Page 64 of Losing Wendy

I gesture to my waist, where I brought a knife I borrowed from Simon.

“Now that, I’d love to see.”

Irritation swells in me. I don’t much like being interrupted in the middle of a run. There’s something about having the feeling of peace swept away from me before I’m finished that leaves me in this heightened state. It feels suspiciously like teetering on the edge of a cliff.

“Seems to me you’re running from something.”

“I’m not running from anything. I’m just running to run.”

Peter quirks his brow.

“It’s become a popular source of entertainment among the aristocracy,” I say.

Among the men, I neglect to add.

“You cause yourself literal pain and call it entertainment?” says Peter. “And here I was, thinking you might have a point about me having a warped sense of what makes for good fun.”

I cross my arms over my chest, shivering as my body temperature cools and the wind from the waves laps up my sweat.

“This isn’t pain,” I say, letting my eyes avert to the dark sand beneath my feet.

I can take away your pain.

“If you say so,” says Peter, eyeing me warily. Then he leans in and whispers in my ear. “But it’s not fun, either. I’d be happy to teach you my ways, if you’d let me.”

He pulls back but extends a hand all the same. The same hand I took out of desperation in the clock tower that night. The same hand whose shadows seeped in through the windowsill for years. The same hand that pulled me to his chest and flew me high above Estelle, where the city lights speckled like dewdrops on the ground and the whirl of the wind stole the air from my lungs and took the pain out of breathing.

The same hands that threatened to drop me in the name of fun.

That thought sobers me right up. I need to get Peter away from me before I succumb to his allure, his tempting promises. Pain has planted its roots in my soul. If I allowed him to pluck it out, he’d shred the very muscle that keeps my blood pumping.

So instead of taking his hand, I slip mine into my pocket, withdrawing the soft, leathery slip of parchment I know will wipe the teasing from his voice. Will remind me just who it is that wants me to entrust him with flying me above the ground.

Peter still appears amused, and he snatches the parchment from my hand playfully. “What could this be? Wendy Darling’s list of painful activities she convinces herself are pleasurable? Do you also include passing a bladder stone on this lis—”

Peter’s voice disappears. He snaps his gaze to mine, peering over the now unfolded parchment. “Where did you get this?”

There’s no anger in his voice. No emotion at all.

“What happened to him?” I counter, repeating the question he refused to answer the night I found him playing his flute by the hearth.

A cruel smile overtakes Peter’s lips. “Maybe he went running by himself.”

Anger stings at my heart, riling me. When I speak, my voice warbles, which only makes me more frustrated. “Is that what you told the other boys?”

Something odd overcomes Peter’s body. A sort of laxness whereI would have expected tension. It’s like watching a sink drain of water.

Peter quietly folds the sketch in his hands and tucks it back into my palm, closing my fingers over it gently. “Thomas wandered too far. Too far for me to protect him,” is all he says.

Judging by the way his eyes glaze over, go unfocused, by the way his voice doesn’t change in pitch, I get the feeling I’m not the only one who has strategies for drowning out the pain.

I’m debating whether to mention as much when Peter’s ears flick. My gaze follows his, curious as to what has snatched away his attention.

Simon approaches, feet bare and kicking up the steely sand. When he reaches us, he bends over, catching himself on his knees. Strange, considering he’s fae. I can’t imagine how fast he must have been running to get winded like that.

He gulps in the salty air, and at first I think that’s what has the whites of his eyes tinted red.

“What’s wrong?” asks Peter, wings going taut, readied for flight at his sides.

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