Page 13 of The First Lost Boy (The Shadows of Neverland Duet #2)

Hudson

I draw in a deep breath of salt air and shout, “Drop the sails! Set a course to the Crop Islands.”

The second Peter sees we’re leaving, he throws a tantrum and flings his shadows toward us.

Belle is there, waiting for the assault. Her magic erupts in the form of an impenetrable, glittering wall of light that doesn’t waver when his shadows crash upon it. Perhaps all she needed was the proper motivation to draw upon the magic of her birthright.

Ava stands on the shore beside Pan wearing nothing but that tormenting green swimsuit that leaves only enough to the imagination to drive a man mad with the need to peel it off her.

Leaving her behind doesn’t sit right with me. My thoughts rage and my gut roils at the thought.

The wind whips her dark brown hair as she stares at us.

Nyin said she didn’t think that Ava recognized her when she last saw her, which means she probably doesn’t know us now. That thought is hard to bear. Because I know Ava. I know her laugh. I know how she nibbles at the inner corner of her lips when she lies. How brave she can be, even when she’s stricken by fear. How her eyes sparkle with mischief when she has something she wants in her sights, and what it’s like to be wanted by her.

Does she look at her sister and see a stranger, and me and the crew and consider us enemies because Pan told her we are?

Belle comes to stand beside me. “We have to get her off that island, Hudson.”

The pixie studies the hook she crafted me. Its intricate design gleams despite the tarnish that has settled into its nooks and crannies over time. The sharp tip carves a valley into the wood rail in front of me. And I can’t stop injuring it because I want to cut the world in half and drag her back to me and I can’t.

I can’t.

Both of us startle when Ava shrills, “Belle!”

She remembers her sister, at the very least…

My heart sinks into my stomach.

She breaks away from Pan, running up the shore and waving her arms like Belle still has wings and might swoop in to snatch her off that forsaken soil and save her.

“Ava!” Belle screams, moving along the rail in time with her sister.

Peter hefts the spear in his hand and calmly follows Ava.

“Drop anchor!” I shout to the crew.

They race to take in the sails they just freed, to stop the ship as I’ve commanded, and crane their heads to see what’s happening.

Peter raises the spear.

Draws it back.

Belle shrieks, “Peter, no !”

Pan hurls the spear at Ava’s back.

It strikes true and my teeth clench when Ava buckles. Her loud gasp raises the hair on my arms as her legs falter. For a long breath, she hovers, her arms stretched wide before she crashes onto the shore.

“No!” Belle roars, almost falling overboard. I catch her by the back of her shirt to keep her from splashing into the sea.

Pan casually strolls to Ava as her arms flounder.

I unleash a string of curses in my attempt to goad him, to distract him from her, as I call for the skiff.

Ava twists her arm behind her back and tries to reach the spear lodged in her skin. Her cries are a punch to the gut, a lightning bolt to the dry field of rage I harbor for Peter fucking Pan.

Belle’s chest heaves as panic claws at her.

Reveling in our pain, Peter watches us as he plants a foot on Ava’s shoulder blade, then smiles as he drives the sharpened end completely through her body, pinning her to the sand.

I hear Ava’s labored breathing like I’m crouching next to her; I hear her groan as her bones further snap when he twists the wood.

By the time he jerks the spear free with a sickening squelch, all Ava can do is weakly cry out for help. Blood soaks into the island around her, then trails into the water-soaked sand where the shallows drag it into the sea.

The skiff finally knocks against the hull with a thud.

I start over the rail.

“No!” Belle cries, grabbing the back of my shirt and dragging me backward before I can hop overboard.

I stagger a step before growling at her, “Get off me.”

She places herself between me and the skiff and holds her hands out like she could possibly stop me. “You can’t go ashore.”

“The hell I can’t!” I’m consumed by the stark feeling in my chest; this hopeless, awful feeling I’ve had since childhood. I’d rather die on that shore today trying to bring Ava back than feel it for another second.

The pixie shakes her head. “You don’t understand.”

I shove a finger toward Pan. “Did you not see what he just did to her?”

“I – I did. I just… We need a plan,” she stammers, blinking rapidly like she might be able to think of something that will work when that’s clearly not the case.

I glare at the pixie, the need to drop into the waiting skiff below itching under my skin. “Belle, we will never be able to sneak up on and attack Peter Pan. Why not meet him and end this once and for all?”

