Darling devours her meal in record time. I don’t think she comes up for a full breath before she’s licking her fingers clean of the tomato sauce, one fingertip at a time.
I can’t help but imagine it’s something else she’s cleaning off and I’m instantly hard.
“What is your verdict?” I ask her trying to distract myself and my rogue cock.
“It was better than I expected.” She takes a long drink of the Winterland whisky and winces as it goes down. “I’m feeling tons better.”
“Yes, let’s talk about your care and—”
The tavern door creaks open and because I like to know everything about my surroundings, I am drawn to the newcomers.
And the moment I see that bright blond hair, my insides chill.
Remaldi royalty and several of their guards.
It doesn’t take much to connect the dots.
Tilly summoned the Crocodile. The Crocodile is from Darkland.
The Darkland royals probably saw an opening to retrieve their dark shadow.
Vane will give the shadow back, I’m sure of it. But now is not the fucking time.
There are two guards who keep two paces back and three of the royal family with the queen at the head. I don’t recognize the other two women, but they’re younger than she is, which means they are much, much younger than me.
Giselle spots me in an instant. I am hard to miss.
“Christ,” I mutter when she starts over.
“What is it?” Darling asks. She follows my line of sight and goes rigid beside me when she lands her gaze on Giselle.
The air shifts. Did the wolf return from his hunt already?
I don’t see him.
I look over at Darling as the energy in the air mounts.
The fuck is that?
I can feel her.
I can feel…
Oh fuck.
“Peter Pan!” Giselle says.
The Darkland queen stops at the head of our table and clasps her hands in front of her. Though Neverland has always been more tropical than arctic, Giselle is wearing a fur shawl made of what looks like a wolf’s pelt.
Beneath that, a black dress skims her body in skeins of silk.
Her blond hair is woven into several thick plaits that are pinned around her head like a crown.
She knows better than to wear an actual crown on Neverland.
Behind her is a young woman who might be twenty-two or fifty, depending on how she ages. She’s swearing the Remaldi royal crest and she has the Remaldi blond hair, so I assume she’s a princess.
Beside her is another girl, younger still.
“The fuck do you want?” I say to Giselle.
I need to get her out of here.
I need Vane and the twins.
“Can a queen not visit another island? See the sights? Maybe sample the island’s finest goods?”
She rocks her shoulders back purposefully pushing out her chest. The shawl is clasped at the base of her throat, but her dress is cut low exposing the swell of her breasts. The silk of her dress is thin and her nipples are pebbled against the material.
“I can assure you,” I say. “There’s plenty of other fine goods on other islands. So you can kindly fuck off mine.”
Her ruby red lips screw up in a lecherous grin. “But Peter—”
“You heard him,” Darling says.
When I look over at Darling again, her head is bowed and her hair is hanging in her face.
That energy is crawling up my spine.
“And who is this whore?” Giselle asks. “Peter Pan, you never were discerning enough.” She comes closer to my side of the booth and leans into me, putting her arm around my shoulders, her mouth at my ear so she can whisper, “Perhaps we go back to my ship and—”
Darling leaps over the table, a knife in her hand and rams it into Giselle’s throat.
Blood paints the air.
The tavern is immediately in chaos.
Giselle stumbles back, groping at her throat as blood mats the fur of her shawl.
The princess goes pale, but she’s quick on her feet and pulls a sword from the sheath at her hips.
But Darling has her by the wrist in a second and blackness eats away at the princess’s skin and pulses through her veins.
She chokes on the darkness. Blood vessels burst around her eyes.
The Remaldi guards come at Darling next, but I’m already on my feet.
I yank the blade from Giselle’s neck and ram it into the eye socket of the first guard, then boot the second one in the chest. He slams into a table behind him and drinks spill to the floor, glasses shattering into a million pieces.
“Darling!” I shout.
She turns and looks at me.
And both of her eyes are darkest black.
“Drop her.”
There is the familiar sound of a pistol arm cocked back.
I know that voice.
I know it very well.
After all, it sounds not unlike Vane’s voice.
They are brothers, after all.
I turn to find the Crocodile in the middle of the tavern, a liberated pistol in his hand. He has the barrel pointed at Darling.
“Drop her,” he repeats calmly.
The Remaldi princess is still choking for air, but the blackness is starting to envelop her face.
She doesn’t have much time left.
“Roc.” I hold out my hands to show him I’m unarmed. “Put the fucking gun down.”
He pulls a pocket watch out of his pocket, pops open the front. “She has five seconds. Starting now.”
Five seconds isn’t enough time.
I can’t kill Roc.
Vane would kill me.
But I can do a great many things without tearing out a man’s heart.
I dart across the room in flight and barrel into Roc. We crash into the bar, then topple over it and slam to the floor on the other side.
I’m up in a second and he swings with a bottle of scotch. I duck. He misses. I catch the bottle when he comes back around and reach for the well of my power.
It’s been so long but the second I tap into it, it races through my veins and adrenaline beats at my ribs.
The bottle lets out a loud POP and then it bursts into firecracker flowers.
Roc looks down at the petals now crushed in his hand and his teeth grit together, his eyes flashing bright.
I can’t help but smile.
And Roc uses my prideful distraction to punch me in the fucking face.
When the ringing fades from my ears, he’s already leaping over the bar.
I fly out after him.
The last of the tavern-goers scream and scatter for the door.
Roc grabs a chair by the back, lifts it over his head, and whacks Darling with the base.
“No!” I shout.
Darling and the Remaldi princess slam to the floor.
I snatch a steak knife from a table and send it sailing across the room, aimed right for Roc’s head.
But he catches it at the last second. Plucks it from the air, just like that.
Then he reaches for Darling and takes a fistful of her hair and yanks her to her feet.
He puts her back to his chest and wraps his arm around her, the sharp edge of the blade pressed against her throat.
“Don’t do this,” I tell him.
He nods at the princess splayed on the floor. “Fix her.”
“It doesn’t work like that.”
He presses the blade against Darling’s throat and blood beads beneath it.
Through gritted teeth, I tell him, “I’m going to kill you.”
“Fix the princess. It’s in your best interest and mine if you fix her.”
I don’t doubt him. Roc isn’t stupid. And he plays by strategy, not emotion.
There is a dead queen lying on the tavern floor and a princess not far behind. I’m not sure about the youngest girl, but I think it’s safe to assume she’s dead too.
“Fine,” I tell Roc. “Let me go to her.”
Darling’s black eyes are trained on me.
I have no time to question how she got Neverland’s Death Shadow or how much it’s taken over. No time to contemplate the consequences of her having it.
But when the corner of her mouth lifts in a mischievous little smirk, I know I’m in fucking trouble.
Because there will be consequences.
There’ve already begun.
She wraps her hand around Roc’s forearm, her other around his opposite wrist.
On any other day, under any other circumstance, he would be stronger than her.
But it’s not any other day.
Blackness creeps out of her grip, up his arm. He hisses in pain and instinctively steps back. She shoves out, shifting the blade from her flesh, then immediately ducks and spins and jabs him with his own hand.
His eyes go wide as blood spills from his mouth and pours down his neck soaking into his shirt.
“Darling,” I call.
Roc staggers back and slumps against the wall.
“Darling. We have to go. Right fucking now.”
Roc chokes and the sound is wet and garbled.
“Darling!”
She finally looks at me and it’s like I’m in a fever dream.
I am looking at her, but I can feel her seeing me too, and for the first time in my entire immortal life, I sense the shadows connecting, like two mirrors pointed at each other.
“Come,” I tell her.
And though her eyes are still black and she’s covered in blood, she smiles up at me, takes my offered hand and follows me out the door.
