Page 124 of Losing Wendy

My whole body goes numb. Was there more to that than I thought at the time? Some innate belief that life ends at that age, or at least innocence does? Would Peter, if he truly believed that, take up the dagger just like the Sister and plunge it into the Lost Boys’ chests, just to keep them from what he perceived to be a worse fate—growing up?

My head spins. Is it even real, the story he told me about the Sister? Or is it just a figment of his imagination? According to the journals, she was the one who tasked Peter with killing the boys if it became necessary.

But what if he’s simply given himself an excuse? A mission for ending them when they start to grow up?

Panic strikes me as I consider the time. How much of it has passed since we arrived in Neverland? John is years past his sixteenth birthday.

Will Peter kill him too?

Panic overcomes me, squeezing down in my chest, as I think of the hands I let touch me all over. Had Freckles’s blood still beenunderneath Peter’s fingertips the night I let him dig them into my back as he catapulted us into the air? Had the same mouth that drowned me in kisses also lured Joel out of the Den, away from the other boys, offering to go help him look for me?

I search for a third explanation, but I keep coming back to the same two: Either Peter is killing the boys to keep the Sister’s secret, or he’s a madman.

And the crazed man I killed on the beach—I know now, in my very gut, who he is. The story paints itself in my mind. A man discovers his boys have been taken. How they ended up in the orphanage, I can’t reckon, but that’s hardly relevant. He sets off on a journey to find them, guided only by his anguish. An anguish of soul that, of course, leads him straight to Neverland.

Where he hunts down the man who had taken his sons.

The man who had killed Thomas, his little boy.

My hand finds my mouth, grasping onto my silent screams as I imagine it all unfold. A father finding the discarded carcass of his oldest boy on the sand. A broken-hearted man sobbing and taking the boy’s bracelet, wearing it around his own wrist to carry a piece of his lost boy with him. Just like he carried a sketch of both boys in his pocket. The same sketch that had led him all the way to Neverland.

And then he’d found him—the Shadow Keeper who had taken everything from him. The being who had squeezed the breath from his son. Ended him in the name of saving him from a worse fate. A fate he didn’t get the chance to choose.

He’d been about to enact justice.

Instead, he’d found himself on the wrong end of my blade.

CHAPTER 45

Itell myself there has to be an explanation.

Peter saved my life. Peter set me free. I owe him the conversation, at least. A chance to explain what was written in the journals.

As I’m pacing his floor, wading through my swirling thoughts, a voice calls out from beyond the shadows of the tunnels.

It’s calling my name.

Wendy Darling, it whispers.

Did I take my dose of faerie dust today? I can’t seem to remember.

My bare feet halt in place as a chill snakes up my spine. Slowly, I tread to Peter’s door and peek into the hall. At the end of Peter’s hall, there’s a tangle of roots that make up the structure of the wall.

The voice whispers my name on the wind, and the roots unfurl. Behind them gapes the mouth of a dark tunnel. Tears sting at my eyes as dread strums at my heart. The voice is wrapped in silky tendrils, like Peter when he used to speak to me from his shadow form. I bite my lip, unsure, but the shadows call again.

And I’ve always listened.

The tunnel is smallerthan the hall, so I have to crouch to enter. Thorns tug at my hair as the top of my head scrapes the ceiling. The further into the tunnel I go, the more the walls constrict around me, pressing in on my shoulders.

It’s almost as if only shadows are supposed to be able to crawl through here.

Voices echo through the tunnel, but they’re different from the voice that led me here. The voice that called my name was multi-layered, as if comprised of several voices. These are more distinct—one sultry, one familiar.

Eventually, the tunnel curves, and I peek around it.

Beyond, in an alcove where the tunnel opens into a cave, is Peter. Except it’s not the Peter I’ve come to know, but the Peter who came to take me away from the clock tower. His body is encased in shadows, his wings ethereal plumes that bat erratically, writhing in the darkness.

He’s on the ground, kneeling.

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