She shakes her head, cheeks pale, eyes haunted. “I need more power to face him! He’s too strong. He’s stronger than he should be.”

“And what? You think you’re just going to find some extra magic lying around on Neverland?” I scoff. “Get it through your head, Belle: You’re never going to be as strong as Pan. You’ll never be ready to fight him. None of us will, but we have to do it anyway!”

“You’re wrong!” she growls, shoving me back when I start forward again. “I just need to find my family.”

I stab my hook toward Ava. “Look no further. He just killed the last of them.”

A crystalline tear slides down Belle’s cheek. “No he hasn’t,” she croaks. “I feel them. The other fairies are alive and on that island.”

I glare at her. “Have you considered that he might refuse to bring Ava back this time? Hmm? What then, Belle?”

Anger flashes over the fairy’s dainty features.

“Leave her alone, Hudson,” Milan interrupts, walking across the deck. He turns to Belle and shrugs one shoulder. “If he wants to go ashore, why should you stop him? Let him offer himself to Pan. Perhaps we can swoop in and steal Ava and Paris away if Pan is busy with Hudson.” Milan scowls at us both. “This is all some big game to the both of you, isn’t it? ‘Hook or Pan this time, winner rules Neverland’.”

I smile even as I feel a stab of blistering hatred toward the Italian, even though he’s like a brother to me. All the men I’ve survived alongside are. And like brothers, sometimes we quarrel. Sometimes we fight.

“So that’s what’s been eating at you? A line in a journal I wrote when I was just a boy?” I shake my head as I remember the passage, scrawled in the round writing of a boy instead of the sharp scroll I now possess as a man. “Piss off, Milan.”

Tinkerbell pushes me back when I start toward the skiff again. “There are things you don’t know.”

“Then you should’ve been more forthcoming before now, because I don’t have time for this. If you want Pan to bring Ava back, we have to give him something he wants or else take it from him. I prefer the latter, but if becoming his prisoner brings her back, I’ll clamp the shackle on myself.”

“No!” she insists.

I growl as she blocks my move around her again.

Belle stops abruptly and turns to the shore. “Ava doesn’t need Pan to bring her back to life. She can do it herself.”

I’m sorry?

I glance at Smee, who warily shakes his head. The rest of the crew look as confused as I feel. I consider telling them to hold Belle while I leave, but Nyin screeches at the hull. Another second or two later, and she claws her way up to perch on the railing, breathless.

“Had-no,” she tells us, pointing at Ava.

The only word the beast speaks that I don’t need translated.

Shadow.

Pan is not close enough to touch Ava. He doesn’t move or even flinch in her direction.

Without his help, without his magic, Ava begins to cough. And when her breath returns, she pushes herself up to sit on her hip, bracing a hand against the sand. From a few feet away, Peter talks to her calmly. He touches her a few minutes later when he helps her stand, then steadies her when she sways before regaining her balance.

“Had-no,” Nyin repeats with a severe expression.

Shadow.

“Does that mean he can revive her with the mark? With his shadow?” I guess.

The mermaid snaps her sharp teeth at me. Apparently, I did not understand what she was saying.

Peter says something to Ava and points to my ship, and she turns to look at us. The prick waves at us like he’s greeting a friend. A second later, Ava does too. An anchor sinks into the pit of my stomach.

Even from this distance, I can see the shadowy vines stretch across her skin like a gray tattoo. Peter reaches out and possessively skims his palm over her stomach. She shouts at him to stop and grips his wrist, wrenching it to the side.

My lips part when Peter winces and cries out, then jerks his arm from her grasp. But the damage is done. The beautiful gray vines of her mark are gone.

Pan reclaimed whatever part of Ava’s shadow he’d gifted her.

We’re no better off now than when Belle took her away to the mainland, I think miserably.

Peter hisses in Ava’s face as she stands on the shore. I hear the words, ‘Return it!’

What’s he talking about? What did she take from him? What the fuck is happening on that shore?

When Belle mutters a curse, I realize that the pixie knows exactly what’s transpiring.

“What’s happening?” I ask the fairy.

“She’s awake,” she replies.

“I know that, Belle. I just watched her… wake up. Though I’m not sure how she accomplished that without Pan’s help. Feel free to enlighten us at any time.”

