No, I’m not all right. Far from all right.
Drenched in darkness.
An ordinary boy, abandoned by his mother.
A man who thought he was a myth, can’t even heal from a stone blade.
Blood seeps through the makeshift bandage. The room spins.
“Sit down,” Vane says, changing his course as he shuffles me around the couch and drops me onto the cushion.
My chest is throbbing, the skin hot where the blade pierced flesh and muscle. Everything hurts.
“Find Darling,” I tell Vane.
He’s crouched in front of me now, his gaze worried.
“I’ll be fine.”
“You’re growing pale.”
“Not enough sunlight,” I joke, but the fake laughter makes me spiral into a coughing fit that sends barbs of pain straight down to my knees.
“Find Darling,” I order him again. “Please.”
He stands upright. “Don’t move. Don’t exert yourself—”
“Yes, I got it. Now go—”
Something zings across the room. Vane snatches it from the air.
Fuck. It’s another black blade.
“Get down!” I yell.
But it’s too late.
One after the other—thunk, thunk-thunk—three more blades sink into Vane’s chest and he drops to a knee in front of me, his eyes black, his chest covered in streaks of blood.
“Vane!” I slip off the couch to catch him as he dips forward. “Vane!”
“Fucking…fairy…bitch,” he says on a wet growl as golden light fills the room and drives away the shadows.
Tinker Bell, with Tilly reluctantly trailing behind her, enters the room.
“There’s the party poopers,” she says. “You left so early. I thought I’d bring the party to you.”
Several Lost Boys and lower level fae fill the loft in a circle, blocking the exits.
They all have dead looks in their eyes.
“Boys!” she yells and waggles her fingers at the twins. “Come join your mother. Come on.”
The twins edge away from the doorway to the kitchen and come to stand beside the bar where Tink lines up several glasses and unstoppers a bottle of apple whisky. It used to be her favorite.
“You know what I find funny?” She fills the glasses and brings me one. I hesitate to take it with Vane still putting most of his weight on me. “Go on, Peter.”
I snatch the glass from her grip. Vane lists.
“What I find funny is how long you searched for your shadow, Peter. How funny it must have been to you when you realized your precious Darlings had it the entire time.” She laughs, grabs a few more glasses, and hands them to the twins.
“I put my faith in you,” she tells me. “There was a time when I thought you knew everything. When I thought you could do anything. Do you remember that feast you conjured for us out of thin air?” She shakes her head, a little wistful. “That was a fun night. When’s the last time you used your power for such frivolities? Now it’s all war and fucking, and let’s face it, whining.”
She comes over to me. “Drink, Peter.”
The glass shakes in my hand. I’m shivering and I can’t feel my legs.
“Drink. Peter.”
I bring the glass to my lips and sip, but Tink grabs the thick bottom and tips it up, forcing it all down my throat.
I don’t even have the energy to fight her.
When it’s gone, she sets the glass aside.
“There are only two men in this room who are worthy of power, who never whined and complained about doing the hard things.”
Tink gestures to the twins with a flourish. “My boys.”
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Bash asks her.
“Reinstalling you to your birthright.”
“By killing Pan and Vane? Absolutely not,” Kas says.
“They’ll never let you lead.” Tink joins the twins, weaseling her way between them, her wings throwing up pixie dust. “Have they ever let you lead?”
The twins glance at one another.
The answer is no, we haven’t. I always treated them like little brothers I never wanted. Vane too.
But the twins chose me. They put their faith in me.
And yet…they still don’t have their wings and I would never have the power to put them back on the throne.
Tink lowers her voice, as if she’s confiding in them. “They don’t want you to lead. They just want you to follow them around, just more Lost Boys looking to be found. But you, the fae princes, you were born to lead.”
Bash’s jaw flexes. Kas’s nostrils flare.
“And you should lead with the shadow,” she adds.
“What the fuck are you suggesting?” Bash uncrosses his arms.
“Peter Pan never deserved the Neverland Shadow,” Tink says. “He just took it because he thought he did.”
“We don’t want the shadow,” Kas says. “We just want our wings.”
“Oh.” Tink pouts. “Did your sister not tell you?”
Tilly backpedals.
“Tell us what?” Bash says.
Kas advances on his little sister. “Tell us what, Til?”
The fae queen licks her lips as tears well in her eyes. “I…your wings…”
“What about our wings?” Bash edges closer.
“I never had them,” she blurts out.
“What?!” Kas shouts.
“As soon as they were taken, I had them destroyed.”
There is sudden pandemonium as Bash steps around his twin to leap at his sister.
“How could you!” Bash yells.
The fae circle around their queen, daggers unsheathed and ready for battle. Tilly backs into the kitchen. “I didn’t think about…I’m sorry…I just…I was so angry at you and I didn’t think I’d ever forgive you and…”
“Of course,” Tink’s voice rings out loudly. “There is one other way to fly.”
The twins turn back to me. Grief is an emotion that is not so easily hid and I can see all of the layers of it on the twins’ faces. Their wings are gone. They’re never getting them back.
I know what it is to pine for something so badly it aches.
“We’re not taking Pan’s shadow,” Bash tells Tink. “So you can fuck right off.”
“We’ll never do it,” Kas adds and he’s looking right at me, speaking directly to me across the room as Vane breathes heavily in my grip.
Out of the corner of my eye, I notice Tilly slip away through the kitchen, tears streaming down her face.
“Then I suppose you’ll never get your Darling girl back.”
The grief and the defiance on the twins’ faces is immediately replaced with anger and fear.
This is Tink’s final card. The trump card.
Even if it’s power she wants for the twins, the Darlings were always a thorn in her side that she wanted to dislodge.
“Where is she?” Kas asks.
Tink’s wings flutter leaving a swirl of fairy dust on the air. “Indisposed, I’m afraid.”
“Where the fuck did you take her?” Bash lunges at his mother, but he’s quickly swarmed by Lost Boys and fae, blades poised to cut.
“I can feel her panic now,” Vane says.