Page 127 of Losing Wendy

This time, Peter cranes his neck up to look at her as she steps in front of him. “And you should know better than anyone else why I am capable.”

Again, I get the sense the awful creature is smiling. “Of course. You’re right. How could I doubt you?”

She takes her hand off his back, then turns as if to go. She must think better of it, because she says, “And Peter?”

“Yes, my lady?”

“I want the last of the ill ones dead before morning.”

In a whirl of shadows and smoke, she disappears.

Immediately, Peter collapses.

His shadows waft off of him like smoke being driven away in the wind, until all that’s left is his pale flesh, chafed by the whirl of shadows. He clutches his fists to the ground, back still facing me, the darkness of the cavern obscuring any part of him I would feel guilty about witnessing, especially since he doesn’t know I’m here.

His breathing is labored, but I get the impression it’s more out of relief that she’s gone than pain from the transition. Some shadows remain, clinging to his spine around where his wings fuse, but when he moves, the light shifts and casts a glow upon his bare shoulder.

Rather, it reveals a glow glimmering on his back.

What I thought were shadows appear more like a tattoo.

Except it’s not a tattoo at all.

It’s a Mating Mark.

CHAPTER 46

It’s a tree painted in gold, its trunk breaking through a stone, its canopy reaching toward the heavens.

I meanreachingquite literally.

The branches curve across Peter’s shoulder blade into the shape of an extended hand. Above the tree are golden freckles, like mine. Except they aren’t freckles at all.

They’re stars.

I find my fingers tracing the path of my Mark—the way the crisp golden dots curve from my left cheek down my jaw.

A sickle.

I feel the way they scatter at the bottom. At least, I’d always assumed they were scattering. But now that I see Peter’s Mark, I’m sure their placement is intentional.

My stars make the hood.

Peter’s make the robe.

Together, we form the Reaper.

The Reaper and the Oak.

There’s even a fox, clawing at the base of the tree, despite the fact that there are no roots to find underneath, no woman’s soul left behind to fetch for his master.

The sight of the Mating Mark scalds the backs of my eyes, overlapping with the vision of a corpse on a beach.

I’d stabbed a grieving father in the back. Then told his only living son a lie that had led him to spit on his father’s corpse. To dump it in a shallow grave and obsessively watch the earth pick the flesh from his father’s bones.

I had done that.

I’d done it to save Peter.

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