Unhooked(87)

“No,” I say, covering him with my own body, as he once protected me. I steel myself for what is coming. For the terrible shattering pain that is sure to be my end.

But a screeching wail echoes in the air, and that blow never comes.

I look up, squinting against the brightness of the Queen’s glow, and I see what has caused that terrible noise—Olivia is behind the Queen. Her hair is a tangled mass around the blank fury in her face.

“Olivia?” I whisper.

She turns to me, but she doesn’t see me. Her gaze is glassy and unknowing. With an almost hysterical laugh, she pulls the dagger from the Queen—Pan’s dagger. It gleams dark silver in the Queen’s light, tipped with the Queen’s own blackish blood.

The Queen stumbles, her light wavering, her skin crawling with the dark lines of her unmaking. “No,” she screeches, clutching at herself. Pain contorts her beautiful face as she turns on Olivia. A dangerous current crackles through the air in the wake of her fury and pain.

With a motion as quick and deadly as a striking snake, the Queen takes Olivia by the throat, lifting her until her feet dangle in the air. Black lines creep across Olivia’s skin from beneath the Queen’s hand as Olivia writhes and struggles, her eyes wide with fear. The black lines continue to craw across her skin—up over her face, down her chest, creeping across the soft skin of her arms, until Olivia stops struggling and goes still.

“No!” I scream, torn between protecting Rowan and helping my friend. Olivia looks up at me, her eyes clear again, and they are filled with pain and confusion.

Before I can choose, I hear the rustling call of the Dark Ones. They begin to creep out from beneath the dead and brittle plants and begin to gather, swirling, marching themselves around us until they surround the Queen. Again they pull at her, but this time, she stumbles beneath their fingertips, releasing Olivia, who crumples to the floor.

The Queen falls to her knees, the dark blood still spreading from the wound Pan’s dagger made in her back—the wound Olivia gave her. The Dark Ones continue to swirl, pulling at the Queen, until they cover her completely. And as she disappears beneath them, she shrieks again, an earsplitting wail that causes the caverns around us to shake and tremble.

Huge chunks of the crystalline ceiling tumble down, crashing with violent explosions to the ground below. The world is quaking, rumbling, and alive by the time the dark wisps form themselves into the shapes of monsters and an army of living shadow stands before me.

The scuttling wind spins faster now, whirling violently in that familiar rustling, but in that rustling, I hear someone speaking to me.

“Please!” I scream, trying to block the sound. I’m not sure what I’m even asking for, but I sob out the word again and again as the Dark Ones swirl. Telling me their secrets, whispering my own truths back to me.

“Please,” I continue to repeat. But my voice is now a feeble whisper, begging for things I don’t understand, and then the darkness overwhelms me and I am tossed back—and the voice whispers to me again.

But it’s not a single voice. No, this time the voice is a thousand dark voices, singing to me and urging me. And all at once, I’m back in those dark woods of my childhood, the coolness of the night calling to me. The voices calling to me. The trees stretching their fingers wide toward the sky, caging the stars in their hands. Creaking and moaning in the rushing air, like the trees are translating the wind.

I am immersed in too-familiar images. And I remember everything then—the strange pull I felt as the voice called to me. The oddest feeling that I needed to go to them, to be with them. Again. For it felt so familiar, that wanting, that calling. So I followed the voice, away from the lights of our house. Away from the safety of my mother. Into the darkness, where the forest smelled of damp leaves, and the night spoke in a language I could almost understand.

It wanted me, I realize, but not to kill me. There was nothing frightening or unsettling about the voices I heard in the forest of my childhood. Nothing terrible about the thick and living darkness that brushed against me. It wanted me because I was part of it. It wasn’t the darkness that hurt me that night. It was everything that came after.

Everything I forgot.

The Dark Ones might have been hunting me then. They were definitely hunting me in my own world and here in Neverland, but now I understand they didn’t want to harm me. They wanted to show me what I was—the heir of my father. The heir of both Dark and Light, perfectly balanced. Just like this world should be.

All at once, the swirling darkness spins around me, excited that I’ve understood them. Joyful their message is clear. Welcoming. Like every soft summer night I’ve spent sleeping under stars without my mom knowing.

When I went running into the woods that night, it was because this world called to me, pulled me. That was why my mom embedded the rune into my arm. To keep me hidden and also to stop me from realizing what I was. This is the truth the Dark Ones give me.

You belong to us, they croon. You can save us and reclaim the world for our King. For our kind.

Neverland is quiet beneath us. It no longer breathes. Its heart no longer beats. The largest of the Dark Ones moves toward me, and even though I no longer sense it as a threat, I throw myself over Rowan more securely. Its faceless head turns and, with a wave of its arm, it shows me what is happening to the world. The fortress all around us is crumbling. Pan was right: without the Queen to hold it together, Neverland is breaking apart.