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.”