Page 7 of The First Lost Boy (The Shadows of Neverland Duet #2)

Ava

I wake up to a fluttering of faint memories from yesterday. As they replay through my mind, I run my fingers over different fabric textures and remember Peter giving me the quilt made of clothes to use last night after he took me to the waterfall. I recall what Peter said there about reminding me what we were to one another, as well as the feeling of warmth bleeding into me from Peter’s hand as he pinned me to the rock wall beneath the crushing water. My thumbnail gently grazes the scar on my stomach. The scar Wendy Darling gave me…

My heart plummets, because I remember her on the beach and how Peter reacted. He’d said I looked at him like he was a monster. I’m still not convinced he’s not one.

Has my mind truly begun to heal in earnest? How can I remember all this when I know how hard I was struggling to grasp anything as recently as yesterday afternoon?

I want to see the scar she left on me. I want to remember what happened, even if Peter says it’s unwise. I lived this.

Sitting up, I pull the hem of my shirt up enough to see the raised mark, watching as a tendril of shadow unfolds from it and curls over and around my thumb.

I sit up straighter.

My lips part as small leaves sprout from the shade crawling from my wound.

When I move my thumb, the vine disintegrates. It seeps back into my skin, but not into my scar. Instead, it stretches from it, reaching toward my navel.

“What the hell?” I breathe.

From outside, Peter quietly speaks my name as he talks to someone else. Ash, I think… And then Wraith’s gravelly tone mingles with the two smoother ones.

I pad across the room to the window, keeping close to the wall to peer out at the three men. The scent of smoke wafts into Peter’s treehouse through the propped-open window with the gentle stir of the morning breeze.

Shirtless and each wearing the same cut-off shorts they donned yesterday, the three sit around the crackling fire, huddled where two of the fallen logs meet, leaning in to meet one another’s eyes as they discuss something about me, which I realize when Ash says my name.

“It’s a risk.” Ash rakes the blade of a knife down a branch, effectively removing the smaller twigs sprouting from it. They scatter at his feet. “You know they’re coming for her.”

Peter leans in, elbows on his thighs as he holds up a chain. Dangling from its end is an open pocket watch. “I’m counting down the minutes.”

Ash studies the watch face for a moment, concern furrowing his brow. “That’s not… why is it doing that?”

Peter snaps it closed. “Because it’s almost time.”

“For what?” Ash and Wraith ask simultaneously.

What is happening? What’s Peter waiting for? And who’s coming for me?

Peter sighs as if he’s bored. “The point of the conversation was to let you know to watch her. She’ll remember parts of yesterday but may still need help navigating for the time being.”

“Will she remember… before?” Ash questions Peter.

He shakes his head. “She won’t remember what happened before yesterday. She may not even remember all of it. I only gave her a sliver, Ash. Calm down.”

“Maybe that’s for the best,” Wraith quietly replies. “Given how long she was his prisoner.”

I suck in a sharp breath as Peter hums in agreement.

Just then, the front door of Peter’s treehouse opens. I turn to find Bones entering, carrying a bucket of water. He pauses, then glances between me and the open window I’m spying from.

He holds my stare as he knocks twice and calls out, “Six?”

I hurry to join him in the main room as he steps inside to fill the basin. “Morning,” I rasp.

“Six!” Peter shouts.

I hurry back to the window and look down to see him waiting, watching.

He waves for me to join them. “When you’re ready, come down,” he shouts up to me. “I believe I promised to show you something new this morning.”

The front door closes, and I crane my neck to see that Bones has quietly left before I turn back to Peter.

“I’ll be down in a few minutes,” I tell him, then head to the basin to wash my face and scrub my teeth as best I can with another mint leaf and my finger. Crossing through the narrow rooms to the porch, I grab my swimsuit from the rail, quickly donning it and redressing.

Wraith, Ash, and Peter watch as I wind down the stairs clinging to the tree the home is built into and walk across the lawn. “Good morning!” I chirp as I join the men. I’m considering whether to show Peter the shadowed vine or keep it secret for now, given what I overheard this morning when Ash quirks a brow and tilts his head at Peter as if assessing him.

