The Fae Princes (Vicious Lost Boys #4)(6)

Our dear mother will twist Tilly up, I tell Kas in our fae language.

We have been fighting against our sister, the fae queen, for a very long time, but it says something about my true feelings, when the first thing I can think of is to save her from our own mother.

Our little sister is no match for Tinker Bell. She never was.

But would our sister come willingly or would we have to drag her out of the palace kicking and screaming?

It’s for your own good, we’d tell her. Would she eventually believe us? We killed Father for the very same and look where that got us.

Tink said she asked Tilly to revoke our banishment and return our wings to us.

Goodwill. Hah. More like bullshit.

Kas and I both want our wings back.

More than almost anything.

More than Darling?

I know what you’re thinking, Kas says.

No, you don’t, I argue.

Do I even know what I’m thinking?

Temptation is a damnable thing.

Kas and I are the only two people in this room without a shadow and no wings. We are grounded, when all we want is to fucking fly.

“Speak aloud, princes,” Vane says and empties his glass. When he sets it aside, his black eye is glinting. “This is no time for secrets.”

Kas sighs and leans against the bar. “We want our wings back.”

“She’s lying.” Pan steps further into the room. “I could always read Tink. More easily than most. And she’s lying. She didn’t ask your sister for your wings. In fact, I’d bet she didn’t even consult Tilly on bringing you back into the court.”

“They keep dangling that carrot in front of us,” my twin says. “I’m getting really fucking sick of it.”

“I know.” Pan runs his hand through his hair and starts to pace the loft. His steps are slow but deliberate.

“What are you thinking?” I ask him.

His back to us, he says, “I never asked you—where are your wings? How would you get them back?”

Kas and I glance at one another. Nana instilled in us a deeply held belief that anyone outside of the fae did not have the right to know our customs. But Peter Pan is just as much Neverland as we are, and anyway, we’ve been banished, so I’m not sure the rules still apply.

“Generally speaking,” I start, “if a flying fae loses their wings as punishment for wrongdoing, the wings are burned. But the royal line is exempt from that punishment, so the wings are stored in the vault in a magical vessel. We don’t know what vessel our sister chose.”

Pushing away from the bar, Kas continues. “Restoring them to us is just a matter of giving us the vessel. It’s the gifting of it that will unlock the binding magic on the vessel, thereby restoring our wings.”

“When is the last time you were in this vault?” Pan asks over his shoulder.

“Years and years,” I answer.

“How hard would it be to find the vessel?” He turns to us once he’s reached the Never Tree. The parakeets are quiet this morning, but the pixie bugs are winking in and out, filling the shadowed branches with soft golden light.

“The vault is vast,” I answer.

“And full,” Kas adds.

“But it wouldn’t be impossible,” I say. “We’d know it when we felt it.”

“What are you suggesting?” Vane meets Pan in the middle of the loft. “Break into the fae palace and into their vault and steal their wings back? Wings that are stored in some unknown magical vessel while the entire fae court is on top of us, helmed by a petty fae queen and her resurrected evil mother?”

Pan regards Vane for a beat and then puts a cigarette in his mouth and spins the wheel on his lighter, the flame catching. He brings the fire to the cigarette and inhales, then snaps the lighter shut. The long draw he takes makes the ember burn brightly between them as they continue to stare each other down.

After a long exhale of smoke, Pan says, “Yes.”

Vane turns away. “For fuck’s sake.”

“Even if we get our wings back,” Kas says, “we still have our mother and Tilly to deal with.”

Pan takes another hit, and ash flakes away from his cigarette, swirling down to the hardwood floor. I can’t seem to read him right now. Not that he’s ever easy to read. I just wish he’d give something away for once.

“I promised you I’d help you get them back,” he says. “And I need to keep that promise. Tink will know it’s the one thing that will motivate you, and while I know you’ve chosen your side and that side is me, I also know what I would do if faced with the same temptation.”

“Are you insinuating we’d choose our undead mother and our wings over you?” Kas asks.

“Are you insinuating that you’ll say no to your wings?” Pan counters.

Kas frowns and looks away.

It’s more complicated than that, of course, but when you pare it down, there is one undeniable fact: we really want our fucking wings.

We want to fly. We want to feel whole again.

Pan, Vane, and Darling can all take to the sky, and Kas and I being stuck on the ground has tipped the balance in our group.

We haven’t spoken this aloud, not a one of us. But it’s there between us like a crack fissuring the ground, a clear line that divides us from them.