Their Vicious Darling (Vicious Lost Boys #3)(43)

“Do you promise?”

Pan hesitates before he answers. Even he must know he can’t promise this.

But he nods anyway, because I think he needs to believe it just as much as Darling does.

None of us want Vane to die.

I think I’m coming to realize we would all die for one another.

When did that happen?

When did I suddenly feel more loyalty and allegiance to this disparate found family than I did my own flesh and blood?

I feel the rightness of it though, thumping like a wild thing in the center of my chest.

Balder lifts his head and looks right at me and blinks at me with his bright blue eyes.

You find what you need when you need it.

Nani used to love saying that to us when we were boys and I’m not sure if I’m just conjuring her words or if Balder is actually reciting them in my head.

And the island gives you what you need when you need it.

I look at the wolf again. The resemblance to the original Balder is uncanny. I didn’t want to believe that it was really him, that the island could do something so profound as bring someone back to life.

And yet here he is.

Balder’s tail thumps loudly behind him.

“Get him to the lagoon,” I say.

Pan looks at me.

“The lagoon. Now.”

Winnie lurches upright. “Yes. He loves the lagoon and the lagoon loves Vane. You said it yourself, Pan, the waters can be healing.”

“Yes but they can be fickle too. Ask the twins.”

Bash and I shrug. “At this point, it’s worth the risk, isn’t it?” Bash says.

Pan sits back on his butt and drapes his arm over his upturned knee, thinking.

He must know we’re running out of options.

But he’s always been wary of the lagoon.

“Fine.” Pan grumbles. “Get him up again.”

This time, Bash and I each take one of Vane’s arms and hook them around our shoulders. He’s completely out now and there’s no helping us so his legs drag as we make our way out of the house and through the woods and down the dirt path.

Rain starts to spit from the sky and by the time we get Vane down to the beach, thick, fat drops are falling from dark, swirling clouds.

It’s almost like the island is matching our somber mood.

When we reach the water’s edge, Bash and I move to drag him in, but Darling stops us.

“I’ll take him,” she says and when I glance at her over my shoulder, darkness is writhing around her eyes, just itching to take over.

“Darling,” Pan says, “I don’t think that’s such a—”

“I’ll take him, Pan. It has to be me.”

There is new determination in her voice. She’s not just our naughty, bold Darling. She’s something else now, something that does not back down even when standing against Peter Pan.

“All right.” Pan finally relents and steps back. “We’ll be right here if you need us.”

She comes in close to me and wiggles in under Vane’s arm, taking his weight.

Despite the fact he’s like twice her size, she barely droops beneath the new burden.

Bash unhooks Vane’s arm from around his shoulder and says, “You good, Darling?”

“I’m good.” She keeps her arm hooked around Vane’s waist and drags him into the water.





26





ROC


I don’t like underestimating people and I suspect I’ve underestimated far too many since landing on Neverland.

I underestimated Peter Pan and Vane and the new Darling.

James is still up in the air.

He’s pacing the barroom, his right hand clamped over his left wrist behind his back, his hook sticking out behind him.

In almost every room, there is a worn path on the hardwood floor where the varnish has worn off. The Captain likes to pace, it would seem.

I crack a peanut shell and pop the innards into my mouth. “Will you sit down?”

“I don’t think when I’m sitting.”

“I can’t think when you’re pacing.”

He stops in the middle of the room and furrows his brow over his green eyes. “What do you have to think about?”

“Strategy, Captain. Because we need one. Like now.”

On a breath, he spins and resumes his course. “You said the Remaldi royals were working with the fae queen? So we need to pick a side—”

“I am never on a side.” I pop another peanut into my mouth and crunch it between my molars. “There is only my side.”

He scoffs at me and waves his hook in the air. “You’re ridiculous and you’re not helping.”

“Mmm well, you’re wasting time. Any minute Holt will come knocking on your door, maybe even with the fae queen in tow, and so you’ll have to know what you plan to say to them. The fae queen will eventually want you dead. Or subservient and while I think you’d wear submission quite well” —the glare he shoots me could roast a chicken— “I suspect being the fae queen’s puppet will not. And Holt will just want to use you and your men as cannon fodder, since the Darling took out several of his.”

I drop the cracked shells of several peanuts into an empty glass on the bartop, then dust off my pants. “Tell me, Captain, what is your preferred outcome?”