Page 34 of Tick Tock, Darling

Pan lowered the whip. “What?”

The door opened and a man stood in the doorway. “We’ve spotted a ship. Someone is pursuing us.”

Damn it! Alice and Darius. It had to be.

Like Caspian, they’d come for me. Crossed a portal and an ocean and were sailing straight into Pan’s trap. I pulled on the chains and got nothing but metal on raw skin.

“Distractions.” Pan looked Caspian over the way a butcher looks at a carcass. “Cut him down. He’s spent. We may have two more fresh specimens to torture.” He tilted his head. “Tie him to the bed.”

Two men rushed in and took Caspian down.

He headed over to Wendy. “You will stand guard. Don’t let them touch each other.”

Why? Did he know something I didn’t?

“Don’t worry.” Wendy’s eyes flashed back to pure black. “I won’t.”

A shudder ran through me.

Caspian was strapped to the bed. His eyes found mine and stayed there.

Say something. Please say something.

I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.

It came out with the breath. Faint stars, a whole cloud of them, drifting across that room and settling over Caspian—and one of them landed on Wendy.

I hadn’t done that. I didn’t know I could do that.

“No,” the thing whispered and the black went out of her eyes all at once.

Gray. Wendy blinked and looked at me with her own eyes, the same gray as her brother’s, and her whole face was different—younger, somehow, and frightened. “You.” Her voice came out cracked and thin, nothing like the growl. “You’re the Christmas Star.”

The thing was playing with me. What trick was it trying to play? “What are you talking about?”

“Tinker Bell,” Caspian whispered.

Everything I’d been holding onto came apart at once. My chest released, my throat went, and I was shaking so hard the chair moved under me. He was alive. He’d been so quiet hanging from the ceiling, and I’d been forced to sit here unable to do anything except watch him bleed.

A tear rolled down my cheek. “Caspian? You can…talk.”

Thank God! Something worked.

“You broke the spell. I knew you would.” His words were ragged as if it hurt to talk. His chest rose up and down.

His face was so pale. His breath so shallow. But he was still thinking of me.

“I’m so sorry for this. It’s all my fault.”

“No, it’s Pan’s. If something happens⁠—”

I didn’t want to hear it.

Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Don’t say it.

I gritted my teeth and pulled again, but the metal wouldn’t weaken. “Nothing is going to happen.”

“You don’t want to hear it,” he gasped. “But ever since the first time…” He licked his lips. “I saw you. I wanted you. Those other women were distractions so I could forget about the woman I couldn’t have. I’m not a playboy, Tinker Bell.”