We’ve been floating in the lagoon for what feels like hours, just me and Vane. The rain has stopped and the dark clouds have thinned letting some of the remaining twilight to shine above.
Vane is conscious again, which is better than when we arrived, but his breathing is labored and every handful of minutes, his body jolts and the shadow tries leaving his body through the gaping wound in his chest.
“Why isn’t this working?” I call to the others.
Pan is sitting beside the wolf, absently scratching at his neck while Bash and Kas play catch with a large seed pod.
“Give it time,” Kas calls. “The lagoon can be picky about how and when it gives up its magic.”
“Darling,” Vane says, his voice weak. “You should go.”
“I’m not leaving you.” I swim closer to him. He’s on his back, the waterline undulating around his body. “Do you feel any better?”
He grits his teeth at a fresh wave of pain and black mist kicks up from the festering wound. I can barely stand to look at it, it’s so bad.
“I think it’s getting worse.”
When the panic rises again in my throat, I quickly swallow it back down.
“Maybe you need to ask the lagoon for help.”
He snorts. “If begging is required, I’ll fucking die.”
“Don’t you dare say that.”
“I can feel the shadow wanting to leave.” He lifts his head just enough to look over at me. “And when it does, I’m not sure what will be left.”
“You still haven’t told me what you are beyond the shadow…”
His teeth chatter. “There’s a reason my brother is known as the Crocodile. I’m no different.” He gets his legs beneath him and treads water slowly. “There was a time I thought getting rid of the shadow would be best. That I could control who I was a lot easier than I could control the shadow. But the more I’m around you, the more…” He trails off and rolls again to his back.
“You what?” I coax.
“I am a monster either way. You would be better off without me.”
“I swear to fucking god, if you keep talking like that I will…”
He gives me the joy of laughing this time. “You’ll what?”
“Make you take me out for brunch in my world.”
“Brunch?” He says the word like it tastes bitter. “The fuck is brunch?”
“The meal between breakfast and lunch?”
“Okay fine. You’ve talked me into bending to your demands with your threat of ludicrous mortal rituals.”
On the shore, the wolf growls.
Peter Pan rises to his feet, his ears turned toward the forest.
Vane swims closer to me. “Do you hear that, Win?”
“Hear what?”
“Heartbeats,” he says.
I have barely accepted the fact that I have the Neverland Death Shadow, so whatever power it might have, it’s still just out of my reach.
“Listen,” Vane whispers.
I close my eyes and turn to my sense of hearing.
And there, just beyond the forest’s edge, is the sound of several dozen heart beats.
“Get out of the water!” Pan shouts at us.
“Go.” Vane pushes me.
“You’re not healed yet!”
“Win, for fuck sake, listen to me for once!” He shoves me again.
But I barely swim forward a foot before the beach is swarmed.
Fae warriors and pirates and several men dressed in black military uniforms.
And standing at the head of the arrival are Tilly, Captain Hook, the Crocodile, and a man I don’t recognize. He’s wearing the same style clothing as the queen in the tavern so I guess he must be the royal family who arrived to take Vane’s shadow.
“Fucking Roc,” Vane says at my ear.
I have a vague recollection of meeting Roc already. I also have a vague memory of killing him.
Or so I thought.
“Is he that much of an asshole?” I ask Vane. “Why is he siding with them?”
Vane shakes his head. “Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what the fuck he’s thinking.”
Peter Pan faces off with the small army. “I don’t know what you think your plan is, but it’s ill-advised.”
The twins flank him. Bash says, “Dear sister, is this really what you want your legacy to be?”
“Don’t pretend like you wouldn’t be doing the same thing if your kingdom was in jeopardy,” the queen says. “We all know the Darling has the shadow and we all know she lost control in town and murdered several innocent people.”
Pan snorts. “Giselle was hardly innocent.”
“Amara was.”
The crowd shifts its attention to Roc at the end of the line. He’s got a cigarette in his mouth, one eye squinted to keep the sting away from the smoke ribboning around his face.
I know I did what they all say I did. But I’m not that person.
Aren’t you?
The dark energy slithers in my gut.
“Get them out of the water,” Tilly orders.
Her fae soldiers take to the air, wings beating so fast, they turn iridescent as they reflect the light of the moon.
“Tilly,” Kas says, “I swear to our gods, if you—”
But she doesn’t wait for the threat.
Instead she flicks her wrist and the entire beach starts to undulate like it’s a living thing.
Kas and Bash spread out their arms to try to keep their balance. Pan takes to the air.
The fae soldiers dart across the surface of the lagoon, not quite touching the water.
“Time to go,” Vane says and wraps his arm around my waist from behind.
“Where?”
I barely get the question out before Vane is yanking us from the water. The beach grows smaller and smaller the higher up we go.
And although I’ve been into the air a few times now, my very mortal brain doesn’t like it one bit.
My cry of surprise echoes across the lagoon.
Vane’s flight path veers sharply to the right and then we’re suddenly crashing to the ground.
When we hit the sloped side of Marooner’s Rock, a jolt of pain shoots up my thighs. Vane loses his grip and we both tumble down the mossy rock.
I slam to a halt against the backside of a boulder. Vane is several feet away on his back gasping for air. More black mist trails from his open wound.
“Why did you do that?” I scurry over the rock to him. His next inhale is wet and shallow. “Vane, goddammit!” He rolls to all fours, collapses, then falls to his side. There’s a vacant look in his violet eye.
The fae soldiers are not far behind us. Down below on the beach, I can hear the sound of blades clashing and people shouting.
