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“It’s fine. I know Peter’s absence is weighing on you. Do you want to talk about it?” She took a swig from the flask, her eyes never leaving mine. I wanted to tell her I was beginning to think I was a failure. I’d spent years of my life planning. I’d traveled between realms for this, and I was losing in the last leg of the race. It was enough to drive me mad.
“There’s nothing to talk about. We’re on the cusp. I feel it. We’ll find him soon.” I spoke the lie so eloquently. I couldn’t let her faith in me waver. She was starting to doubt me. It was clear. That’s why she’d started concocting a poison to finish him off. She was trying to take matters into her own hands. She’d taken measure of me and found me wanting.
“If we don’t find him today, there will be another day. Maybe tomorrow we could?—”
“Leave it be, Katherine! This isn’t any of your concern. I’ll deal with Pan on my own. Give me some damn space, woman.” The moment the words left my lips, regret welled up inside me. The hurt look on her face tore open my heart. My mind cycled through an assortment of apologies I could offer her when something caught my eye. A flicker of auburn in a sea of green.
“Don’t shut me out. I can?—”
“Shh.” I shoved a finger to her lips, quieting her so I could focus. There it was again. I was sure of it this time. I broke out into a dead run, chasing after my destiny. I heard my men calling after me, but they were merely an afterthought. I had him within my sights, but I wasn’t about to let him slip through my fingers.
I barreled back through the forest, flashes of auburn luring me on, but I made no gains on him. My heart pounded in my chest, and my lungs burned, but my legs churned on. While my body toiled, my mind was my enemy. Flashbacks from the last time I thought I had Pan within my grasp at Mag Mel plagued me. Had my mind conjured yet another vision of Peter out of desperation? Was I truly going mad?
Just when I was fully convinced that I was merely chasing ghosts, I skidded to a halt in a clearing. There, crouched on an outcropping of rocks, was Peter Pan.
My breath came in ragged pants as I stared in disbelief. “Pan!”
The boy whirled on me, squinting in the late afternoon sun. The flicker of his pixie circling his head.
“Do I know you?”
I stood there, glaring at the boy who’d been at the center of my world for far too long. My body locked in place as a wave of emotions crashed into me. Rage was something I knew all too well, but there was more to it. A blind sense of nostalgia. An unnatural awareness of being exactly where I belonged in the universe. Most surprising of all was disappointment. It snatched at my throat and stuck there. All these years. All this hate I’d harbored for so long toward the idea of Peter Pan and what he represented, and at the end of it all, was nothing more than a simple boy.
He flitted to the ground from his high perch like a bird, taking a step forward to get a better look at me.
“Careful with this one, Peter.” His pixie’s words of warning were in sharp contrast to the sweet, melodic sound of bells that flowed like music from her mouth. But he swatted her away dismissively.
“You look familiar. Have I bested you before?” he asked as a cocky smile cut across his face.
“There he is; there’s the conceited little bastard I know so well. Even after all these years, your mind is still as infantile as your body.”
“Right, so I did best you, and now you’re sore about it. Don’t think it’ll help much, but I’m willing to give you another go at it.”
“You really don’t remember me, do you?”
“Once I’ve bested someone, I have no need to remember them. It’s a waste of time to look backward.”
“And that is why history is doomed to repeat itself.”
“History is for old, dusty books. I only care about the next big adventure.”
“At the rate you’re going, death will be your next big adventure.”
“Are you going to talk my ear off or get on with challenging me? I haven’t got all day, old man.”
“Once upon a time, you promised me a life of fun and adventure,” I lamented. He had to remember me, or it would ruin everything. “I was the first boy you lied to.”
He scratched his head, trying to remember, but Neverland’s magic kept it just out of reach. “Now that I think about it, there have been quite a lot of boys. None of them overly memorable.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. The little fucker was testing my patience. “I know your story from the very beginning. I’m the one who helped you make the rules. You called me?—”
“Jas?” The name rolled off his tongue, a quizzical look in his eyes as he took another step closer to me. “Can’t be. You’re so…” He scrunched his nose and squinted his eyes, really looking at me for the first time. He floated off the ground until we were face to face. His pixie fluttered around us like a possessed house fly, glowing red in her irritation. My hand clutched around the dagger at my belt. I could have ended him at this very moment. But it wasn’t time, not yet. He had to know for certain. His soft, brown eyes went wide as recognition finally hit. “Oh, My Divine, how’d you get so old?”
My hand snapped up to grab for him, but he was too quick, pulling back a moment before I had him in my grasp.
“I had the privilege of getting old because I didn’t roll over and die when you abandoned me in the gutter,” I growled as I drew my cutlass.
“All this time, and you’re still sore about it? You’re the one who broke the rules.”
