Unhooked(46)

Pan takes Olivia’s hand and helps her mount the first of the large boulders so she can begin the precarious climb. When she’s well on her way, he pulls me forward. But I hesitate.

“You’re just going to leave us there without anything to defend ourselves?”

“You’ll be safer there than anywhere,” he says. “Once you’re up, I’ll retract the stones, and no one will be able to reach you.” Lifting me easily by the waist, he sets me onto the first step. Then he takes my hand in his and presses his lips to the underside of my wrist. Heat flares at the place his lips touch me. “I’ll not let him have you, Gwendolyn,” he says with a determination that has my cheeks flushing hot. “I never let him take what’s mine.”

For a moment, I don’t pull away. I feel as though all I can see is the clear blue of his eyes. For a moment, I feel that same tug toward him, that overwhelming urge to just agree with whatever he demands of me, to give him anything he wants.

But then he glances up, breaking our gaze. Without the steady intensity of his attention, I feel almost lost.

The intensity of that feeling is enough to bring me back to myself—to make me realize how quickly, how easily I fell under his thrall again. And enough to scare me.

When I turn to see what’s caught his attention, I realize Olivia has already reached the top. She’s watching us with narrowed eyes from the doorway above. From the dark look she’s giving me, she saw Pan kiss my wrist. And she’s not happy.

I pull my hand away from Pan and give him a weak smile before I turn to the steps. I’ll explain, I think as I start to climb toward Olivia. I’ll calm her down and try to get my Olivia back. She was there this afternoon, if only for a moment. I have to believe she’s in there still, somewhere behind the forgetting Neverland inspires. I have to believe I can remind her, because the longer I’m in this world, the more I see and experience, the less clearly I remember the world I came from. The more easily I feel pulled by Pan’s temptations. And the more I understand we have to find a way back soon, or we’ll never get back at all.

Once I’ve stepped into the room, the stairs retract with another thunderous grinding noise, leaving us stranded high above the growing commotion in the Great Hall. The boy had been right—the gates didn’t hold. The last step has barely retracted back into the wall before the Captain’s crew begins flooding into the Great Hall.

All of them have their blades drawn to attack. Sam is there, leading the charge. Devin wields his sword with devastating accuracy, cutting down any of Pan’s boys who dare to get in his way. Even soft-eyed Owen looks more fierce than I would’ve ever imagined he could be as he lumbers into the fray.

“You’ll never win, you know.” Olivia’s voice comes from behind me.

At first I think she’s talking about the battle below. At first I think that she knows a part of me is rooting for the Captain.

“I don’t know why he brought you here, but he doesn’t need you. And you can’t have him.” Her brows draw together, and her pale green eyes meet mine, challenging. “He’s mine,” she says sharply, as she grabs for my arm to force me to face her.

But she misses my arm and snags my bracelet instead. I feel the fragile string give way, and time goes slow and still, like my limbs are frozen and all I can do is watch helplessly as the blue-gray stones fall, ricocheting off the uneven floor.

It’s not until I hear the first of them strike the stone beneath my feet that I can make myself move. I lunge for the beads, frantic to keep them from careening out the door and down to the Great Hall, but they roll away from me, bouncing in too many different directions all at once.

“Help me,” I plead.

But this Olivia doesn’t care. This Olivia doesn’t remember my mom or our world or even our friendship. This Olivia sees me only as a threat, not as someone trying to save her. She stalks over to me, the shadow of her squared shoulders casting a pall over the ground before me. And when she speaks, her voice sounds like someone else.

“I should have known what you were up to from the beginning,” she says with a hollow viciousness that makes tears burn in my eyes. She takes another step forward and kicks some of the stones out of my reach. A couple of them clatter across the floor and out the open door. “Pan is mine. He came for me. He saved me.”

“Olivia—” I say, but my voice dies when I see her standing above me. Her eyes are wild and angry, the eyes of a stranger. Not the eyes of my friend.

“I won’t let you take him from me,” she says, and her voice is so cold, so unlike her that I don’t doubt this Olivia will keep her word.

I try to collect a few more loose stones. “I don’t want him,” I whisper, as much to myself as to her. And this time, it is not a lie. I pluck up the last of the beads that haven’t tumbled down to the Great Hall and close my hand around them, not understanding how everything could have gone so off course so quickly.

Below, Pan’s boys battle the Captain’s. Pan himself is among them, fighting with a graceful economy that none of the other boys possess. Where the other boys slash with bloodthirsty violence, Pan’s movements are frugal, elegant, even. It also helps that he’s not bound to the ground. Flying gives him the advantage of surprise and the ability to sail over a boy and cut him from behind before his victim has a chance to turn.