Page 17 of The Last Lost Girl

“How do you know he didn’t lie to you?”

His mouth pops open like he is about to speak, but his attention darts away as he looks to the left. Right. Behind him. Behind me. “Did you hear something?” he whispers, his voice almost inaudible.

I listen for whatever it is he heard, or thinks he heard.

The aurora slowly washes over the canvas sky in deep shades of violet and amber. Other than the foliage and trees around us, I can’t see any threat. I don’t hear anything, either.

He silently turns, watching all around us for several more minutes, unable to dismiss what he heard – or thought he heard – as nothing.

During that time, the sky shifts again in preparation for the impatient dawn. The violet blanches into lavender, the amber into the palest yellow. The darkness, displeased, excuses herself and walks away to the west.

A pang of regret thrums through me, even if I don’t know why, as he redoubles his efforts to coax me into memories I don’t have. Memories he doesn’t even have. Pan told him a story and he assumes it’s true when it’s nothing but a lie.

I know exactly what Belle meant about him now.

The boy leans in closer, insistent. “Peter said … he said it’s been years since you left. Thirteen or fourteen, maybe? I can’t remember. Do I look familiar at all?”

I shake my head.

He doesn’t. I don’t know him. I’ve never seen him before in my life.

Tears gather in my throat even though I’m not sure why I care.

He tears at his shaggy hair and growls in frustration.

The growl is cut short when a silver hook slips around his throat from behind, its sharp tip pushing into his skin at the jugular.

I stumble backward.

My eyes flare and my mouth falls open at the sight of the silver curve just before a rich, deep voice purrs from behind the guy who found me. “She clearly doesn’t recognize you. Perhaps a reintroduction is necessary after so many arduous years. Be a sport and give her your name.”

My stare collides with eyes so dark green, my stomach clenches. Even in the starlight, even in the shade, they’re bold.

“Hook,” the guy grits, but I don’t miss the trembling in his hands as he raises them, then lets them fall, seemingly unsure what to do with them.

This Hook isn’t anything like the character in Belle’s least-favorite lie, and a far cry from how the cartoons portray him.

He’s not old. Doesn’t have an aquiline nose or don a wig of dated, rolled curls. He doesn’t wear a frilly white poet shirt.

No. Loosely laced and stretched over his broad chest is a shirt of simple black linen with sleeves rolled to his elbows revealing lithe muscle and trailing veins. He’s my age or a couple years older at the most, with dark hair that falls to his collar bones and a shadow of matching stubble. A deep scar bisects his left brow.

His lips aren’t too thin or full, but perfectly shaped... When he notices me staring at them, his tongue darts out to wet them.

My eyes snap up to his humor-filled green ones.

Heat floods my neck, then my cheeks.

I look toward the tips of his ears and frown because hair obscures them.

Peter’s friend, whose jaw is clenched so tightly I think his teeth might splinter, hisses. As a thick crimson rivulet carves a bloody path down his neck, I see that the hook’s tip has broken his skin.

“I told you to give this exquisite creature your name. Not mine,” Hook seethes. Even as he threatens – demands – everything from his captive, my would-be captor, the pirate’s stare never wavers from mine.

“Wraith,” the bleeding hostage grits out as the pirate pushes the tip of the hook deeper into his flesh.

Wraith whimpers and silently begs me to help… then his shoulders sag when he realizes I won’t. I can’t. His gaze turns furious, and I can see the moment he decides I’m still the traitor he knew. That I’m deserting him again.

My lips part as I decide to try to reason with the pirate on his behalf when a hot wash of blood sprays across my face, chest, stomach, and legs as Hook rips the silver crook through and across Wraith’s throat.

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