Page 92 of Losing Wendy

“Then you haven’t read enough poetry,” says Peter, leaning in so that his mouth barely brushes my forehead. He lingers there for a moment, and my heart stops with the idea that he might kiss me, but he doesn’t. He just plays with the curve of my spine, teasing me in the most torturously wonderful way.

I’m not high from the faerie dust anymore. I don’t think so, at least. But the calm that seeps into my muscles isn’t natural. Not for me, at least. I’m not sure if it’s normal for anyone else, how others go about their day inhabiting themselves.

For years, I’ve successfully maintained the facade of calm, but it’s come at the cost of not feeling much of anything. Delicate happiness swells in my chest now, but even in Peter’s arms, it feels fleeting. Like a hummingbird buzzing in my chest, one that I feel I must trap in the cage of my ribs, suturing the gaps with tough and implacable skin lest it flutter away, leaving me wondering after it forever, grasping at this moment of peace for the remainder of my days.

“Why do you have a book on etiquette sitting on your bedside table?” I ask him, glancing at the leather book I noted the time I searched his room.

“I needed a reliable source on what it was to be a gentleman,” he says. “That way I could be certain I’d never turn into one by accident.”

“You did drug me, I suppose,” I say teasingly. “Not very gentlemanly.”

“You didn’t seem to mind too much.” He says it nonchalantly, but that doesn’t change the fact that until last night, Peter had been hesitant to give me any more than a minuscule dose. My throat goes dry remembering the shadows swelling over me. “Why do the shadows come after me?” I ask. “Why have they always come after me?”

Peter’s throat bobs.

“You weren’t always the shadows that whispered to me, were you?” I ask, breathless, thinking of the night terrors I experienced as a child, the ones that often sent me into a fever, from which I’d awake to my mother pressing a cold rag against my forehead.

Peter swallows, then shakes his head. “No. When I’d come to speak to you from the window, that was me. Or, my shadow self, at least. But I wasn’t the one who caused your nightmares.”

“Why did you let me believe that you were?”

“I didn’t want you to be frightened,” he says.

I shift. “I was still frightened. Just of you. Just of…” I stop myself before the words come out. The words that admit the spark in my chest I’ve stoked for longer than I care to admit to myself.

Peter averts his eyes, and I fight with the discomfort swelling in my belly. “I don’t want to ruin this moment,” Peter says, and I almost wonder if he’s sad.

I offer him a weak smile. “I don’t know when else I’m going to feel much safer.”

Something lights in his eyes, and it might be my imagination, but I feel as though he holds me tighter, claiming me in defiance of the shadows that so desire me.

“I’ve suspected since the night I found you at the warehouse that you might be a shadow-soother,” says Peter. My rounded ears perk at the term. It’s unfamiliar to me, which is a bit shocking given how much reading I did on shadows as a child. “Not all shadows are simply a by-product of an object blocking the light. Sometimes, shadows become infused with magic.”

“Like you?” I ask.

Peter shakes his head. “I’m a fae who was given a shadow form. What I’m speaking of…it’s almost like the opposite. A shadow coming to life.”

“How?”

Peter grins. “Magic.”

I frown. This isn’t exactly the type of answer that would assuage my brother John, nor am I fond of it.

Peter’s grin falters, and I get the sense that he doesn’t want to tell me.

“You don’t have to protect everyone around you from pain, you know.”

Peter smiles, wiping my hair from my forehead. “But it’s such a naughty thing, pain.”

“Sometimes necessary, though,” I whisper, though in my heart I don’t know if I believe it. Not when a night soaring in the blur of faerie dust has me wondering if pain is imperative to living at all.

My mouth salivates. Embarrassed, I swallow the craving, untangling myself from Peter’s arms and propping myself on the edge of the bed, hoping sitting upright will clear my head. Peter follows my lead. When he maneuvers next to me, our legs brush.

“It’s a dark sort of magic that creates Wraiths,” says Peter. “Shadows infused with life. It often requires someone or something to undergo such agony that the pain becomes palpable enough for the shadows to latch onto, to feed off of. Those who wish to create Wraiths often do so by sacrificing living beings, though some Wraiths are made through happenstance. An eager shadow that happens to be in the same place where intense pain occurs. They’re often found in old houses, where many have suffered agony as they watched at bedsides as their loved ones passed.”

“Makes sense as to why they were everywhere in our manor,” I say. “It’s been in our family for generations now.” I think of the ballroom and wonder how many shadows were brought to life on the night of the masquerade. My stomach rocks at the thought.

Peter nods, contemplatively. “There are some fae gifted with the ability not only to speak to the Wraiths, but also to wield them. If you can hear them, you likely have fae somewhere in your bloodline.”

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