Page 143 of Chasing Never
“You really don’t remember?” he asks.
I shake my head, but the gesture is deceptive, and I have no wish to deceive this man. “I remember parts, as one might a dream, the details slipping away from you as soon as you wake. I remember, but the memories are not my own. They are memories of a different reality, no more real to me than a nightmare.”
The beautiful man stares at me, then offers me the faintest of smiles. “Come now, Darling. They can’t all be nightmarish.”
His rogue grin sends me back to a dark hall of a ship, to this man pushing me up against a wall.Promise you won’t kiss me back.
The shadows surrounding me shudder, but I try my best to ignore the warmth bubbling up within me. This is how it happened for my Sisters. How much pain has been endured by so many because a Fate allowed herself to be seduced by a mortal?
“I am sorry you have lost your wife,” I say, my voice clipped. “If it is any comfort to you, from what I remember, she loved you very much.”
The man’s tantalizing smile turns to stone. I wonder if he will hate me—her. If he will perceive this as abandonment. What he does not understand is that Wendy Darling, whoever she was—whoeverIwas—died. She has no more abandoned him than a wife fallen to a plague.
“If you won’t come back for me,” he says, “then at least come back for your son. Would you let him grow up motherless? Would you force me to tell him the story of the woman who didn’t wish to return to him?”
Pity swells in my heart for the man. Yes, he truly does not understand.
“Your wife is dead,” I say, hating to put it so bluntly, but it is now evident that this is necessary. “Tell your son she died saving him.”
“Would you have me tell him that his mother died, but when given the choice to come back to him, she refused?” says the man. “That is not often a choice the dead get to make. I doubt it will be much comfort to him.”
“He is yours. It is not my business what you do or do not tell him,” I say, turning to go.
The man reaches out to me, his hook grasping at my shoulder, but it glides right through me, barely a buzz of sensation. I do not turn around.
“In your heart you know he is still your son,” says the man, desperate now. “When Peter held him over the fire, you protected him with a ferocity only a mother would. I heard you claim him.”
I pause, unable to contradict that last statement. But there is no way of explaining to the mortal that no matter how confusing my feelings for the child may be, they do not excuse irrational behavior, pretending I am someone I am not. “The child is an infant. An innocent. I do not take kindly to those with power using the innocent to their own benefit. The child should not have to hurt. Children should be protected. But you? You will protect this child. I can see it in the way you hold him. In the way you look at him. And if you believe he is in need of a mother, I am sure you will have no difficulty finding one who is eager to fill that position.”
“I don’t want a mother for my child,” says the man. “I want you.”
It’s my instincts that betray me, and I find myself swiveling around to face him. He truly is beautiful, not just in appearance, but his words, too, every syllable that drips from his mouth a temptation formulated specifically for my lonely heart. “But I amnot her. I am not who you seek. You fell in love with a mortal girl. Don’t you see it? She was never meant to exist.”
“That’s how Wendy used to think, too,” says the man. “That’s what she used to believe.”
“Well, then she was correct,” I say. “She must have had an instinct.”
“Do you know what I think?” says the man. “I think you are afraid.”
Something strange stirs within me. “Afraid? Afraid of what? My Sisters are dispatched. They will not challenge me again.”
“When my wife went to your dwelling place,” he says, “she returned and said it was beautiful but lonely. As if it had only ever been touched by one being. Still, there were baubles all within it. Collections taken from the mortal realm.”
“They were gifts,” I say. “I stole nothing.”
“No, but you collected them all the same, no matter how worthless they would have been to a Fate,” he says.
“And your point?” I ask.
“The two Sisters,” says the man. “They walked among mortals. They befriended them, loved them even, from time to time. But there are no such legends of the Youngest Sister doing so. I think you were afraid, just like she always was. I think you valued yourself so little, valued your companionship as so inferior, you did not believe yourself capable of being loved. Or perhaps you did not believe others were capable of loving you. Of enjoying your company. Of loving your laughter. Of doing anything they could to catch your smile. You didn’t know what others would sacrifice to watch you grow, to watch that beautiful, guilt-stricken face finally know peace. You believed your company to be worthless. And so you refused to give anyone else the chance to value it. You were alone, and convinced yourself you were content that way.”
“How could you possibly know any of that?” I ask, unable to stop my voice from heightening in pitch.
“Because I know you, Darling,” he says. “Because I watch you. I notice you. I see you. I chart you like I do the stars. You were my wife,” he says. “You were my wife when you were mortal, and you are my wife now. I do not care which form you have taken. I do not care if what we had seems only a daydream to you, for it was not. It was real. It is real.You are my wife and the mother of my child and the woman I vowed to spend the rest of my life with. And I do not make promises,” he says, his jaw tightening. “And I will not watch you disappear into the mountains to some lonely little hovel, because you were too afraid to let yourself be loved.”
He stops, wincing. “How many times,” he says, closing his eyes, “will you refuse help because you do not believe those who are offering it are doing so freely?”
I watch the man intently. It is not that I love him. But I can remember her loving him. Still, these feelings are not my own, and I cannot grasp them.
