Page 104 of The Last Lost Girl

“She had one chance to get you home if you were ever going to be able to go back. She planned on returning to us, to help us and return our shadows, after you were safe, but then…” He looks to her for an explanation as to why that didn’t happen.

“But my wings crumbled.” Belle’s voice and chin wobble. “And I tried, but I couldn’t find it. I chartered a boat once, and saved up money for a plane ride, but never felt the curse line. I didn’t feel a pull in any direction until the necklace broke. Before then, I couldn’t sense my own home.”

Hudson tips my chin up and his gaze rakes down the column of my throat. “It’s spreading…” His thumb drags down my heated skin.

I can see in his eyes that he would do anything to take the shadows from me. But there is nothing he can do, and we both know it. We’re just pawns in Pan’s game, and…

Peter doesn’t lose.

I look at my sister. “Let me try.”

She shakes her head. “It’s not wise.”

“Fuck wise!” I shout, rushing over to grab her arm and give her a shake. “We don’t have time for wise!”

She twists and tries to free herself. Shouts at me to let her go.

My free palm reaches out and pushes flat against her stomach and I try to find anything that feels like Hudson. Something that smells like salt water, iron, and cloves; that feels like linen; of strong muscles and an unbreakable spirit. Of a shadow that is heavier than all the rest.

I find it.

Drawing it into my palm, I release Belle because his essence has seeped into my skin. A flood sweeps my feet out from under me and I tumble through currents comprised of his memories. Moments from his happy, normal childhood. He had two brothers, one older and one younger. His parents… they loved him so much. He played baseball.

“Your name…” I choke, emotion flooding me as I meet his worried stare.

“Don’t say it,” he begs, tightening his fingers around my hand, desperately, urgently. “I don’t want anyone to speak it until my entire crew has their memories back.”

I start to stumble backward when more memories surge forward. Hudson’s arm quickly bands around me, stopping me from crashing to the floor. His memories are like a movie I can drift through, but I feel Hudson’s emotions, too…

Pan approached him at the ball field and lured him away with the promise of friendship and pizza dinner at his house. I cringe at how innocent Hudson was when he fell into the mouth of the wolf. I note the boys he came to call friends and those who became enemies on the island.

I see Pan give part of his shadow back, so he doesn’t have to remind him of everything all the time. He was the only one of the Lost he offered to restore, even if it was only partially.

I see Belle through his eyes, with her beautiful wings. I watch the moment Pan lands on Neverland with me in his arms. I see myself as I tell him about the life I remembered parts of, when all should have been erased. He garners the courage to show himself to me the night Pan commanded his boys to toss me into the cage next to his.

He was so hungry before I shared the food Wraith brought for me.

The glint of the serrated saw he showed me resurfaces.

A tear falls from my eye.

He watches me wasting away with no food or water, growing weaker each day. To punish me for sharing my meal with him, Pan starved me. Tinkerbell came to check on me after she noticed I was missing. Hudson talked to her at the cage’s edge when the boys went to The Cove to see the mermaids.

Belle tells him to hang on and promises to help him heal, escape, and survive. The Lost Boys and Pan were planning to go hunting that night. It was the perfect opportunity to free us and take us all back home.

“You have to take her home first,” Hudson insists. “She can still remember how to find her way home if you take her now,” he adds. “It’s too late for the rest of us. We can wait. If you can just find somewhere we can hide and be safe, we’ll wait until you come back.”

That night, the Lost Boys whoop and holler as they leave on their hunt. Tink flies back to Hudson after she trails them for a while to make sure all of them are far out of earshot.

It’s time to move.

Hudson crawls toward me and shakes my shoulder to wake me up. From his eyes, I look tired and dirty, weak and dying.

“I need you to cut me free,” he says. His eyes are bright with fear, but his words are determined. He’s ready. He holds his hand out and squeezes the shackle down as far as it’ll go.

Tinkerbell hovers overhead. Smee is hammering at the locked bars with a rock, trying to smash it apart.

“Can’t she just break the lock?” I ask, casting worried eyes to the fairy.

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