Page 66 of Veiled in Stars and Silver
“If Pan is defeated, and if he is the one behind it. What if you fail?”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, love, but that’s all the more reason to stay away.”
“And you think I’d stay away with my brothers still trapped here?”
He growled and ran another agitated hand through his tousled hair. “Damn it, Wendy. I wasn’t planning for this.”
“Planning on what? To actually let me help? To actually save my brothers?”
“To have something I care about more than freeing Neverland,” he snapped, then softened. He gazed at me in agony. “Or someone.”
I blinked, startled by his admission. Had James Hook admitted to loving me?
Some of the tenseness leached out of my body. “I’m not leaving. But we need to figure out what our next step is.”
I stepped up to him and laid a hand on his chest. He gripped my fingers and pressed them to his lips, nodding. He gave me a knowing smile. “It was worth a try.”
I knew what it was like, believing a person was guilty and being unwilling to let it go. But I didn’t have time to fully convince James that I was right. That Tinker Bell was really the one behind it all. It made too much sense. The fairies were strong, powerful, having flooded Neverland. And Peter had never seemed calculating enough to pull off all that James and the others claimed. Besides, if Tink possessed the power to put thoughts in others’ minds, wouldn’t she have the power to make them sound like Peter?
I may have wanted revenge on Captain Hook for seven years, but Peter had been the focus of James’s hate and rage so much longer than that. A thousand cuts year after year, that had never healed. He wouldn't change his mind. Not in two hours or in two days.
In a flash, I grabbed the rope hanging from the post next to the bed and swung it around him. He swore as I rushed past him, usingmy weight to jerk him against the post. He struggled, but I hastily tied it off before flinging the long rope across him one more time and tying it behind him.
“Wendy, what are you doing?” James growled.
I picked up the map of Neverland and spread it on the desk where we had made love. My teeth sank into my lip in a moment of indecision as I gripped the potion attached to the chain still surrounding my neck.
“He’s too powerful. You can’t do this on your own.”
“Like you were going to do this on your own?” I saw him flinch at my words. “I must do this.” That was what Tink, and even Peter, expected. They wanted me to bring the dagger and the book alone. If I brought James, he was as good as dead. I grabbed the spellbook off the floor and flipped it open. I froze at the handwritten notes on the front page.
Why Wendy? Why her brothers?
Possible explanation: Descendants of Stardust?
I looked at James. “You wrote this?”
“It was the only place I could safely write down my speculations.”
“Who is Stardust?”
“Untie me, and I will explain.”
I pressed my teeth together. I didn’t have time for this. Looking through the table of contents, I found the locator spell and turned to it.
The words of the book poured from my lips as I chanted, as I had seen James do when I first arrived. I dumped the ingredients of thevial out on the page, and when I came to the right part of the chant, I muttered Tinker Bell’s name.
The thin stream of potion pooled out to a small nameless cave on the outskirts of what was now fairy territory.
I pressed my finger to the map. “There you are.”
I turned to the front of the book to find the spell that needed to be used with the dagger. Luckily, James had circled it. I flipped to the page and then folded Neverland’s map and shoved it in that spot to mark it.
“Wendy, let me go. Now,” James demanded as I gathered the spellbook of Stardust into my arms and strapped the Dagger of Forgotten Souls to my hip. Last, I slipped on my boots and stashed my throwing knives beneath my shirt and inside my footwear.
I let myself meet his dark, stormy gaze. “I’m sorry. This is for the best.”
“Don’t waste your one chance to end this. To end him.”