He wears an ornery grin as he asks, “You’re awfully chipper, Six.” He turns to Peter. “I’ve been told that late nights lead to bright mornings. What say you on the matter?”

Peter’s teeth gleam in the morning sun, just like the golden strands of his hair. Like she’s shining just to highlight the softer parts that lay against his sharpness. “I can decidedly confirm they do.” Peter winks at me and my lips slowly part.

Ash’s brows nearly meet his hairline. He whistles and laughs while Wraith huffs and looks away.

I narrow my eyes at them all, prepared to set the record straight that nothing happened between me and Peter last night.

“Ready?” Peter asks as if nothing just happened. He gives a slight shake of his head, asking me not to correct him, I think.

“Sure,” I drawl instead.

Ash tells us to have fun and wiggles his fingers at us, while Wraith turns his back and pokes at the logs in the fire pit with a long branch that’s well-charred at one end.

Peter and I start out of the circle and take the path I’d trailed Bones down yesterday when he was heading toward the shore, but quickly veer down a different artery, pulsing farther into the forest’s heart.

“Why did you just lie to them about us?” I ask as we walk.

“The others have been insecure lately. They need to know that things will go back to the way they were before,” he confidently asserts, as if the matter is closed.

“But it’s not the same, and you can’t promise them that.”

Peter ignores me.

“Peter, you can’t tell them everything will be like it was before, because it won’t,” I push. “It might never be again.”

He keeps walking, brushing branches that trespass into the path out of his way. I keep close so they don’t rebound on me. Some have incredibly long, needle-like thorns.

Peter beams when we reach a broad tree proudly standing in the middle of another clearing. It’s been stripped of wood from its wide roots to its lowest branch, which is high enough off the ground that I wouldn’t be able to reach it even if he boosted me up. In the smooth, pale grain, names have been carved. There are so many I can’t count them all.

I circle the trunk, reading as many as I can make out. Some are barely visible, having been carved too shallowly. Others have been slashed through. “Whose names are these?”

Peter begins circling the trunk opposite me, but he stays in step with mine so I can only see his face every time he moves forward, losing sight of him again when I move away. My heart beats faster at the look he gives me.

I can’t decipher it, or him, for that matter.

His motives, intentions, and whims still aren’t clear. Like the murky way he answers a question that only displaces the truth’s surface.

“They’re the names of the Lost,” he finally answers.

“Who are the Lost?” I glance at him, waiting for him to explain.

“Everyone who’s called Neverland their home at one time or another has carved their name in the bark.”

There are so many, yet I’ve only seen a handful. Where are all the others? “Why do you call them ‘Lost’?”

“Because that’s what anyone who steps foot on Neverland becomes,” he says cryptically.

“So… I’m Lost?” I ask, pressing a hand to my chest.

He grins and nods. “Of course you are.”

“Should I carve my name here with the others, then?” I tease.

“You already have,” he replies, eyes glittering with mischief.

“Where is it?” I ask. “I don’t see Six.”

“Perhaps you’ll recognize it when you see it.”

His challenge sparks my curiosity and the air between us. I let my thumb trace one of the gouged-out names. “Why are some of the names damaged?”

Peter smiles at the question the way he smiled at Wendy Darling’s corpse yesterday and I fight to suppress a shudder when he tells me, “We strike through the names of the dead.” He pulls a long blade from his waistband. “I thought you might want to do the honors.”

He lightly drags the tip of the knife around the tree and I follow, stopping when the tip of the blade touches the first of five haunting letters.

The blade catches the sun, glinting brightly when he offers it to me.

I curl my fingers around the handle and study Wendy’s handiwork.

She took her time carving her name. Each letter was carefully made, the lines bold and deep, the curves cultivated. Her artistry stands in stark contrast to the more hastily, or impatiently sawed ones.

Just above Wendy’s, three other names stand out from the rest. The letters are larger, more weathered, and even more carefully and severely carved than Wendy’s. Peter’s is the largest, the one cut into the tree’s flesh the deepest, and his is by far the most intricate. He’d beveled the letters of his name so that each collects light and shadow in equal portions as the sun, and perhaps even the moon, shifts across the sky.