Ava laughs in Peter’s face, but it doesn’t sound like any laugh I’ve heard Ava make before. It sounds darker, more sinister. Monstrous. I greedily, wholeheartedly drink it in.

Nyin’s feral chattering startles the crew, who’d gathered and watched everything that just happened as she speaks to Belle, who seems frozen, staring at the shore like she might not recognize Ava’s laugh either.

And then I realize the opposite is true. She recognizes it all too well.

“Peter is in danger,” the pixie breathes, ignoring my question as she clutches her stomach.

My brows peak. “ He’s in danger? What about your sister?”

“He’s no threat to her ,” Belle bites.

I fling my hook toward the shore. “But he just killed her!”

“Clearly, he didn’t,” she primly argues.

“Tell me what you know!” I roar.

When she presses her lips shut, turns away from me, and crosses her arms, I give up on her and start over the railing again.

The pixie is there in a flash, tugging on my biceps. “No, Hudson. Not you. Not now. You can’t go near either of them.”

“Give me one reason why!” I shout, hooking the underside of her chin and tipping it up so that her golden eyes are all I can see. “What the fuck is happening?”

“I lied to you!” she bellows before a sob escapes her. “I lied to all of you. When I realized what she was, I had to save him from her. I had to save Peter from Ava.”

Had to save Peter from Ava?

“When?” I calmly ask, ignoring the sea thrashing inside my chest.

“When I abandoned you here!” she cries. “When I left you behind and refused to come back. I could have, you know, but it was too dangerous.”

Nyin begins to chatter and snarl at Belle, too. I might not know her words, but I understand her meaning.

“I had to take Ava away from Neverland, and I couldn’t just leave her on the mainland without knowing where she would go or what she might do. She’s far too dangerous.”

“ Ava is dangerous,” I deadpan. “To whom?”

“Everyone,” Belle admits quietly.

Nyin snaps at Belle and shifts down the railing to keep her from the skiff when it impatiently knocks against the hull again. The pixie glances from the ship to the shore. “Had-no,” the mermaid says again, aiming the word at me more pointedly this time.

If things weren’t so completely fucked, I might laugh. “This is all about Peter, then. It always has been.”

Nyin screeches. A split second later, she dives off the railing and starts dragging herself across the deck to reach Tinkerbell.

The pixie darts behind me, shrieking for me to help her. Some of my crew start toward the mermaid.

“Anyone who lays a finger on Nyin will be immediately and forcibly removed from my ship!” I declare, then watch as they shrink away from the ensuing fight.

For once, the siren and I are on the same side. But the woman who claims to be her sister is obviously on Pan’s. That much has become abundantly clear.

Everything she’s done, she did for him .

To protect him.

To save him.

At the expense of us all.

“You don’t understand,” Belle pleads, holding her hands out to Nyin, who’s almost reached her.

How is the mermaid so impressively fast outside the water?

“It would be in your best interest to help us to,” I state flatly.

Belle holds her head up for a moment, but her false bravado quickly bleeds away. Her sobs elicit no sympathy from me, my crew, or the mermaid who calls Ava her friend. And when I think she’s about to evade or jump ship, she shocks us all with one sentence. One horrible, fateful sentence.

“Peter,” she says between agonized hiccups, “is my betrothed.”

Belle’s cries rend the air as Nyin gasps, her gills fluttering. She rears back like she’s been stuck, her sharp teeth bared as she hisses at the revelation and the one who delivered it.

My lips fall open and my heart pounds.

The crew mutters their shock and looks at one another in disbelief. Then they glance at me to see what I’ll do with that knowledge.

She betrayed all of us. For him .

Stole years of our lives and gave them to Peter.

Robbed our families of us. It’s become painfully clear that we can’t go back after so much time has passed. I see that now. Who could bear to waltz back into the lives of those we love, knowing that we can’t explain what happened to us in a way anyone would understand? Knowing that returning would mean we’ll be removed from them a second time when death rips us from this life and thrusts us into the next?

Belle raises her hands in surrender, rotating in a circle now that everyone’s turned against her. “Not the Peter you’ve come to know and hate, but the boy he was before. You’ve seen his ears. He’s a pixie. We were best friends before our parents announced our betrothal. We had years before we would be married; plenty of time to get to know one another as we grew into adulthood. Time to get used to the idea of being wed. But I grew to love him in many different ways. First, as a friend. Then after a time, my dreams began to fill with the future, and he was in every scene I imagined.”

