Page 97 of Losing Wendy

I certainly can’t do it for me.

I had one kill in me, and I spent it on the murderer on the beach.

Panicked, I wipe the sweat from my brow and try to calm myself. It’s okay that I can’t kill the captain. I’ll just find Peter, and Peter will do it for me.

Except Peter isn’t here.

Perhaps I could recruit some of the Lost Boys for help, but they’ve become closer to John lately, and I don’t think I can bear for him to know the captain is on the island. I remember him finding me by the sink basin and asking if I enjoyed putting a blade through Thomas’s murderer. My brother has bloodshed in his heart, a stinging sense of vengeance in his eyes. If he finds out Captain Astor is on the island, he’ll drive a blade through his neck. Or make him cut his throat with his own hand.

And then he’ll be a killer like me.

I don’t know that the shadows will haunt John at night like they do me, but there’s something wrong on this island, in this realm that was rushed to be made. Grief comes in torrents, and where I could hold it at bay in my home world, here it topples over me, consuming me.

So letting out a tiny sob as I do it, I sheathe my dagger and loop my hands underneath the captain’s armpits.

And drag him away.

CHAPTER 36

The cave I find to dump the captain in is off the shoreline. The tide has come in, so I have to drag his body over the jagged, wet rocks to get there, water sloshing inside my leather boots. I get a sick catharsis every time the captain’s shirt tears, the sharp rocks digging into the flesh of his back. Every time I have to tug extra hard to get his limbs unstuck.

I don’t know how he’s here, in Neverland, but the captain must have been hunting me. He’d wanted to kidnap me the night of the masquerade, though for what purpose, I don’t know. Fear threatens to overtake me, and just before reaching the mouth of the cave, I consider whether I should leave the captain face-down in the water.

I’m not sure what all kills the fae anymore. They rarely make an appearance among humans, so all I have to go on is what I’ve read in the old faerie tales. So far, they haven’t steered me correctly. When the fae were cursed with mortal lifespans, did it make them easier to kill too? That seems likely given the fact that I was able to take the life of the murderer with my dagger.

I bite my lip, a sharp pain stinging at my lower back from where I slipped and had to overcompensate on my right side to keep the captain from falling into the water.

What am I even doing?

Even if I manage to hide him in this cave, there’s no telling how quickly he’ll come to his senses. How quickly he’ll be able to escape.

I release my grip on his arms and let the captain slump.

As if hearing my call, a wave consumes the captain’s body, covering his mouth and nose in the ocean’s froth. The ocean itself tries to pull the captain into its watery grave, its treasure store of corpses and bones and waste, but the jagged rocks provide a barrier upon which the captain’s limbs become stuck.

I watch as the waves retreat, leaving a gargling half-corpse upon the rocks as the captain’s body fights for air. It sounds like choking on your own blood. The sound my parents made when their throats were slit.

I should revel in this male’s pain. His agonizing death should fill some gaping hole in my chest, but I make the mistake of looking at his face.

He’s devastating. That alone might be enough to let him drown here. People with wretched hearts shouldn’t get to be beautiful. Not when he ripped mine from my very chest. But it’s the pain on his face that gets me. The slight wrinkles around his eyes betraying years of suffering he has over me.

Another wave splashes against the captain’s face. I might as well be pinching his nose shut while covering his mouth in a cloth. But even in his passed out stupor, he reaches for his hand.

The hand with the severed Mating Mark.

With a jolt, I remember the hatred and desperation with which I dug my dagger into the murderer’s chest cavity, even thinking he might lay a hand on Peter. I tremble to consider what I might have done had he succeeded. And Peter isn’t even my Mate.

The captain had been married to his Mate, I remember from the night of the masquerade.

What sort of madness had the captain been driven to when the Mark on his hand withered and died, following the death of his wife?

This time, the crashing waves succeed in lifting the captain fromhis safehold behind the rocks. In a moment of anguish and folly, I lunge after him, splashing myself up to the waist as I struggle against the sea for the captain’s body.

Heaving, I drag him across the rocks and into the mouth of the cave. I drop him onto the ground, wondering if he’ll drown despite my effort. But the man’s mouth begins to foam with saltwater. He chokes and gargles, coughing it up as it spews past his lips and down the sides of his cheek.

I stand there for a long while, staring at him, until I realize I don’t have time for such things. Not when he’ll wake eventually and persist in his quest to kill me. Or whatever it is he has planned for me.

My mind is racing, and I rub my hands on my hips absentmindedly. As I scan the cave, my gaze lands on the purple-leafed plants that jut out rebelliously from the sand.

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