Oh no no Cherry!
“Spit it out, Win,” Vane says, his bright violet eye searching my face.
I don’t want to tell him.
He’s going to lose his fucking shit.
I close my eyes and try to conjure the exact memories, the exact words, the exact look on Cherry’s face…
She said a bird was stuck in her room and she wanted help getting it out and I was second guessing it because Vane had ordered me into Pan’s tomb. But I felt bad for her because I had already taken Vane from her and the twins too.
So I went down to the ground floor and down the hallway to her room and then…
She shoved me inside.
The first edge of the old fear comes back.
The shadow had been darting around the room and I could feel its panic and its hunger.
Then it went still and I could sense it sizing me up.
Then it lunged for me.
“Winnie,” Vane says again, this time with more command in his voice.
And that dark thing takes notice. It practically preens for him.
Tell him, it says. Tell them all the truth. They will kill the girl and they will have proven their loyalty to us.
I don’t want that, I answer.
Don’t you?
I can no longer tell if that dark edge of excitement welling in my gut is mine or the shadow’s.
“It was Cherry,” I answer. “Cherry locked me in a room with it.”
22
HOOK
I can’t seem to take my eyes off of him.
The fucking Crocodile in my own damn house.
His dark hair is disheveled and it makes him look like the rakish prick he is.
He’s still pale from blood loss, but his wounds are already healing.
I always knew he wasn’t human. More beast than man.
He is lying in the bed in my guest room, his arm thrown over his middle. He’s facing the ceiling so I can see the sharp outline of his profile, the slope of his nose, a slight divot right before the tip.
And then his mouth.
It is a mouth that knows how to bend things to its will.
When I drag my gaze back up, I lurch upright, finding his eyes open.
The wooden chair beneath me lets out a loud squeak and the Crocodile rolls his head my way.
“Captain,” he says, his voice thick and hoarse.
I pull my pistol, cock the hammer back and point it at him. I feel better knowing I can put a bullet in him at any moment.
Except he laughs at me. Fucking laughs.
Thankfully the laughter dissolves into a long, dry cough.
“Water, Captain.”
“Fuck off.”
He smacks his lips together. “Perhaps your blood will do then.”
There is nothing I hate more than the sight of my own blood.
And I think he knows it.
I go to the pitcher on the dresser and fill a glass.
With my back to him, the hair along my nape rises and it takes everything I have not to visibly shiver.
“I can hear your heart racing,” he says to me.
I grit my teeth and turn back to him, the glass in hand. “I’m excited about the prospect of murdering you.”
He snorts and pulls himself upright in the bed, his back against the headboard.
The sheet sloughs off his torso.
Smee removed most of his clothes to get a better look at his wounds.
We had nothing that would fit him once we were finished. The Crocodile is lean around the waist, bulky in the shoulders. My men are lazy and spoiled and pudgy.
I linger in the sight of his firm stomach and the tightly compacted muscle.
He catches me staring and lifts a brow and I shove the water in his face.
“Now start talking.” I drop back into the chair.
He brings the glass to his mouth and upends it, drinking back the liquid in three big gulps.
His Adam’s apple sinks in his throat and it makes the crocodile mouth tattooed on his neck move like a real mouth.
I swallow hard.
He breathes out with relief when the glass is empty.
I want to murder him.
I will murder him.
Just as soon as I know what’s in store for Neverland. There hasn’t been outright fighting in a very long time, but anyone worth their salt has likely felt the shift in the wind.
Neverland—the heart of the island—is shaking things up.
Glass still clutched in hand, the Crocodile eyes me.
As enemies, I suppose he wants to hold his secrets close and I sense them there, tucked behind his sharp incisors.
But he’s at my mercy, so he must give me something or I’ll put a bullet between his eyes.
“Winnie Darling has the Neverland Dark Shadow,” he says. “She killed half the Remaldi royal family in a tavern in town. The Remaldis were here to retrieve their shadow from my brother. We were invited by the fae queen who I suspect wants all of the dick on this island dead or subservient, including yours.”