I shouldn’t care about what happens to Winnie, but the gnawing of my conscience is making it difficult.
I don’t want her to turn out like the rest—dazed and faraway.
Like her mother. We made Merry a promise and we broke it.
There is a single moment where I consider stopping Tilly, damn the consequences.
I nearly do it too.
But someone else beats me to it.
Not my brother. Not Pan.
But Vane.
It’s the Death Shadow that leaps in.
27
WINNIE
The pain sinks deep. It is worse than the constant, dull ache I’ve lived with nearly my entire life. Worse than the blades that etched fake magic into my skin.
This pain is all over. It feels like Tilly is touching my soul with claws and fire. Tearing through the very fabric of who I am and what I am.
I can’t move, it hurts so bad. There is only the bright white light and the sharp ache.
I try to hold on as best I can.
I can do this, I try to tell myself.
I have endured.
But I can’t.
I can’t do it.
I want it to stop.
I want to seep away like a river, disappear over the horizon.
Just let go.
Peter Pan needs you.
The Lost Boys needs you.
The island needs you.
None of this is mine, but yet I feel I have a duty to save it.
Endure. Endure.
Just a little longer.
I can’t be sure, but I think I start shaking beneath Tilly’s hands. I can’t feel my legs and my hands are clawed around the arms of the chair.
Hold on.
Endure.
These brutal, vicious boys might have used me in the vilest way possible, but in that moment, I finally felt free.
I felt alive.
There is something about Peter Pan and the Lost Boys that feels like a liberation.
I can do this.
And it’s then, when some distant part of me gives in to it, when I decide to endure for them and not because of them, that something clicks into place.
And then the light cuts out and the pain ebbs away and I collapse into Vane’s arms.
“No more,” he says. His voice is a distant rumble over top of me. I have the distinct sensation of being lifted in the air, cradled against a solid chest.
“Vane.” Pan’s voice rings with authority.
“No. We’re not fucking doing this anymore.” Vane starts away.
“I wasn’t done,” Tilly calls.
“I’m saying you’re done.” He keeps walking, his footsteps heavy on the hardwood floor.
“Where are you taking her?” A beat, then, “Vane, for Christ’s sake.”
A door opens, then slams shut. A bolt clicks into place.
“Vane!”
“Darling?” Vane’s voice is hoarse above me. “You still with me?”
My response is thick and muzzy. “I think so.”
He lays me down on a bed. The room is dark and warm and it smells like him, like dark, summer nights and crushed amber.
He starts to pull away but I take a fistful of his shirt. “Don’t go.”
There is a second where it seems like he’ll leave anyway. After all, I think he hates me, which doesn’t explain why I’m currently in his bed, why he would defy Peter Pan.
“Move over,” he finally tells me and though my body aches, I do as he says.
The bed sinks beneath his weight and then he takes me into his arms, nestles me against him.
My ear at his chest, I hear the steady thrum of his heart.
I’ve never felt as safe as I do in this moment and I don’t know how to feel about that.
It makes me want to sob.
“Why did you do that?” I ask, my voice catching.
“Stop asking questions and just rest,” he says.
“Why, Vane?”
His arm comes around me, his fingers sure at my waist. “Because I felt like it, and because I could.”
“That’s not an answer.”
He sighs. “Where I come from, little girls like you are broken every day for no other reason than to watch them crack. And I’m fucking sick of it.”
His breath is warm against my pounding skull.
“I’m stronger than you think,” I tell him.
“Even the mighty oak believes she is strong until a man comes along with an ax to chop her down.”
“Is that you then? Do you have an ax?”
“All men are born with an ax in their hands, Darling. To take the measure of a man, you just have to pay attention to how he wields it.”
I sigh against him.
“Now rest.” His hand trails up to my temple and warmth spreads beneath his touch. Within seconds, I’m out.