Page 143 of Freeing Hook

My brother hums under his breath, unaware of my return. His voice is high, sharp. I don’t need to hear what he’s singing to know he’s upset. Distraught, even.

The Lost Boy won’t look at me.

“Victor, where’s John?” Fear for my brother grips my chest, slicing through the love-struck exterior my bargain has me under. It’s still there, compelling me to choose Peter, but my love for John is something separate. Something I can cling to while I hold my choosing of Peter in the other hand.

Victor doesn’t answer. He just squeezes Michael’s hand tighter.

Peter goes quiet, but his voice is commanding, concerned. “Victor? What happened?”

Victor glances back and forth nervously between me and Peter, like he’s tiptoeing around a minefield, trying to find the right words when there are none.

Michael’s singing gets louder. “Last one to the top’s dead meat.”

My heart stops in my chest.

I drop Peter’s hand and run.

CHAPTER 53

WENDY

The forest is sinister, the shadows enveloping where there should be a faint outline of the trees in tonight’s bright moonlight. There should be light, and there is none, and it seems the shadows are doing it on purpose. They jump from the brush and obscure my path, holding their fingers over my eyes like I’m a frightened child.

They don’t want me to see. Don’t want me to find what’s at the end of this path. But my feet propel me ever onward.

I run, skirting by trees, slamming into bark when the shadows obscure my vision too fully, but I run all the same, allowing the forest to beat my body to a pulp.

All the while, I hear John’s laugh.

I hear it as he yells, “Last one to the top’s dead meat,” in the middle of our tutoring sessions. I hear it as he grabs Michael and throws him over his shoulder as we race toward the clock tower, Michael’s giggling contagious. I feel John’s spindly fingers around my ankles as he lunges for me in our hallway manor, doing anything he can to keep me from winning.

At least, I think I feel it. But it’s just the thorns on the forest floor grasping at my ankles, begging me to turn around.

I can’t just turn around. I run, and with every step, I leave an imprint of my heart—torn in two—on Neverland’s floor.

And then I’m back to the day John, Michael, and I raced through this forest back to the Den. The day John had pretended to lag behind, just so he could tease me about how he could still outrun me.

How he would still get there first, despite being younger.

I only know I reach the clearing with the reaping tree in the center because there’s no longer any tree trunks to slam into, nothing else to block my path.

The shadows stay firmly wrapped around my eyes, nothing deterring them now that my blood is clean of faerie dust.

“Please,” I tell them. “Please, you have to let me see. I have to know. I can’t bear not knowing.”

Still, nothing but darkness.

“Please,” I beg. “You can’t protect me from what’s real.”

There’s a hesitation, and I wonder if the shadows intend to blind me for the rest of my life. But then they dissipate, slowly leaking from my eyes. It’s the glow of the bulbs on the reaping tree that sneak through the darkness first, a gentle beauty as deceptive as the reaping tree itself.

The shadows slink back into the forest, leaving me alone, though not entirely.

They’re still obscuring the face of the dead boy hanging on a noose from a branch of the reaping tree, its lights backlighting his form. I don’t need to see his face to know that it’s him. I recognize his lanky frame, his long limbs.

When I take a step forward, something crunches underneath my feet. Pain and blood flow against the soles of my feet.

Glass from round spectacles litters the forest floor.

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