Unhooked(51)

They are never going to know another day. They’re never going to grow up to become the men they might have been. And in this world, no one will even remember them. No one will mourn their loss. In days, or maybe even hours, no one will even remember them.

I wonder about the people they left behind. I wonder if anyone from our own world still waits for them to come home. I wonder if anyone waits for me.

Two older boys lift the first body—Owen. Grabbing him by the shoulders and feet, they unceremoniously heave his familiar freckles and ruddy hair into the pit. Then they reach for the next boy. I feared Sam on the ship, but now as I look at his broken body, I can hardly remember why.

When they lift him roughly, Sam’s arm flops like the dead weight that it is. Part of it is missing, but there is no bloodied gash like so many of the other bodies wear. Instead, like the boy who attacked me on the Captain’s ship, the lower half of his arm is simply gone, as though it cracked off along the line of his jagged tattoo. No blood. No bone. Just empty blackness where his arm was once attached.

Is this what happened to the Captain’s arm? Is this what drove him to accept the life the Dark One offered that night?

Pan is standing to my left, with Olivia tucked close to his other side. He’s watching the proceedings without any visible emotion as one body after another is lifted and tossed unceremoniously into the gaping pit. When Olivia turns and buries her tears in Pan’s shoulder, he comforts her without sparing me a glance. Ever since I plead for mercy on the Captain’s behalf, Pan has looked at me with barely concealed disappointment.

I can’t really be sorry for what I did, though. I couldn’t have watched the Captain die like that. On his ship, he told me that he’d saved me and that I owed him a debt. I consider that debt forgiven now, because Pan gave me what I asked for—he’s spared the Captain’s life. For now, at least.

But I can’t stop wondering why the Captain tried to make me believe Pan was the one who controlled the Dark Ones? After what I’d seen him do on that ship, I would have thought he’d have come up with a more believable story.

“Come, ladies.” Pan pulls Olivia closer and extends a hand to me. “Let us put this whole messy ordeal behind us, shall we?”

“I’m going to stay for a while longer,” I say, not taking his hand. My gaze is still steady on the last of the bodies.

I need time away from the chaos of the fortress. Time to mourn for the boys who died today—to witness the loss, even if no one else seems to understand the finality of it. Even though I understand that, in this world, time is probably the last thing I have.

And I need time away from Pan. One thing became painfully clear the moment Pan admitted Fiona was working for him—he does have a way to get us back. Fiona was in London, and if she’s on Pan’s side and not the Captain’s, she could take us back there. If he wanted her to.

So why doesn’t he want her to?

“Come in before dark,” he says after a beat of uneasy silence, not a request but a command. I give him a vague nod, and he takes Olivia in, leaving two of the fairy lights behind to guard me.

I stand in that pointless vigil long after the last body disappears into the gaping mouth of the trench. When my legs grow tired, I’m still not ready to face what waits for me in the fortress. I know Pan’s boys will already be pummeling one another, sating their appetites, and sleeping lazily in half-drunken stupors. I know the fortress will still be filled with the Fey, their watchful faces blank with careless indifference as they stand guard.

Sinking to the ground, I press my palms against the pulsing surface of rock to steady myself, wanting so badly to be able to go back and make different choices. To believe my mother, to leave the light burning and the window shut, to stop Olivia from coming to London. To stop any one part of this from happening. Beneath my palms, the ground grows suddenly warm, and heat licks across my skin.

And then as quickly as it flared, the heat is gone.

I pull away and stare at my hands. There’s no sign of a burn, no sign that anything at all just happened. Still, I know I didn’t imagine it, just as I’m more sure now that I didn’t imagine it at the falls with Pan—or in the tunnel, when I thought the island would bury us alive.

I stare at my palms for a long moment before I slowly lower my hands to the ground again, wondering all the while. I close my eyes and concentrate on the heartbeat of the island and—

“You play a dangerous game, Young One.”

I startle at the voice behind me and pull my hands away from the ground, tucking them into the soft folds of the tunic I’m wearing as I turn. No bright flash warned me of Fiona’s approach, but she’s there behind me, her bright hair a beacon in the dimming night.

“I’m not playing any game,” I say as I glance over my shoulder, where the chasm stands waiting. It’s not lost on me that we’re alone. The other fairy lights Pan left with me are gone.

She stalks forward, her steps as graceful as they are predatory. “Are you not?” Her voice is as menacing as a swarm of wasps. “What were you attempting, then, with your hands pressed as they were to this world?”

“Nothing,” I say, feeling immeasurably stupid for having even tried. Fiona cocks her head, expectant, clearly unwilling to let it go. “Pan told me Neverland answers those who belong here. I was just trying . . .” But it feels too ridiculous to say the words aloud.