Below Peter’s is ‘Tinkerbell’. My heart beats faster at the sight of her name.

Below Belle’s is ‘Jameson’. I wonder if I know who that is, and whether Jameson goes by another name.

Bones, perhaps?

My left forefinger traces Peter’s name. He watches my finger slip over the letters that spell his name, then drag down Belle’s, then Jameson’s… When I finish, a muscle jumps in his jaw, and his chest rises and crashes like an angry sea. His eyes swirl like the green of the sky during a terrible storm. Suspicion embodied.

“These two – and yours – are different from the rest. They’re lined up perfectly under your name and look almost as weathered. Who are Tinkerbell and Jameson?” I ask innocently. “Their names haven’t been marked through, but I haven’t met them. Have I?” I turn to look at him with open curiosity.

My question calms the maelstrom in his eyes but doesn’t send the clouds racing away. They roil, hovering… waiting. Like lightning gathering in a cloud before taking a bright stab at the soil.

And then as if the sky bends to match his emotion, the world around us darkens, like the shadows from the forest answer to him and would smother me for him if he so much as flinched in my direction.

Carefully, he replies, “These are the names of my oldest friends.”

I let my fingers fall from the engraving. “So, I have forgotten them.”

“You don’t remember them.” He plants a hand on the tree and leans in close, his stare dropping to my lips. “But don’t worry. You’ll be meeting them very soon.”

I breathe easier, leaning against the tree with my shoulder against the trunk just shy of the carvings in question. “Well, if they’re your friends, I’m sure they’ll be worth the wait.”

Peter taps Wendy’s name with his finger and waits, watching as I draw the sharp knife across the wood, scarring it. “Again,” he encourages, his features igniting with pleasure. “Cut her away.”

I rake the blade across the bark once, twice, until a gash forms. Then I slash and saw until a rift divides Wendy’s deeply, carefully crafted script. Until the muscles of my forearm burn from the effort. Until Peter smiles so brightly at the result that I can’t help but stare and wonder what makes him enjoy things that would make most other people sad.

Peter eases his grip on the elements and the sky clears in mere moments with his shift to a more agreeable mood. Soon sunlight shines on Neverland and the tree with the names of all the ones who’ve lost themselves to her.

If this tree holds their names and Peter’s was carved first, perhaps he was lost before any of the rest of us.

I wipe the sweat from my brow with a shaking hand, hoping he can’t tell how much erasing her name unnerved me, then return his knife.

He tucks it back into his waistband. “There’s someone I want you to meet before we go hunting.”

“Hunting?” I ask, my chest tightening.

He shrugs his bare shoulder. “You offered to cook dinner tonight.”

“I didn’t realize that providing game was part of the deal,” I mutter, pressing a hand to my sweaty brow again. A memory of a five-foot tall, menacing green bird emerges… The Neverbird.

Please don’t let Neverbird be on the menu tonight.

Peter winks. “Don’t worry. I’ll help you this time.”

This time.

Note to self: Don’t volunteer to do anything ever again.

Wraith sits on a weathered stump in another clearing not far away. His expression brightens when he sees Peter, then dims again when he realizes I’m walking behind his friend. I’m still not sure what I’ve done to aggravate him. Maybe it’s just that I survived the fall that should have killed me.

“Is he ready?” Peter asks.

“I think so,” Wraith hedges, standing, then sitting again as if he’s nervous. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands as he glances between the ground and Peter, once, twice…

My feet draw to an abrupt stop.

Behind Wraith, two prison-like cells have been dug into the ground. These must be the cages ; the ones Lock was guarding last night when Wraith brought him and their prisoner supper. At first, I don’t see anyone beyond the rusty, crudely shaped bars that look like they were cleaved off something else, repurposed, and set into the ground.

The cages look like they might crumble apart but… I can’t explain it, but at the same time, they feel unbreachable. The metal crackles with energy, like an electric fence humming and ready to zap anything that might brush against it.

