I nod my head to the side. “Get up,” I tell him, and do you know what he does?
He just laughs.
So Calla laughs.
And my neck goes hot, and my eyes start to sting, but I grit my teeth and glare over at him.
“Now, Peter.”
He scoffs. “You’re not the boss of me.”
“Get up now!” I demand and he stands, then floats over to the other side of the room, eyeing me like he does an animal before he tries to catch it.
“You don’t talk to me like that.” He shakes his head, hovering high above me. “I’m the king of these woods.”
And then I grab his wrist and yank him down to the ground. “And I am its queen, and you treat me like shit!”
“Yeah?” He stares at me. “You’re a bad queen, so you’re fired.”
“Fine.” I turn on my heel and start racing around the room, grabbing anything I can see that belongs to me.
Which isn’t much, really. I don’t have many belongings here.
My dresses, my shoes, the dagger that I keep in my boot at all times anyway. The book from Hook.
I find a blanket and start tossing them into it, looking over at Peter as I do. “So which one is it?” I call to him.
Peter glances over at me, disinterested. “Wendy, I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
He catches eyes with Calla, who laughs and stretches her arms up over her head without a word, inviting Peter back to her.
He swallows heavily, then looks back at me.
“Well?” I blink.
He frowns. “Well, what?”
“Are you a liar, or are you a cheat?”
Peter rolls his eyes. “What are you talking about?”
Calla laughs again, and I decide that she really is quite intolerable, rather an awful person.
“You said I’m your favourite. You said I was the most beautiful. You said you wouldn’t see her if it made me uncomfortable. You called me your girlfriend, said that we had a string. So were you a liar then, or are you a cheater now?”
Peter’s shoulders square, and his eyes go defensively dark.
“I don’t like your questions,” he tells me, shaking his head, and even though both his feet are on the ground, he towers over me. “This is my tree, in my forest, on my island. You’re here at my pleasure.”
“Oh, well!” I roll my eyes. “It’s all about your pleasure tonight.”
“Yep.” He nods. “And it always will be.”
I tie the edges of the blanket together and make a little sack, heaving it up as I glare at him. “You know, they were right about you.”
Peter’s eyes pinch. “What about me?”
“Oh, you know.” I shrug, baiting him. “Just what they call you.”
His eyes cloud over, and so does the sky behind him.
“What do they call me, girl?” he growls, and thunder cracks, but I don’t flinch for a second.
“They call you deficient.”
His face pulls tight, and the little muscles around his mouth start twitching.
“How am I deficient?” he asks in a whisper that might have frightened me on my weaker days.
I look him square in the eye and deliver him the blow Hook’s been delivering to me all this time. “You’re just a boy.”
Peter makes a sound like a bark, snatches my makeshift rucksack from me, and shoves his hands through his hair angrily.
“What more do you want from me?” he asks, and it starts streaming outside.
“Nothing, actually.” I shake my head at him, and I completely, entirely mean it. “I don’t want anything from you.” I snatch my things back from him. “We’re finished.”
Peter shakes his head. “We aren’t finished till I say we are.”
I roll my eyes at him and turn to leave.
“Don’t walk away from me!” he yells after me, and thunder claps.
I ignore him and pick my pace up, heading for the door.
He flies after me and grabs my sack. “I said, don’t walk away!” he shouts. “Daphne! I’m not finished with you yet.” He drops my things and grabs me instead by the wrist, yanking me back in towards him.
I shove him off me, but he grips me tight.
“You are mine,” he tells me, eyes undaunted, and slams me into a wall behind me.
“Get off me!” I squirm, trying to shove him off.
He presses me harder into the wall, and I am aware of his hand placement on my body—how with every shove, his grip gets closer and closer to my throat.