Their Vicious Darling (Vicious Lost Boys #3)(20)

I reach out for her hand. She tries to snatch hers back, but my fingers circle her wrist and drag her into me. “Show me, little girl.”

She huffs, furrows her brow. The fae live long lives. I’m not entirely sure how old Tilly is, but I guarantee she isn’t as old as me.

“Fine,” she says and then the throne room disappears and I’m suddenly Wendy and I’m being yanked out of Peter Pan’s grip.

“Don’t leave me,” Wendy screams. “Pan! Don’t…please…”

Peter Pan pulls a blade from his side and slits a guard’s throat. Blood geysers. He stabs another.

“Get him!” someone shouts.

Pan backpedals. I get further away, but my arm is outstretched and there’s panic beating at my breastbone.

“Get Roc!” she yells. “Please get Roc and come back for me!”

When I stumble out of the memory, there are tears in my eyes. They aren’t mine exactly. Or maybe they are.

I can still feel Wendy’s panic thumping in my chest.

He left her.

He fucking left her.

And he didn’t tell me even though she begged him to.

Unless…

I blink back to reality and search the queen’s face.

Can the queen make up fake memories? I suppose I couldn’t put it past her.

“Tell me how the Darling line continued.”

“Wendy told Peter Pan she’d already had a child,” Tilly explains. “So he didn’t think anything of leaving her.”

“I noticed.” The words come out through clenched teeth.

“Wendy was lying, of course. She told him she had a child because she had wanted to stay in the Isles with you.” Tilly taps at her chest. “I could feel her desire for that right here. A heaviness I still have a hard time shaking.”

“Then why did she deny me?” I challenge.

“Because of what you did to Hook.”

I tsk. “That was no business of hers.”

“Wasn’t it?”

“He deserved what he got.”

Tilly cants her head. “Did he?”

“Get on with it, queen. How did the line continue if Wendy never returned?”

“Because when Wendy Darling left Neverland, she was pregnant.”

I can hear all of the things the fae queen is not saying.

She left pregnant. She did not arrive pregnant. And what I am...it does not so easily procreate.

Which means…

Heat rises in my throat and for the first time in a long time, the shift threatens to overwhelm me outside of the seconds and the minutes and the hours.

Somehow, I keep it at bay.

I must amend my list. I will lose my mind over three things.

Blood and unshelled peanuts and revenge.





11





CHERRY


I uncork a bottle of wine and guzzle it back.

When the alcohol settles in my stomach, I sway a little on the edge of my bed and look around my room.

I should go.

Don’t even bother packing. Just slip out a side door and through the woods and find a ship I can sneak onto in Darlington Port.

The pit in my stomach is growing heavier by the second.

“Cherry?”

“Ahhh!” I jolt. The bed squeaks and I throttle the wine bottle like a weapon.

Bash frowns at me from the open doorway. “Are you okay?”

They’re going to find out. If Winnie hasn’t told them yet…they’re going to find out and then they’re going to do very bad things to me.

There is no one I can turn to.

I’ve always had no one but it’s hitting me especially hard right now just how very alone I am.

“I’m fine,” I answer. “What’s up?”

It’s been hours since Smee left. Bash has showered, his hair wet and slicked back save for a few strands over his forehead. He’s shirtless because he always is. Sometimes I would catch myself just staring at his abs and the tattoos that run over his torso.

I might have been in love with Vane all these years, but I always felt safest with the twins.

No, maybe that’s not right. I’m not sure there is such a thing as safe on Neverland.

But the twins made me feel less alone.

I can barely look Bash in the eye now.

“We’re throwing you a going-away party,” he says. “I’ll make you one party food. Your choice. What’ll it be?”

I need to leave. I take another drink from the wine.

“I have everything for lavender biscuits, the lemony ones you like.” He tilts his head and scans my face. “Or the honeysuckle tarts.”

I take another drink and wince.

“Cherry?”

“Honeysuckle tarts.” I’m practically vibrating. I want to vomit.

Bash comes further into the room. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Of course.”

“You know, it might be for the best, you returning to Hook’s territory.”

I snort. “Are you kidding me?”

Bash cocks his head. “Cherry, listen—”

“My brother didn’t want me in the first place. Do you know that when he left England, I snuck onto his ship because I couldn’t stand the thought of being left with our father? Our father beat Jas every chance he got and sometimes when he was really angry, he’d slap me around too. But Jas never wanted me around either. When you all took Smee, he came to me and convinced me it was ‘good form to make a great sacrifice for the family.’ He told me trading places with Smee would only be temporary. A few weeks at most. And then when the weeks drug on and on, I realized he wasn’t coming back for me so I decided to make the most of it and now look.”