Right now, the anger festering like an open wound, the one thing I want to do is sit down with Smee and vent about misdeeds and disloyalty. Smee was the one person who would listen and never judge me.
Deep down, I know what she did was the safest route.
The logical one. Not motivated by greed or emotion or fear.
She wanted to protect me.
I know she did.
And yet…
She comes around, removes the bag from my hand and wraps me in a hug.
When I was eleven, I had a cat that was trampled by a horse. I held its crumpled body in my hands and sobbed over it.
My father found me, pried the cat from my grip, tossed it into the nearby woods and told me to stop acting so foolish.
I refuse to shed tears.
Poor form, indeed.
I sink into Smee’s arms and return the embrace.
“I’m sorry, Jas.” She pulls back, shoves her hands into her trouser pockets. Our moment of weakness has passed and we will never speak of it again.
“I’m staying,” she says.
I nod. It’s probably for the best.
But it still feels like I am leaving something of myself if I leave her behind.
I can’t come back. Peter Pan made that clear enough.
“The house is yours,” I tell her. “The town as well. Do with it what you please.”
“And the Crocodile?”
I look past her toward the hallway and the stairs beyond, as if I can sense him just barely out of my reach.
He is at his most vulnerable again and in my house and taking up space in a bed I own. I could kill him.
I want to kill him.
But I want to reach Wendy Darling first and see his face when he catches up and realizes I’ve bested him.
“If he survives this coma, when he wakes, tell him exactly where I went.”
“Another fight, Jas?”
“The last one, Smee.”
37
BALDER
The wolf knows what’s coming. And though he knows, he cannot stop it.
Peter Pan might have his shadow and the Death Shadow may be claimed, but the island will not be settled until Peter Pan knows his place.
And the man who may be a god must first deal with his past.
If he is to become who he should, he must confront who he was.
The wolf watches the lagoon from the underbrush. The day is early and the light thin.
The fae queen struggles out of the woods dragging the fae throne behind her.
She grunts, curses, drags it through the sand, then turns and readjusts and curses again.
She may be a queen, but the wolf senses only a girl.
Halfway down the beach, she stops and drags her arm over her forehead, wiping away the sweat. Her wings flutter anxiously behind her, shifting from red to yellow to green to orange.
The wolf rests his head on his outstretched paws. Beside him, a forest mouse hops up on a rock to watch too.
They don’t speak the same language, but they can both bear witness to the same desperation.
The fae queen gets the throne to the water line and then sits on the seat and props her elbows on her knees and bows her head.
Her shoulders shake, but her tears are silent.
“I will do anything,” she says, voice wavering. “I cannot fail again. I have tried everything and…”
She cuts herself off and takes a deep, raspy breath. “I give you the only thing of true worth I have.” The queen gets up again and wraps her hands around the supporting sides of the throne where the sun’s rays meet the seat.
With a loud groan, wings humming as she propels herself forward, she takes flight over the lagoon, the throne dragging beneath her.
When she reaches the center, she lets it drop.
The water splashes up and the throne sinks like a stone.
Within seconds, all that remains is a swirl of light.
The fae queen flies back to the beach and drops her feet to the sand.
She waits.
And waits.
It’s clear she does not know what she’s waiting for.
She paces by the shore, testing the water every now and then with a bare toe as if she might trudge in to see if the water will give or take.
She waits some more.
The wolf waits and the mouse waits.
When the sun should crest the horizon and break across the sky, the sky turns dark instead and storm clouds roll in.
The wolf sniffs the air and smells the shift in the energy.
The lagoon’s waters grow choppy. The fae queen steps back and shields her eyes with her arm.
The clouds churn.
Thunder rumbles overhead and the bright, swirling light of the lagoon flickers out as something dark emerges from the water.
The fae queen sucks in a breath and stumbles back so quickly, her feet get tangled beneath her and she slams to the sand.