Peter crouches at the edge of the cage and waves me forward. “Come here, Six.”

Slowly, I move toward him and peer into the earthen hole to see the dirt-streaked face of a young man who doesn’t seem to realize we’re hovering over him.

Why can’t he see us? Hear us?

My heart begins to race. At the carved tree, he claimed I would be meeting Tinkerbell and Jameson soon. Is this him?

The prisoner’s sable hair is oily. It looks like he’s tried to brush it back, to no avail. Strands fall limply on either side of his pale, gaunt face.

He startles and blinks up with deep brown eyes when Peter crouches and asks, “What’s your name?”

With peeling lips so chapped they’ve cracked and bled in places, the prisoner scoots back against the earthen wall behind him and answers, “I don’t know.”

His voice is like the bars that hold him: frustrated and rusted. And accented…

Wraith crouches beside Peter and the two question the young man further, but like me before Peter ‘helped’ me last night, their captive has no memory.

I study his voice because it’s familiar. The tone. The sensual lilt that curls around sounds and syllables. It’s so pleasant to the ear.

I know him. I just don’t know how. Or from where. And I like him. My heart knows that much. He’s a friend.

The prisoner’s dark brows furrow as he glances from Peter to me. “Who are you?” he seems to ask all three of us even as he stares at me.

“He’s ready,” Peter decides, then turns to me. “And he needs a nickname, if you’d like to give him one.”

“Doesn’t he have a real one?” I ask.

“He doesn’t remember it,” Peter answers. “We have to call him something.”

The caged man watches me, his bare chest heaving. His skin is covered in mud, made from sweat and the earthen walls surrounding him. He stretches his legs out, wincing and drawing one up when it cramps. The space is barely large enough for his tall, lithe body.

How long has he been in that hole? And what did he do to warrant such confinement?

His muscle cramp eases and he pants in relief, resting the back of his head against the wall of dirt behind him. The roots from some plant rest on his shoulder.

What are the chances that someone else on this island has lost his memory?

“Wraith,” Peter smoothly says. “Help him out.”

Wraith steps around me and pulls a chain from his shirt. A brittle key made of bone dangles from the loops of silver. This must be the one for which Bones is carving a replacement.

I wonder who the original key was taken and carved from. Another of the stricken-through Lost, perhaps?

Wraith pushes it into the lock and gives it a careful turn, the antiquated mechanism grating and straining with his effort. I wince, worrying the key will break in the lock, but it finally disengages with a loud click.

A moment later, Wraith pulls open the cage door and lays it back on the square of grass beside the cell. He reaches into the small enclosure. “Grab my hand.”

The boy’s hand flails through the air as he tries to find Wraith. When he does, he clasps it and weakly stands before clumsily climbing from his shadowed containment cell and into the bright swell of Neverland. His legs quake. He staggers forward a few steps, away from the cages, braces his hands on his knees and hangs his head, squinting against the light.

I peer into the cage. A square of sunlight splashes over the spot where he used to sit, but to look at him, one would think he’d been in total darkness.

Peter nonchalantly tells him that the light sickness will pass soon enough, though his eyes will be sensitive for a few days.

The former prisoner’s dark eyes water as he loses his balance and sways sideways, clutching his stomach like he might be sick.

At the sight of his struggle, something visceral stirs from deep within me, like something awakening and uncurling from where it’s been sleeping between bone and sinew. It moves. Slips between my ribs like silk between fingers. At first, it feels like a predator who hasn’t eaten in far too long, finally scenting its prey. Recognizing something weaker it can sink its teeth into.

But I soon realize it’s so much more than that.

I imagine myself curling my hands around that billowing darkness and flaying it open to see what’s inside. And when I do, I find this stranger, this now-freed prisoner, waiting for me there in the shadows…

I see him as a small child with knobby knees and an ornery grin. I hear his delighted laughter and the distinct lilt when he speaks. My heart thunders as the feel of terror painted over with false bravado settles over my skin. Then there is gritted teeth and a hiss as the skin on the inside of my forearm begins to sting as if it’s been cut.

