to rule, but because I was born to do it. And I take duty very seriously. It feels like an itch I cannot scratch.
Bash pivots away from the throne. “And our banishment?”
“I can give you back your wings, but the court would never accept your return—”
“Bullshit,” Bash says.
“Do you even know why we killed our father?” I ask.
Bash shoots a look my way. This question is toeing the line of too goddamn personal, but I need her to know. I need her to know why we made the decision we did.
“You were angry at him,” she answers, which is about as vague as you can get.
“Of course we were angry at him.” Bash plucks one of the spindly twigs from the vines growing in the walls and twists it into a knot.
“But why were we angry?” I ask her and catch the faint dip in her throat as she swallows.
“We were angry,” Bash says, “because he told us he planned to disinherit us from the throne.”
We both watch for her reaction. Our sister may be cunning, but she could never hide from us.
I’m surprised to see no reaction at all.
Time for the next secret to test her. “Father was dying already, did you know that?”
Her mouth pops open.
Finally, we’ve managed to surprise her.
“He wanted his revenge against Peter Pan for killing Tink, so he swam into the lagoon hoping it would imbue him with more power. Instead, he came out dying.”
“So he scrambled to make a plan,” Bash says. “But his plan was never to allow his sons to take over.
“’You sympathize with Peter Pan,’ he’d told us. ‘You don’t deserve to rule.’”
“So he schemed behind our backs,” I say. “He wanted the island to unite against Peter Pan and he knew he was running out of time to do it himself. So he offered your hand in marriage to Captain Hook and Hook agreed.”
“He was going to auction you off like chattel,” Bash says, his voice catching.
“And that is why we killed him,” I finish. “To protect you and to protect our rightful place among the court.”
Our sister blinks. But her mouth is pursed tightly again and all of the blood leaves my face.
I’m numb all over, but suddenly covered in a cold sweat.
She knew.
She fucking knew?
Bash and I glance at one another and I can see my own rage reflected in his eyes.
After we killed our father, we were immediately isolated from our sister and were never given an opportunity to explain. We blamed it on the other noble fae who never quite liked us, who had always wanted a puppet on the throne.
It made sense to us.
But maybe it was Tilly all along.
I’m going to kill her, I tell my brother.
I’ll help you, he says.
We charge for her.
“Stop!” she yells and throws out her hand and the floor beneath our feet turns to quicksand.
I stagger. Bash hits his knees and his hands get stuck in the mire.
It’s all an illusion. I know this magic. I can even smell the faintness of it on the air. Sweet like honeysuckle, edged in earthiness like that of sweetgrass.
I’m surprised that I’m having a very difficult time fighting it.
Our dear sister has become more powerful in our absence.
Tilly takes in a long, settling breath.
“Yes, I knew what our father planned to do.” She clasps her hands behind her back, her iridescent eyes glittering. “He came to me first because he knew I would do what needed to be done. Neither of you were ever driven enough to make the sacrifices the fae needed. Peter Pan killed our mother and you barely blinked.”
“Did he not have a right to his revenge?” Bash bites out. “Mother was a cold-hearted bitch who betrayed him. Say what you will about Pan—he may be cruel and he may be vicious, but you will never wake up with his knife in your back.”
Tilly’s wings flutter angrily behind her and the edges turn bright crimson. “Father was right to disinherit you. You dishonor the fae. I don’t regret the decisions I made. I would have married Captain Hook and we would have banded together to defeat Peter Pan.”
“And then what? The fae queen would have a pirate for a husband?”
“Was our mother not a common fae? And she made her place among the court just like Hook would have.”
I snort. “I don’t buy that for a second.”
She screws up her mouth. “All right, yes. He would have been a thorn in my side. The men of Neverland have always felt they deserved to rule, even when they don’t.”
She turns again, her wings going still. “I would have done then what I plan to do now.”
“Which is what?”
The smile that comes to her full lips is devilish indeed. “Summon his greatest fear to deal with him, so I can rule all of Neverland alone.”
She’s so smug and proud about it, our dear little sister. How much she’s changed beneath the cutthroat world of the fae court.
“I know I can do better,” she adds. “I will do better.”
I hear the words she’s left unsaid. “Tilly, what have you done?” I yank at the quicksand but it holds fast and sucks me deeper.
“Two birds, one stone. Remember that saying? It used to be Nani’s favorite.”
“Spit it out, dear sister,” Bash says and lunges forward, testing the sand’s strength.
“There is one man who can handle both Hook and Peter Pan.”
I go cold inside.
“No,” Bash says. “Don’t tell me—”
“The Crocodile,” she says.
“Fuck.”
Tilly smiles. “Getting inside of the Darlings’ heads all of those years has allowed me to reap something of value—Peter Pan’s secrets. He has been keeping something from the Crocodile and he won’t be happy when he finds out. When all is said and done, the Crocodile will have devoured both Pan and Hook and I will be the only one left standing.”
She turns away, her wings closing at her back. The floor returns to stone and we are immediately free.
“I suggest you pick a side,” she says as she walks away. “And if you want to live, I suggest you pick mine.”
