our fiancée is here to see you.” Sir William folded his hands behind his back and glanced around Hook’s office, taking in the vast collection of maps the younger man had plastered across the walls. In recent weeks they had accumulated a new, sprawling cipher of lines and circles and enigmatic notations, all written in Hook’s own hand. “I wouldn’t let her see this, if I were you. She’ll be convinced you’re not well.”

“Hmm?” It was more of a grunt than a question. Hook ran his good left hand through his dark locks and skewered the page before him with his hook, dragging it heavily across the desk until the paper fell off the edge into the empty air, fluttering down to join several dozen more, scattered below.

“Your fiancée? Surely that’s clear enough. Unless you have more than the one?”

“William, by all that’s holy, what are you talking about?” Hook removed his hand from his head and glanced up from the desk in annoyance. When he did, his hair fell across his eyes, wild and unkempt.

“Sir William. Try to behave like a civilized Englishman long enough to get rid of her without scaring her to death. The Home Office doesn’t need the sort of attention that would follow if a young woman were to run screaming from the building.”

“You’re saying she’s here? Wendy Darling is here?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, yes. Who else would I be talking about?”

“But … how did she even get here?”

“Your houseboy. Said his name was Colin. He drove her in the carriage all the way from Hertfordshire. Your carriage, I presume. He’s wearing your family’s livery.”

“She brought Colin to London?” Hook’s voice remained subdued, but the undertone of amusement had disappeared. Now it was ice cold, and he slammed his hook into the desk before him, burying its tip deep in the wood as he rose to his feet.

“Not just him. She brought her two guards too. And a couple of dogs. It’s a veritable circus downstairs.”

“The dogs?” Hook asked, blinking. “She brought the dogs?”

Sir William grunted his assent. “Come to think of it, she doesn’t seem that well herself. You might be a good match for each other.”

Hook scowled. “Well, why is she here? What does she want?”

“She wouldn’t say. Says she’ll only report to you. I explained that I outrank you, but she didn’t seem to care. Said she had information you requested. Sensitive information. If you’ve gotten that girl in trouble—”

Hook waved the idea away. “Of course not. I told you, there’s nothing between us. I gave her a task to complete. But I didn’t think she’d actually do it.” His voice trailed off as he considered the possibility. “Just keep the carriage here. Find a place for them to stay tonight. All of them. I don’t want that boy on the road after dark. But bring the girl to me.”

From the moment Wendy entered Hook’s office, she was accosted by the immediate and overwhelming impression of a mind on the verge of … well, on the verge of something extraordinary. But whether that something was to be an epiphany or a collapse remained to be seen. 

The maps lining the walls now bore the calculated ravings of a man obsessed. His coat lay draped over the back of his chair, his shirt fell unbuttoned at the neck, and his hair hung loosely about his face as though he had no care for his appearance whatsoever. But his eyes … his forget-me-not eyes held the grim determination of gunpowder and steel.

“Miss Darling. Is something wrong?” He asked the question lightly, but it held a distinctly threatening undercurrent. He stood in front of the sturdy desk, leaning against it, his arms crossed over his chest. A multitude of papers lay scattered about the floor, but the desk itself was clear save for a single stack of pages. What she could see of its surface behind him was horribly disfigured, crisscrossed by deep scars, as though it had been locked in the room with a tiger.

“No. I’m perfectly fine, thank you.” But her eyes flicked involuntarily to the hook that extended from his wrist before returning to meet his gaze.

“It was suggested to me that I should clean up before inviting you in, but I was afraid it might encourage you in future unannounced visits.”

Wendy ignored the taunt and moved toward one of the maps on her left. She reached out and ran one finger over the bold, erratic lines, smudged in several places and bleeding in others, where the ink had been over-applied and had dripped down the canvas before drying.

“You’ll have to forgive my penmanship,” he growled. “It isn’t what it used to be.”

“Oh! No … that isn’t—”

“Why did you bring Colin here?”

“Excuse me?”

“Why … did … you … bring … Colin … here?” He stepped away from the desk, prowling toward her until Wendy felt compelled to back into the wall.

“He just drove the carriage.”

“He’s a boy! And you brought him here! To London! Where more boys are going missing every week! Their guardians killed in the streets! The public doesn’t know, but you do! You know the risks! And you brought him anyway!”

“They wouldn’t hurt him—”

“They wouldn’t hurt you, you mean. Or so you think. But even if you’re right, you have no idea what they would do to him!”

“I do know! Pan could have hurt him if he had wanted to. He could have taken him. But he didn’t. He took me. Colin was perfectly safe.”

“What are you talking about?”

“My report. The report I came to deliver in person, if you would stop trying to intimidate me for one second and listen. You told me to find an everlost ship, and then we could return to our platoon. Well I found one. Peter took me to it, and I know where it is.”