I release the darkness, pinch it together like the edges of a pie crust, and look at his arm where, sure enough, a single name has been carved into flesh as if it was the bark of the tree where I just obliterated Wendy’s name.

In raised, silver scars, his forearm reads Paris .

More visions that are not mine enter my thoughts. Of giggles and bare feet cutting through the jungle, racing over fallen trees and through brooks, of fights with blunted branches. Of fear and whispers and running, not for fun but to survive. Of splashing into water without regard to what creatures it might obscure, because anything – even a hungry croc or suckered kraken – is better than the smiling monster clawing at your heels.

Of friendship, and hope, and long nights waiting. Rocking. Of wood that smells like seawater and rot, and the pangs of hunger. And bouts of thirst that are worse than anything else.

Of storm after storm…

The seasons never changing.

Then of that hope dwindling away minute by minute, hour by hour, and every turn of the sun across the sky making you detest its taunting rise more than the day before.

The urge to insist that we call him Paris overwhelms me for a split-second, even though that’s not his name.

Because I know it now, too.

He is from Paris, but his name…His name is Luc. And as I take his secret into my heart, tears prick my eyes. I’m overwhelmed with sadness and triumph. Fear and envy.

I don’t know what this slithering, silky tendril of truth I can feel as surely as I can my own skin is or where it came from, but I can’t let Peter know I have it. Because when Luc was running away, afraid for his life, and splashed into crocodile infested shallows, he was running from Peter. He cut himself because of Peter. He was viscerally terrified of Peter Pan.

And he still is, I realize, even if he doesn’t know why. Even though he’s weak and confused, he refuses Peter’s offer of help.

“I can walk on my own,” he tells him, batting Peter’s hand away.

The strangest thing about the interaction between the men is that Peter looks somewhat wary of Luc, too.

“Take him home, Wraith,” he orders and then waves me forward. “We’re going to The Cove, then to find dinner, unless fortune smiles upon us and the two goals happily align.”

Wraith runs a hand through his strawberry blond hair, then looks at me. “Are you sure it’s safe –?”

“Are you implying that I’m incapable of keeping Six safe?” Peter slowly asks, his green eyes turbulent.

Wraith raises his hands. “Not at all. I was only asking who would watch your back in her presence.”

My mouth gapes. What a dick. Does Wraith really think I’m a threat to Peter?

Peter bares his teeth. “Then you’re implying that I’m weak?”

Wraith’s eyes flare with fear. “N-no, I wouldn’t,” he stutters. Backing away, Wraith turns and ushers Luc toward the trail that leads back to the treehouses.

For a second, I have the strangest vision of all the structures burning, the wood that comprises them popping and scaling while I stand back and watch, holding the torch that lit each of them like candles on a pretty cake.

Then Peter interrupts the fiery scene by clasping my hand and drawing me toward The Cove.

Maybe Wraith’s mistrust is valid.

“Do you remember us discussing The Cove yesterday?” Peter asks as the trees thin and we come to a sharply curved stretch of beach littered with shells of every color. The beach arcs inward, cutting into Neverland. A dozen yards into the water is an enormous rock, half-covered since the tide’s still receding.

“I do,” I tell him, drifting farther into the trove.

There are cockle shells the size of my head and twisting, knobbed whelks resting among whole and shattered sand dollars, amid perfect angel wings and arks. Broken pieces of coral lay like blanched bone scattered through all the rest, and strings of kelp and seaweed tumble in the tide at the edge of the water.

I crouch to pick up the nearest cockle shell and glide my thumb over the even ridges on its back.

How do I know the names of all these?

Peter meanders away as I stand. He finds a large conch and dusts off the sand clinging to it. After giving it a good shake to empty what had collected inside, he pulls the knife from his waistband. With the blade, he strikes the shell’s tightly twisted top. A small piece breaks off and Peter smirks proudly as he twists the shell this way and that. He tucks his knife away and walks to the water’s edge, putting the shell to his mouth, pursing his lips, and blowing. The conch makes a loud buzzing noise at first, but then a strong, horn-like sound resonates over The Cove and flares out over the sea.

