Page 126 of Losing Wendy

When I first arrived, Peter told me the Sister has no friends. Only lovers and slaves. I can’t help but wonder if some hold both titles.

I think I might be ill. What all has Peter been required to do while within the servitude of this woman?

But then I remember the bargain that Peter could use against me at any moment. What might I be required to do in the service of his pleasures?

You’ve craved her, is what the shadow woman said.For how long, my mind wonders, and I’m scrambling to make it mean anything other than what I think. That he lied to me in the trees, that he’s wanted me since childhood.

That Peter is sick, and that his craving for me is not the same way I crave him.

If that’s the case, then with the bargain he holds over me, not only could he force himself upon me, he could keep me from fighting back. Could trick me into thinking I’m enjoying it.

A horrible thought crosses my mind.

What if Peter has already taken his side of the bargain? What if he’s already taken me up on it and commanded me to forget? If he’s commanded me to obey whatever he asks, he could technically wipe my memories. He could whisper in my ear that I was developing feelings for him. He could be the one controlling my attraction to him, my trust.

But no.

The Sister doesn’t seem to think he’s taken me. Surely she’d know if he had.

But he still lied about hardly noticing me all those years when he was in his shadow form. I can’t quite wrap my mind around the logic of it all. Why lie when, through the bargain, he could make me believe anything he wanted me to? It doesn’t make sense. Or perhaps it does, and the anxiety of the moment is making it difficult to fit the pieces together.

“I would have taken her many times,” Peter says, his wings rippling, “but my other half refuses to allow it on anyone else’s terms but hers. He wishes to woo her, it seems.”

My heart stops in my chest, my breathing too, chills snaking up my arm.

He’s not himself when he’s like this, I remind myself. No matter how many times I repeat it, I’m not confident it will be enough. Not when his journal is tucked into my inner coat pocket, the words inside as heavy as iron, as incriminating as a signed confession.

“Is there anything else?” Peter asks, returning to his previous state, on one knee in front of the shadow woman. She paces around him, stalking him like a cat would its prey. As she does, she traces her fingers lovingly, tenderly up his back.

Peter’s shadows lurch with every curve of his spine that herfingers travel. My stomach lurches with him as my pity for his slavery grapples with my anxiety over what Peter might have done on her behalf.

“You’ve grown displeased with me,” she says. “Increasingly so, since administering the boys’ unfortunate fates.”

The way the shadows leaching from the hem of her gown curve toward Peter has my stomach reeling. I hold my breath and wait for him to deny his part in it.

That moment never comes.

Instead, Peter just says, “You know I don’t like messes.”

It’s like I’m being stabbed through the ribs. I have to clamp my hand over my mouth to keep from crying out in pain.

“I’m surprised their deaths matter to you, of all people,” the Sister responds as I bite back silent sobs.

“I don’t like losing what belongs to me. Any more than I’d like losing the pair to my sock,” says Peter.

The apathy with which he says it infiltrates my chest as the boys’ faces flash across my mind. Thomas. Freckles. Joel.

I remind myself Peter’s different in this form.

As if that will ever be enough.

“Don’t act as if I didn’t warn you that this might happen. Your kind might have ascribed the term Fates to my sisters and I, but make no mistake, Fate itself is a different force entirely. My sisters and I can only coax it in a certain direction. We cannot force its hand.”

Peter’s cruel laugh echoes through the cave. “You wouldn’t call strangling one boy and stabbing two forcing Fate’s hand?”

“Those boys were ill. You knew from the beginning you might not save all of them. All we can do is try to cut off the disease before it continues to spread. I’ll be honest; I’d hoped it would have ended with Thomas, but you should have killed him long before you did. You had better be careful, Peter. Or I’ll start to wonder whether you’re up to the task, or if I should consider Neverland a failed trial altogether.”

My cheeks drain of color at her implications. At the imagesracing through my mind—Neverland dissolving into shadows, the realm unraveling with the boys still trapped within it.

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