Belle sighed. “And then one fateful day, a Celestial fairy named Ezryn descended to Neverland seeking not only sanctuary, but for our people to conceal him for a short time. Celestial fairies are the most powerful of all fairy kind, strong enough to make and control the heavens, and the darkness between stars. And while pixies aren’t powerless, they wouldn’t survive the wrath of a Celestial. He could have burned us all, and this land, to ash with one breath.”

She takes a steadying breath. “Celestials aren’t made to survive here. They’re brilliant like stars and comprised of thousands of pieces of heavenly matter. We knew he was hiding when he asked us to conceal him, but we didn’t know why or who he was hiding from. He claimed he could simply settle in one of us to rest until things in his realm settled and then he would leave. He promised it wouldn’t be long, and it wouldn’t hurt the pixie who hid him away. So, Peter volunteered to be that fairy.

“When Ezryn entered Peter, my father crafted a barrier over the island and took Peter’s shadow away, effectively locking him inside. He knew something was wrong with the whole matter, all the way to his marrow, but he was powerless to refuse the Celestial. When Ezryn asked Father why he made the barrier, Father lied and told him it was an extra measure meant to keep him hidden.”

A stroke of brilliance to limit his movement, but at what cost?

Belle looks at me and tears well in her eyes. “Ezryn lied about how long he would need to be hidden. He lied about not harming Peter. But he was honest about running and needing to hide. I just never imagined the Celestial he was running from would make her home in the little girl I would one day raise as my sister.”

She flings a helpless hand toward Ava…

My stomach drops.

“The Celestial sheltering inside Ava is named Imani, and she’s a ruthless hunter, from what Peter was able to glean from Ezryn while he was still… him .”

Imani . I rolled the unfamiliar name around in my mind.

“How can we rid them of these parasites?” I bite, teeth clashing with every word.

Belle’s earnest eyes meet mine. “We find my people and beg them for help, because I don’t know what to do or how to do it,” she answers brokenly. “And before you say they’re dead, you should know they are not. They helped the Celestial fairy enter Peter, and I think they can remove the fairy from him again.”

“You think ?” Milan curses and rakes a clenched hand through his dark hair.

“It makes sense,” Belle pleads.

The Italian is incensed. “To what end? If that just pisses him off, you said he could obliterate this place!”

Belle shrugs primly. “Then maybe it’s time to let it burn.”

Smee shifts his weight. “Maybe Nyin could swim Belle to another area of the island so she can search for them.” He turns to the pixie. “Could you make a barrier around yourself so Pan couldn’t sense you or reach you? Like the one you made with the water?”

She nods. “Yes. I can do that. I’m a little irritated I didn’t think of that sooner, to be honest…”

“When Ezryn entered Peter, was there any part of Peter that remained?” I question.

“Yes. For a long time after he descended, Ezryn slept. But each time he woke up, I could tell when Peter wasn’t himself and Ezryn had surfaced, so to speak. That’s how Peter described it to me at one point. He said that he and Ezryn were in a shadowy lake together, both treading water, surrounded all around by dark sky and land. And that sometimes, he climbed out and stood on the shore until Ezryn dragged him back into the water so he could climb onto the shore instead. There was this constant push and pull for dominance until slowly, Peter emerged less and less often, and Ezryn learned how to avoid the water altogether.”

“Then we just need to make sure that Ava stays motivated to keep fighting Imani until we can free her of this thing.” I pace, thinking of what might keep her present.

Belle doesn’t add the words if we can to the end of my sentence, but they’re written on her face. There’s too much doubt in her mind. Doubt we can’t afford.

I glance at my crew’s pensive faces and immediately know they’ll do whatever I ask of them; whatever it takes to get Paris and Ava off Neverland. I gesture to them with my hook. “We can look for the pixies if you can keep Pan occupied long enough.”

Belle shakes her head. “The only problem is that you can’t sense them, and it might take longer than whatever diversion I can create. You could search the entire island and never find them if you can’t feel them, and I can’t focus on Ava and my people at the same time.” She holds her hands out as if to say she has nothing left to offer, then groans and flings a hand in my direction. “As much as I hate to admit it, Ava needs a pirate, Hudson. She needs you .”

I grin like the cat who caught the canary. “Can you repeat that, pixie?”