Unhooked(67)

“That wouldn’t have stopped Pan,” I told him. “It wasn’t Fiona who finally got to me. One way or the other, I think I was always going to end up here. But I’m not sure if I can do what Fiona thinks I can,” I tell him honestly. “That thing that happened in the dungeon—it was the first time I’ve ever managed to do anything remotely Fey-like.”

“You’ll do what you can, and we’ll take our chances, because we’ve no other choice. I don’t have a ship. I don’t have a crew. . . .” he says, his voice faltering, his eyes closing against the pain of his loss.

“You loved them,” I say, seeing it so clearly in the pain written across his features.

“Aye, but I’ve killed them too. Just as he does.” He meets my eyes. With his jaw shadowed by more than a day’s growth of beard and his hair mussed and hanging idly over his forehead and his chest bare in the flickering firelight, he looks very much the pirate he claims to be.

But he also looks tired and worn from trials I can’t begin to imagine.

“If I were braver, I’d have chosen death long ago,” he tells me, a confession and explanation all at once. “In that way, Will was far stronger than I’ve ever been.” His eyes bore into me, daring me to condemn him. Or maybe asking me to forgive.

I’m not sure that I can do either.

“Weak as I may have been, I’ve tried to use my life as best I can. As long as my life can serve to protect even one lad, I can’t regret the path I’ve chosen,” he says, his words tumbling before me, like he’s trying to get everything out before he loses his nerve.

He holds himself stiff and his face purposely free of emotion as he waits for my judgment. I can sense it in the air between us—his expectation that I will turn away from him now.

But I find I can’t. I’ve only been in this world a short time, and how many of my own choices have I come to regret?

I stand slowly, careful to keep his coat pulled around me, and make my way to his side of the fire. He doesn’t so much as move or blink. He simply stands and waits. The pain and regret and dread in his eyes are so clear, it brings tears to my own.

Gently, I twine my fingers through his, feeling both the warmth of his true hand and the soft leather of the glove covering the metal one brush against my skin. Surprise lights his eyes, but he still doesn’t move. He doesn’t tighten his fingers around mine or even breathe.

I tilt my head up to him and quickly, before I can think better of it or lose my nerve, I rise up on my toes and press my lips against his. His mouth is warm and firm beneath mine but it is also immoveable.

That doesn’t matter.

This isn’t a seduction. This isn’t me throwing myself at him or trying to stoke some passion deep inside his stoic reserve. This kiss is simply a choice.

For days I have been tossed from one danger to the next. Misled, tempted, tricked. Used. For days I have not known which way to turn, what the truth was, or who to trust. But the ragged emotion in Rowan’s voice, the calm resolve and unadorned words he used to tell me his story, felt more honest and more real than anything has felt yet in this world. So I give him a single kiss, lips pressed simply against lips, with no expectation and no purpose other than to show him my choice.

I let go of his hands and look up at him. His arms are still at his sides, but I see his fists are clenched, as though in an effort not to touch me, and I can’t help but smile.





The boy was stuck in that vast landscape of wire and bone. He could not go on without his brother. But he also could not go back. Then his brother was there—just off to the left, running with his arms out. And for a moment, relief washed over the boy, because he could see the field ahead, dark and clear, and the safety of the land just beyond. . . .





Chapter 30


LATER, I SLEEP CURLED INTO Rowan for warmth, my head propped against him as he keeps watch. At some point, though, the exhaustion of the day must have overtaken him. At some point he must have fallen asleep and let the fire die, because the sound of rustling and the smell of damp leaves wake me.

When I open my eyes, Rowan’s arms are still around me, and the bulk of his body is slumped over mine as he sleeps. But the fire has gone out, and the inky darkness already surrounds us.

The damp, aged odor of the Dark Ones intensifies as they gather. I feel the wet brush of their still-ghostly bodies closing in, and I start to shake Rowan, to try to wake him, but before I can, I’m swallowed by the darkness, and I can’t hold off the images that assault me, tipping my world dangerously on its axis until I tumble again into memory.

I am back in the same forest, the cool air of the night whipping through my hair, stinging at my cheeks, and a voice whispers words I cannot understand. The forest reaching for me, urging me on. That grating rasp is everywhere, echoing around me, reminding me. The path was so clear before. The craggy fingers of the dark trees reaching for me. Pulling at me. Encouraging me. Beckoning me.

But now that I have been to the untamed wildness of Neverland, I realize the trees in those memories have always been simply trees. They are not what I truly fear, nor what I was running from—or perhaps to—that night.

Cold and dark and the forest reaching for me as I run, but I am brushing aside its spindly branches as the voices whisper.

And then the image shifts, and my mom is there, her blue-gray eyes wild as the sky before a storm. Her face this close to mine, her breath sour and hot. “You have to forget this. You cannot speak of it ever again. Not to anyone, Gwendolyn. Do you understand?”