Page 41 of Tick Tock, Darling

Peter Pan stood further down the passage, lit up, the only light in it.

I growled and my fangs came down. He was a dead man.

“Caspian, no.” Wendy put her hand on my arm. “Don’t. I love him.”

“He’s had you for years, Wendy. Look what he did to you.”

Tinker Bell stepped in front of me. Right into the space between me and him, close enough that I’d have had to move her to get past.

“I destroyed the thing inside of Wendy.” She gestured down the passage at Pan. “Don’t you think I could heal his heart as well?”

I didn’t have an answer for her.

Pan came up the passage and got down on his knees on the boards. He bowed his head. “I’m truly sorry for what I did to your sister. Just know I love her.”

I scoffed. “Love? What do you know about love?”

“I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness.” He raised his head. “But I’ll spend the rest of my days making it up to Wendy.”

Days. He had a lot of those.

I looked down at him kneeling there in his own light, whole, healed, better than he had any right to be. He’d put a whip made of his own shadow across my back. He’d put worms in Tinker Bell. He’d had my sister for years and worn her like a coat.

“No,” I said.

Wendy’s head came up.

But I ignored her and focused on Pan. “I’m not forgiving you. Not today, not here, and don’t ask me again.” I stepped past him and put my hand on my sister’s shoulder. “But she says you’ve changed, and she’s the one who paid for what you were. If she believes it, that’s her right and I’m not taking it off her.”

Pan started to speak and I stopped him.

“Hear the rest. I run cargo for Angelo Santi. I know every port on two worlds and I’ve got a ship and a long memory.” I looked down at him. “You hurt her again and there won’t be anywhere on either side of that portal I can’t get to you. I’ll take my time. You’ll have earned it.”

He held my eyes. “Understood.”

Wendy squeezed my hand. “Thank you.”

I smiled at her. “You know I can’t deny you anything. You’re my twin.”

She tilted her head toward Tinker Bell. “I think there’s someone else you’ll do anything for.”

I didn’t answer that.

Wendy laughed. My sister, laughing at me in a passageway in the Elder Dimension, the way she used to when we were kids and she’d caught me at something.

“Oh,” she said. “Look at your face.”

“Don’t.”

“I’ve never seen your face do that.”

Tinker Bell was watching us from a few feet off with her arms crossed and her chin up, and she’d heard every word of it.

Let her.

Chapter Fifteen

Tinker Bell