Come on Death Shadow. You came out and wreaked havoc once before. I need your magical madness once again.
I’m greeted with complete and utter silence.
You can’t be serious!
“Win,” Vane says.
The soldiers are going to be on us in seconds.
I hook Vane’s arm around my shoulder and grunt as I leverage us up. Blood from his open wound soaks my shirt, but it’s thick and dark, not the bright crimson blood should be. “We’ll jump off the rock,” I tell him. “Go to my world to hide you. I’ll come back and help them—” I drag him to the cliff’s side and he digs in his boots.
“You don’t know the first thing about portal jumping,” he says with a grumble.
“Sure I do. You go to the cliff. Jump. Easy peasy.”
“Says the girl who is always terrified to jump. That and you’re on the wrong side.”
Ocean spray glitters in the moonlight.
“There is no portal at the bottom on this side. You jump from here, you’ll be impaled on the rocks below.”
With him still listing at my side, I ease to the edge of the cliff and peer over. Craggy, sharp rocks break through the surf several hundred feet below.
Okay maybe I don’t know what I’m doing.
“So what’s your bright idea?” I ask.
He unhooks his arm from around me and stumbles forward. “You’ll fly away and I’ll face them alone.”
“Hah!”
He may be on death’s door, but he’s apparently still capable of scowling at me.
“Get the fuck out of here, Win.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
The fae soldiers land across the sloped expanse of Marooner’s Rock and charge toward us.
Vane shoves me back putting him between me and the men and women even though he’s in no shape to be fighting.
And as the soldiers barrel toward us from the left, down below, the royals are making their way up, hedging us in.
What the hell is the point of having a powerful magical entity if it’s not going to get you out of tight spots?
The man wearing the royal military uniform reaches us just as the fae soldiers circle us.
Vane sways on his feet.
Where is Peter Pan? Or the twins?
“Vane,” the man says. “It’s been a while.”
“Holt,” Vane says as he levels his shoulders. “I would prefer it had been longer.”
Holt takes a step closer and Vane backpedals, shielding me.
“She killed my sisters.” The man eyes me over Vane’s shoulder, his jaw flexing as he grits his teeth.
“They probably deserved it,” Vane answers.
“Giselle, maybe. But Amara wasn’t so bad. She didn’t deserve what she got.”
It kills me that this man is mourning the loss of his siblings, sharing their names with their killer—me—and I can barely recall what they looked like.
“I didn’t mean to,” I tell him.
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
I catch movement behind me and spot two of the military men getting closer.
“What do you want, Holt?” Vane asks, his voice reedy.
“Besides justice for my family…I think you know.”
Vane nods. “The Darkland shadow.”
“It belongs on Darkland soil.”
“I’m not arguing that.”
“So?” Holt grabs a rock hanging from a chain around his neck and gives it a yank. The chain snaps. “Let’s not make this any harder than it needs to be.”
The fae soldier grabs my right arm and the guard the other.
“Hey!”
“Let her go,” Vane says. “I’ll give you the shadow if you let her go.”
“You’re in no shape for negotiations.” Holt wags a finger at the men who have me in hand and they drag me around to face him. Vane tries grabbing for me but stumbles and has to catch himself on an outcropping as his breathing grows more labored.
“On my island,” Holt says as he peers down at me, “a girl such as yourself, who committed a crime against the royal family, would first spend a year in the bowels of Pyke Prison and then when you could barely remember what it felt like to have sunlight on your skin, you’d be dragged into the city square, stripped naked, your body used for all to see.”
Behind me, Vane growls and gravel crunches beneath his boots as he comes toward us. But he’s caught by several of the royal guard.
Holt goes on. “Afterward, when you could take no more,” he reaches out and drags the back of his knuckles down my cheek, “your guts would be cut from your stomach and wrapped around your throat like a noose. And you’d hang there until eventually you died a very painful death.”
Nausea wells up my throat.
I thought Peter Pan and Vane and the twins were bad.
Nothing compares to this man.
I think I understand a little more why Vane did what he did and why he left his island.
I want this man to suffer even more than his sisters did at my hand.
I need you, I think to the shadow.
Please for the love of god, I need you.
“But we’re not on my island, of course,” Holt says, his lips spreading into a sinister grin. “I’m sure I can get creative nonetheless. But first…” He looks over at Vane. “First I will claim what’s mine. Get him up.”
The guards pull me back, one of them placing the curved tine of a blade at my throat. On my own, I’m no match for them. I feel like a bug caught in a spiderweb with no hope of getting out.
What the hell should I do?
Holt steps forward, the rock necklace still clutched in his hand.
He lifts it out before him and several tendrils of black mist trail away from Vane and toward the rock.
Vane grits his teeth together, sweat beading along his forehead.
How do I stop this?
How do I beat them?
If you were going to help us, now would be the time! I say to the shadow.
But it’s like it’s gone dormant.
Hello!
Holt takes another step and more of Vane’s dark shadow leaks out.
Don’t ignore me now!
My own shadow stirs and excitement surges up my throat.
Do something, I tell it.
Not my battle, it says.
You must be fucking joking.
Not my battle. Not my shadow. Better if it leaves.
I don’t care about the shadow. I need to save the man.
Vane’s knees buckle and he hangs between the two royal guards as more blood trickles out of his open wound.
Please, I beg.
But it’s too late.
Holt jams the rock into Vane’s chest and there is an explosion of dark, writhing shadow.
The ground trembles beneath us.
And when the darkness settles, Vane’s head is bent forward, his body limp in the soldiers’ grip.
And Holt’s rock pulses with the energy of the Darkland Death Shadow.
