I know what Tilly is doing.
I know illusion magic. How it feels. How it looks. But that doesn’t mean I can just as easily break out of it.
The sand is writhing beneath me and I can’t keep my balance on it, even though I know none of it is real.
Bash leaps forward and grabs a low hanging branch from an oak tree, then waggles his fingers at me, gesturing for me to follow.
I take the offering and we both leverage ourselves into the tree.
Our sister takes flight and rises before us.
“Well done, sister,” I say. “You’ve cornered us in a tree. Now what?”
“Stay out of this and walk away from it,” she says.
Bash and I look at one another. He snorts his derision. “How many times are you going to stage a coup, only to lose?”
“Does it look like we’re losing?”
“I don’t understand this.” I shimmy down the length of the branch to get closer to her. “Why go to all this trouble when you clearly don’t want the throne.”
She’s shocked by this insinuation, as if the thought had never crossed her mind.
“Of course I want the throne. I will do what needs to be done to protect it and to protect Neverland. I will never stop.”
Bash walks himself upright using one of the thicker branches in an elbow in the tree. “If you wanted the throne, your soldiers would not be so weak. You would be training them, day in and day out. You would be prepared for a takeover. Not saddling yourself with weaker men.”
The expression on her face softens. I’ve hit a sore spot, but even worse, one very close to the truth.
“Why do you continue to fight?” Bash asks.
“It’s what Father wanted. It’s what Mother would have wanted, too. She hated Peter Pan and he’s still running Neverland like some god.”
“Tinker Bell hated that Peter Pan didn’t want her,” I remind her. “There’s a difference.”
I notice my brother’s stance, the ease in his knees, the tension coiling in his back.
“Forget Mother and Father,” Bash says. “You need to ask yourself, dear sister, is it worth it still?”
I may have been separated from my sister for a very long time, but I recognize the sadness that comes across her face.
The weight of it all is crushing her.
She was never raised to have the throne. And almost every monarch that came before her has been surrounded by family.
But Tilly has no one left.
Not our parents. Not Nani. Not us.
I feel pity for her.
And deeply sad.
“We don’t want this for you,” I tell her. “We never did.”
“It’s why we made the decisions we made,” Bash adds.
“We wanted to shoulder the burden of the court, Til,” I say. “We never wanted you to have to sacrifice anything.”
And it’s absolutely true.
We never would have killed our father if we’d have known this is where our little sister would end up.
But there is selfishness propelling me forward now.
I no longer want the throne to protect my sister.
I want it for myself and my brother.
Because it is rightfully ours.
I look over at Bash as our sister’s silence stretches between us.
She’s breaking right before our eyes, but we can no longer be weak for her.
We don’t need our fae language to know what the other is thinking.
Now, Bash says with his eyes.
We both leap from the tree and tackle our little sister.
Bash hooks her around the shoulders. I grab her by the legs. Her wings beat feverishly behind her, but she’s not strong enough to hold us all up.
We sink toward the forest floor.
She fights, trying to dislodge us, but once we’re on the ground, we want to keep her there.
And our little sister isn’t the only one well-versed in fae magic.
Bash lets his run wild.
Honey drips from the tree branches above us and several thick globs hit our sister’s wings. They come to a halt as she wars with the illusion and the weight of the thick goop, even though it’s not real.
The honey follows the delicate, veiny structure in her forewing and quickly encapsulates her hindwing.
“Give up this fight, Tilly,” Bash says.
She struggles with the added weight, panic rising in her face. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
Bash and I advance on her.
“What do I have, if I don’t have the throne?” Her voice catches. “This is what Father wanted me to do.”
Sometimes I wish we could go back and change it. I wish our family could be together again, though perhaps minus Mother.
But even if we could, it would never be the same.
And I often suspect that what remains of my early memories is only half truth. It’s like a reflection on water, stretched on ripples, a bit unrecognizable.
We were always dysfunctional. And Bash, Tilly, and I did what we had to do to survive.
And now Bash and I have to do it again.
Bash lunges for our sister.
The honey cracks and her wings beat behind her.
She takes flight and down on the beach, the fae soldiers wail and shriek.
Through the trees, I can just make out a shapeless figure darting through the soldiers and he’s…devouring them?
“Holy shit,” Bash says. “That’s the Crocodile.”
“Fall back!” Tilly screeches. “Fall back!”
Several fae take to the air. The Crocodile snatches one by the foot and yanks him back down. His wings work at the air and he gains an inch, only to lose two more.
The Crocodile unhinges his shapeless mouth and within seconds, the fae is gone.
The rest that remain form a V in the air above us and disappear over the treetops.