Excitement flashed in his eyes, followed immediately by suspicion. “Oh, Peter took you to it, did he? This I have to hear. By all means, deliver your report.”

“Are you going to stand this close to me the entire time? Have you truly lost all civility?”

“You’re not the first today to suggest that I have. And yes, I will stand where I please. The men of my unit are trained to hold their ground under gunfire, Miss Darling. Surely you can deliver a report while confronted by the open skepticism of a superior officer.”

Wendy squared her shoulders and stared him right in the eye. “Fine. Pan appeared again at the Hertfordshire estate.” (She thought it best not to mention the tiny dragon-fairy she had used to summon him.) “I pretended to be your prisoner so he would trust me.”

“I’m taking English ladies prisoner now, am I?”

“It’s not entirely inaccurate,” Wendy shot back.

“You are in the king’s service, Miss Darling,” Hook growled. “I ordered you to stay at the estate. I did not take you prisoner. There is a significant difference between the two. If you were my prisoner, you would not be standing here in my office, having traveled to London of your own accord. But please, continue.”

“Yes, well … in any event, the ruse worked. He ‘rescued’ me and took me to his ship—”

“How did you get there?”

“He was able to carry me in his arms while he flew.” She thought it best not to mention fairy dust either, under the circumstances.

“All right. Continue.”

“He took me all the way to Dover Castle and out over the straits until we were no longer within sight of land. His ship was in the sea to the northeast.”

“That’s an exceptionally vague location, Miss Darling, considering the size of one ship as measured against the size of the ocean.”

“I’m not finished. He took me to his ship and demonstrated that it does, in fact, fly.”

The muscles of his jaw flexed at this, just once, but whether in disbelief or surprise, Wendy didn’t know.

“I asked him to take me to Dover, leaving the ship where you could find it.” And stranding it there without its magical flying thimble, she thought. But she left that bit out too.

“And what guarantee do I have that the ship hasn’t flown away?” Hook demanded.

“They’re waiting for me to return,” she said, raising her chin and holding his gaze. It was not entirely true, but it was close enough.

Hook just stood there, watching her.

“It’s there, I tell you!” she insisted. “Just east of the castle, and just far enough away as to be out of sight of land. Send a ship. You’ll find them.”

He stared at her a moment longer, then strode to the door, finally giving her room to breathe.

“Runner!” he shouted into the hallway. “I need a runner!” In moments, Wendy heard racing footsteps and then a reply, barked out between excited breaths.

“Yessir!”

“Find me Sir William at once.”

“Is there a message, sir?”

“No message. Just tell him I need him immediately. No matter what he’s doing. I don’t care if he’s three bites into a partridge. Now. Understood?”

“Yessir!”

The boy raced off again, and Hook closed the door.

“Well then,” Wendy said, “I’ve done as you asked. I’d prefer to return to Dover as soon as possible, but if transportation can’t be arranged until morning, I’d certainly understand. Either way, we can be ready to leave as soon as needed.”

“The only place you’re going is back to Hertfordshire.” He didn’t even look at her when he said it, staring instead at a relatively unaltered map of the southeastern coast of England on the wall.

“What?”

“You heard me. If we find the ship where you say it is, I’ll consider sending you back to your post once the everlost threat has been eliminated. I won’t send a woman to a massacre.”

“Massacre?” Wendy echoed.

“What did you think, Miss Darling? That I would invite them to a tea party? We … are … at … war. We’ll take one or two as our prisoners, if we can, for interrogation. The rest will die.”

“But that’s impossible,” Wendy protested. “We don’t even know how to kill them.”

“You don’t know how to kill them. That information is classified.”

A memory flashed before her eyes: Peter’s face, flushed and in pain, shouting at her in the darkness at the Hertfordshire estate. Hook is my enemy! He is death to all my kind!

But that didn’t make any sense …

“You’re lying,” she said. “If we knew how to kill them, you would have told our platoon.”

“Outlying platoons, Miss Darling, are little more than sentries. They are not meant to engage the enemy and do not, therefore, need to know our most tightly held military secrets. Do you really think you are my confidante? Do you believe I would entrust the king’s highest military secrets to you just because you came to me with some wild story about resurrection and flying ships?”

He paused and smiled at her cruelly. “Or is it perhaps on account of your beauty that you assume men will do anything to please you? You do not know everything I do, nor will I tell you my reasons for doing it. You will return to Hertfordshire and await further instructions. If all goes well, I will restore you to your post, as we agreed. But it will be at my discretion. Is that clear?”

Wendy felt a ball of cold, hard ice settle into the pit of her stomach, and her heart shivered in her chest. It was all too clear, in fact. She had just betrayed Peter and his entire crew to their mortal enemy. She had stolen their only means of escape, and then she had offered them up for slaughter.