“Girl,” says Peter, floating over me as I lie on the dock, sunning.
I peer up at him through one eye.
The width of his shoulders takes up half my view of the sky, blocking two of the suns. I can’t imagine that he’s actually getting bigger in real life because he drinks from the fountain every few days, but still to me, he looks to have grown.
Maybe just in my mind’s eye.
A couple of weeks have passed since Jamison definitively categorised our relationship as “friends,” and they’ve both dragged and slipped by.
Sort of how it feels to be pulled under a wave and tossed around.
Once you get past the feeling that you can’t breathe and maybe you’re dying, the rolling about’s not so bad. Almost like a ride.
Peter Pan is a ride and a half and the most beautiful distraction from the ache in my chest that I could have ever daydreamed.
He took me to Aqueria the other day. I met the Poseidon, who Peter told me isn’t a god but is king of the sea. Not just this one but all the seas.
He was quite firm, but I get the feeling that were you to be on his good side, he might be quite nice. I suspect I’m not on his good side though. I don’t think the mermaids care for me much, not now that most of Peter’s attention is on me.
Still, he said he wanted me to meet them. Actually, he said he wanted them to meet me.
He wasn’t unkind, the king, just stern. Bowed his head in a little nod and spoke mostly in hushed tones to Peter.
It was still impossibly beautiful though; Aqueria is beyond imagination. An underwater city and palace that’s made of coral and limestone and sandstone, with underwater plants you’ve never seen before, crystals I’ve never heard of, and streams of light pouring through windows that never close, because why would they? We’re so far down that it doesn’t make sense for the light to still reach, but it does, and I suppose it makes sense here, because magic.
Peter gave me this little thing that you hold in your mouth. It’s almost like a tiny harmonica, and it lets you breathe underwater.
Speaking’s still hard. Kissing harder still.
But breathing is easy.
We also went back to La Vie En Grande. We found buried treasure on an island off the coast of the mainland. We saved a baby whale that was beached on the shore of Buccaneers Cove.
He taught me how to paint the sky.
The days have been good, how I think I imagined they’d be in Neverland all along. I make a habit of going to the cloud every day to drop off the parts of the day that I don’t think I should like to remember. I drop off my thoughts of the medicine now—it’s just medicine after all. I drop off the thoughts about where Peter goes when he thinks I’m sleeping or when I’m with Rune or Rye. I have my own friends; why shouldn’t he?
There are a few specific things I feel it would be wiser for me to keep so I don’t fall back into bad habits with pirates, but I definitely did drop off that terrible thought Rye seeded in me that there are different kinds of fate, and I’m glad I did too. That kept me up at night before I put it away—wondering what he meant, what it might mean—and now that it’s sitting on a shelf in the clouds, when I think of it (and I hardly ever do), I don’t even know what the fuss in my head was about. Different kinds of fate? Who cares? I don’t even know what that means. Nothing about a mountain and a breeze whistles through my mind, and there’s no snow on our noses. The only fate I’ve ever heard of is the kind about Peter and I, that he’d come for me, and he has.
He floats in front of me now, waiting for my attention.
“Yes, Peter?”
“There is a ball tonight.”
I sit up. “A ball?”
He floats over to land on one of the dock’s wooden columns. He balances on one foot. “Yeah. Do you know what balls are?”
I cross my arms. “Yes.”
“Not a throwing ball, a—”
“I know what balls are, Peter,” I interrupt.
He nods. “And dates? Do you know about them?”
I swallow, sitting up straighter. “Do you know about dates?”
“Course I do.” He rolls his eyes, annoyed. “You’re mine to this.”
I stand up. “When is it?”
“Soon.” He shrugs.
“Soon as in, in a few days?”
Peter shakes his head like I’m the silly one. “Soon like now.” He jumps off the column to the dock, hands on his hips. “Go get dressed.” He walks back towards the tree house.
“Into what?” I call after him.
He ignores me. “And be quick about it. You’re looking a bit heavy.”
My mouth falls open at his rudeness.
“I can tell you’ve got things on your mind.” He tells me with a shrug. “We’ll drop them off on the way.”
I didn’t drop them off.
It’s Jamison. That’s what’s heavy on me—what I feel for him.
I see it every time I stand in front of the mirror in the baggage claim.
It’s not even a bag; it’s a yoke around my neck.
I stare at it, feel it weighing down on my shoulders, imagine how much nicer it would feel, how much easier my days would seem if I were to take this particular thought off—but like every time lately when I’ve stood here and seen it, I don’t.
I stare at my reflection. I’m in a gown Rune made for me.
“She’s really annoying, that fairy, but she’s good at making you those dresses” is what Peter said before Rune kicked him in the temple and he yelled “ow” and said sorry.
I straighten my dress out. As best as I can tell, it’s made entirely out of flowers and vines. They climb up one shoulder and cascade into a giant skirt at the back, and while it is rather covered, it’s still rather breezy.
I do look lovely, though it looks strange in my reflection when paired with the yoke. At least no one can see it but me.
