The Never King (Vicious Lost Boys #1)(11)

“This is Neverland,” I tell the Darling. “This place does not exist in your world.”

She takes in a breath, her shoulders rising before quickly deflating again.

“You can swim for miles in any direction and you’ll get nowhere, especially not home.”

The gulls cry out again, then turn into the wind and head south. The waves pick up as the tide rises.

“There is no escape. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

She drags her tongue over her lips.

Vane goes rigid beside me.

“What am I doing here?” she asks and takes a step forward. “Why do you take the Darlings?”

She’s rail thin, but full of fire.

“How long before I can go home?”

“Is that what you want?” I ask her. “To go home?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Answer the question.”

“I don’t want to be held captive.” Her voice is rising and Vane’s patience is thinning. “I can’t help you with whatever it is you want,” she says and drops her arms at her sides, hands curling into fists. “So you’re wasting your time and…my mother…she needs me.”

“Does she?”

“Yes!”

“This one is going to be a handful,” Vane says, his voice rumbling in the back of his throat.

“I can’t help you, so take me home and—” She cuts herself off, her eyes going wide.

The sharp bite of sulfur blooms on my tongue.

“Vane,” I say.

The Darling backpedals, her heart rate spiking.

“Vane!”

She turns around and runs.

I grab Vane by the shoulders and give him a shake. Both his eyes are black and the blackness of the shadow is filling his veins, surging around his eyes like a writhing mask.

“You didn’t tell me it was this bad.”

He growls and yanks out of my grip. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine.”

His attention zeroes in on the running Darling. Her feet pound at the sand, her sweater flapping behind her.

“Now I have to go chase her,” I say. “Well done.”

“No need. I’ll chase her.”

I grab him again before he gets away from me and yank him close. “If you catch her, there won’t be anything left. And she is our last fucking chance.”

The shade has turned his black hair white, turned his incisors to fangs.

Vane has never had a handle on his shadow, no matter how much he tries to convince himself, and me, otherwise. He’s got his own demons to hunt.

“Go on,” I tell him again.

He grits his teeth, lets out a long, disappointed growl.

He watches her another second before turning away and as he walks back up the beach, his hair fades to black again.

I’m running out of time, but I think Vane is too.

For fuck’s sake. I don’t have the patience for this.

The Darling is halfway down the beach now, the moonlight painting her in strokes of silver and blue.

I might not be able to fly, but I can still run, and the Darling never stood a chance.





7





WINNIE


I can’t breathe. I wasn’t made to run.

The sand is uneven beneath my feet and it’s making every step twice as hard as it should be. Tears are streaming down my face.

I hate fucking crying.

I don’t cry.

How far do I run?

Why am I running?

Haven’t they warned me over and over not to run?

The panic returns and this time, I think it’s all me. This might be a tight situation I can’t negotiate my way out of.

There’s a cliff in the distance rimmed in the glow of the moonlight. Mist from the ocean waves glitters in the devouring night air.

Suddenly Peter Pan is in front of me and the terror steals the air from my lungs.

I lurch to a stop before I slam into him. He catches me easily, his grip rough on my arms.

“What the fuck did I tell you, Darling?” His voice is edged in rage.

“I don’t know…I was…” I can’t catch my breath. I don’t know what is happening. “I was afraid,” I admit, even though I don’t remember becoming afraid.

Suddenly I just was, just like when I first woke up in the house and Vane came into the room.

For a split second, Pan softens.

I can sense it in the fading of the tension in his body. “That was Vane,” he says. “He has the ability to make people feel terror.

“He…what?”

“If it’s any consolation, he didn’t mean it.”

I laugh and for a split second, I hear my mother in my voice. The madness bleeding through.

“It’s not,” I say, “a consolation.” I swipe at a tear as it trails down my cheek. “Is it like…magic or something?”

“Or something. Come on.” He gestures back toward the house.

“I want to go home.”

“Why?”

“Because…because you all are assholes.”

“And?”

“And…and I don’t want to be broken.”