Satisfied, Peter lowers the conch shell and waits, impatiently watching the water as the lapping crystalline waves go still.

“Who are you calling?” I ask, hurrying to his side. Earlier, he claimed ‘they’ wouldn’t refuse his call. Who are they ?

“I need to speak to my sirens.”

His sirens? I think of the lines scored over Wendy’s bones.

“You have sirens?” I watch the water for any anomaly, but when there’s nothing but stillness, I glance at Peter.

His voice is confident. “They won’t harm you while I’m here. But if you’re ever alone, know that you should never trust a siren, Six. Never get within reach of the waves if you’re near the shore alone, and if you see one, you should plug your ears immediately. Though, it’s often too late once you spot them because they’ve long-since spotted you.”

At first, I think he’s just trying to scare me. Then my mind takes a darker path and I imagine Wendy Darling, whole and happy, wading in the shallows without a care in the world, until clawed fingers snag her ankle and jerk her into the water.

I try to focus on the shells, staying clear of the sea and the mysterious creatures it holds.

Several minutes pass and nothing but waves enter The Cove. Undeterred, Peter raises the shell to his lips and calls for them again.

We wait even longer, until it feels like half an hour has passed.

He grinds his teeth, irritated at being ignored, and calls a third time. His chest heaves as he paces, crumbling the shells under his feet and clenching the conch like he might break it with his bare hands.

“What if something happened to them?” I tentatively ask.

Peter’s lip curls. “For their sakes, something better have.”

He launches the shell high into the air like a quarterback hurling a football. It spirals, whistling as it soars. When it crashes into the water, the conch explodes and all the shards quickly sink into the scant foam stirred by the impact.

He stretches his arms out wide. The air begins to vibrate, blurring at the edges of my vision. Shadows surge toward him from the island’s interior, writhing across the sand and amassing before he pushes them out over the water to rush over shallows and depth alike.

My fingers clutch the scar on my stomach as something frigid creeps over my skin. I raise the flap of my buttoned shirt and gasp. The sound draws Peter’s attention, and he sees the shadowy vines slither from the wound. Their fine hairs cling to my stomach, cinching around it. They creep up my side and around my breast and claw toward my throat.

His eyes sharpen as he studies the shadows, lips parting as if he can’t believe what he’s seeing.

“What did you do to me?” My fingers tremble as they try to touch what I can clearly see and come away empty. The shadows are more solid now. They don’t dissipate like the first tendril did when I discovered it this morning.

Peter’s green eyes flick to mine. “I gave you back part of your shadow.”

I pluck at them, watching them dissipate before creeping farther across my skin when they manifest again. “Why is it like this? Why vines?”

“You’d have to answer that question for yourself. You’re the one shaping it.”

I shake my head. “I’m not.”

“Then tell me who is responsible, Six?”

He waits like he’s expecting me to toss out a name, which is insane. I have no idea what’s happening or what he’s talking about. Don’t know why his eyes are gleaming with delight again. I wish he wouldn’t have seen them.

“How do you become more and more interesting by the moment?”

I gasp. “Me? What are you talking about?”

He beams. “I make a move and then when it’s your turn, you do something I can’t possibly prepare for. It’s exhilarating.”

I narrow my eyes. “This isn’t a game, Peter. This is my life.”

Peter smiles and brushes a shaggy tuft of hair behind a pointed ear. “You’re wrong, Six. Everything is a game and winning is all that matters.”

Peter forgets me, his mood instantly darkening when the shadows he took from Neverland return in a gust of foreboding fury, breaking over him but never making him bend. He turns his back on me and stalks into the island’s heart without a word. He probably expects me to follow, but I can’t bring myself to take a single step in his direction.

From his foul mood, I take it that the shadows didn’t find any of his sirens, but I’m not sure what that means – either for him, or for the rest of us marooned here on this cursed island. His shadows didn’t delve into the water itself, which is where I assume the sirens are. I don’t know much about them, but I assume they spend most of their time under the surface.

If Peter can’t reach them there, it means there are limits to his power and I just learned one of them.

Something shiny, the color of bright, orange-pink coral flashes in the sun and catches my eye. It shimmers again, the light glinting off it from behind the enormous boulder seated in the shallows. Another glimmer.

The tide has continued to lower, revealing the bottom half of a rock worn smooth by the waves, its bottom half cloaked in algae and adorned with barnacles.

And then… I see her peeking at me from behind the stone.

Something dark teal drips from her eyes, carving paths down both her cheeks. “Ay-vahh.”

Her voice is like silk.

I walk closer to hear her speak to me again.

To see her.

I want to swim with her.

I’m almost to the water when she splashes into the scant waves and disappears into the sea.

With the movement, the spell she cast is severed and I’m left bereft and confused.

An arm snakes around my stomach and hauls me backward, out of the wet sand I didn’t know I’d reached.

Peter curses, hissing like his feet are burning until we reach the powder and shells. “Did you see her?” he demands, turning me around and gripping my upper arms with clenched fingers.

“Who?” I blink, still dazed.

“The siren!” he snaps impatiently. “What did she look like?”

“I… I don’t know.” I look at the water where wave after wave lines up, but nothing surfaces.

“What color were her scales?” he demands. “What did her voice sound like?”

“I don’t know!” I lie, trying to rip my arms from his grip. “ You would know if you hadn’t left me behind.” For some reason, I don’t want him to know about the siren I saw, or that her scales were the most beautiful variance of coral I’ve ever seen. Or that she spoke to me. Something that sounded like ‘ay-vah’, or ‘ade-ah’. I don’t know what it means or how Peter might react if it’s not something he wants to hear.

Or if it’s exactly what he needs to hear.

His bright green eyes narrow and sharpen. “I returned part of your shadow so you would remember. So you would know to keep up and not wander off or linger where it’s not safe.” His words are slow and measured as his hands move up my arms to circle my throat. His fingers dig into the skin behind my neck; his thumbs push uncomfortably into the soft divot at the base of my throat. “Haven’t I warned you enough about how dangerous Neverland can be?”

“I’m sorry.” I try to placate him, reaching up to clasp his wrists. “I was just upset.”

“Are you sure?” he asks, his brows peaking. “Because if I hadn’t come back for you, you’d be dead right now.”

I change the subject. “Why did the water hurt you?”

Peter’s lips thin. “Nothing hurts me, Six. Nothing is powerful enough to.”

“That can’t be true. Everyone has a weakness.”

“I don’t. If you forget everything else, you should remember that ,” he warns as he boasts about how powerful he is.

It’s a lie. He’s a lie.

His thumbs press further into the hollow of my throat, as if he wants to show me how capable he is of causing pain while believing himself immune.

It occurs to me that I’m losing this game. Peter is as adamant as he is desperate in this moment. Whatever hold he had on the sirens has been severed. Whatever he thought he could do with his shadow magic didn’t work. He’s losing control and is desperate to regain even a fraction of what’s slipped through his hands.

But if this is a game, then maybe all I need is to reposition myself on the board. And since he keeps touching me, maybe it’s because he craves touch from someone else and would do anything to have it. Maybe it’s one of his weaknesses.

Something I can exploit and benefit from…

My hands leave his wrists to slowly drift up his forearms and biceps, then cup his face.

He tilts his head, verdant eyes flashing with an emotion I’m too afraid to name. He loosens his grip on me ever so slightly. “What are you doing?”

“Comforting you. If you want me to. If you’ll let me.”

He thrums with an emotion I can’t name but slowly, he eases his grip on my throat. His chest rises and rapidly falls, bumping mine with each crest.

Pushing onto the tips of my toes, I press my lips to Peter’s.

I count the seconds our mouths press together, worried he’ll know I only want to distract him long enough to get his focus and fingers off me, that he’ll know that kissing him is the last thing I want to do.

It only takes three seconds for Peter to move both of his hands to my hips and lean in to deepen the kiss. Three seconds for me to outmaneuver Peter Pan.

This time.