I head back out to the cloud where Peter’s waiting, and I stare over at him.
Light linen trousers (clean ones) and a white linen shirt that was ironed when we left the house but is all scrunched up again, and I think he did it on purpose.
No shoes, because he insisted he would “rather die” and “what do we need shoes for anyway? We fly everywhere.” He has a point, I suppose.
“All dropped off?” John says with a smile as he casts off into another cloud.
“Yes.” I flash him a liar’s smile.
I didn’t. And I think he can tell.
Peter can’t. He doesn’t have the kind of eyes that could see the true weight another person is carrying. But John does.
He knows I didn’t.
I couldn’t.
It felt like a betrayal for some reason.
Jamison hasn’t done anything wrong. All he’s said is he wants to be my friend, and I’d wash away my feelings for him because of it?
How childish.
I’ll let it run its course, like a fever. And one day, the fever will break, and I will wake up cured.
I don’t need the island magic.
I am my own island magic.
“Come.” Peter flies over to me, taking my hand. “It’s a long flight to Alabaster Island.”
He’s not taken me here before. We’ve been near it but not on it. Alabaster Island is the main island. It’s big. More of a city than a small seaside village like we have on Neverland.
But it’s a funny kind of city. Like a melting pot. Not of different cultures but of different times. It could as easily be ancient Egypt as it could be the year 2000.
“Whose ball is it?” I ask Peter as we fly over the city, swerving through the streets.
Peter shrugs. “Just this man’s.”
“Just this man’s?” I repeat, staring back at him, but he doesn’t notice and keeps flying towards a castle that’s nestled up against the mountains.
Alabaster Island mostly looks like Cape Breton Island. Dramatic and beautiful and calm and fascinating but not in a way that makes you overly eager to discover it. There’s no great urgency to peer around every corner, but a nice walk to a place you don’t yet know about sounds like a lovely idea.
We land on a balcony, and it’s quite the entrance. Not because we crash or anything, but it appears Peter and I are the only two to have arrived by flight.
I’m immediately relieved to see Rye and fractionally disheartened that Calla’s right there beside him.
Peter spots her quickly and glides over to her. He puts his hands on her waist, smiles at her like I wish he wouldn’t.*
She looks beautiful—much how you’d expect. Her dress is made from some kind of animal skin, fur. It’s got no sleeves and ties off at her neck like a halter.
She looks sexy in a way that makes me in my flowers feel like a stupid schoolgirl.
Rye touches a bud on my dress. “This is incredible.”
I flash him a smile. “Rune.”
He nods and I take his wrist, feeling grateful for him.
“I didn’t know you’d be here. I’m so glad you are.” I look around, and it’s decorated like Christmas. “What is this?”
He stares up at the ceiling that’s glistening away like real stars. “The hibernal solstice.”
“How is that possible?” I give him a look. “There are four suns here.”
Rye laughs. “It was Day’s favourite holiday on Constanopia.”
“Day?” I frown, thinking on the name. It sounds familiar.
I think I know about a Day in a part of my brain I haven’t used in a while, and I flick through the pages of my memory, looking for the thought I know is in there about who this Day man might be, when a hand slips around my waist.
I know whose it is immediately—there’s no question. Only one person takes me by the waist these days, and only one person does it with something akin to force. Peter pulls me back tight against him, and he doesn’t notice when his grip knocks off one of my flowers. It tumbles down the rest of my dress, and I watch it skitter across the floor, landing at the feet of a man whose face I can’t see but whose back I should know.
He stares at the flower for a moment before looking back over his shoulder, and our eyes catch like my heart does in my throat at the sight of him.
I tell myself to smile at him—quickly! Like a friend would!—but I don’t, and he swallows heavy, crouches down, picks up the flower, and then looks the other way.
Peter digs a finger under my rib to get my attention, and I spin around to him, smiling with the face I’ve practiced a thousand times for when he catches me thinking about the other.
But it’s not just Peter. It’s another man also.
Tall, broad, dark skinned, regal looking. He stares at Peter with a heavy brow.
“The Never Prince.”
Peter nods at him curtly. “Old Man.”
The man doesn’t look too old, really. Not much past middle-aged.
He flicks Peter an unimpressed look. “It takes one to know one,” he says before he smiles at Rye and Calla, calling them each by name. And then his eyes land on me. “And who’s this?”
Rye gently pushes me towards him, and Peter’s grip on me tightens, but I don’t think anyone can see it.
“Lady Never,” Rye tells him.
And the man’s eyebrows go up, intrigued. “Ah.” He nods once. “He’s taken a lady.”
I give him a wry look. “I’m afraid he’s taken many.”
That delights him. He chuckles as he extends his hand. “I’m Day.”
I shake it. “Daphne.”
“Daphne.” He nods once in a knowing way, and I feel myself frown a little. He notices, I think, because he smiles quickly and gestures to the room around us. “Do enjoy. And welcome! I’m very glad you’ve arrived.” And then he walks away.
“Girl.” Peter tugs at my wrist, turning me around to face him. “Calla says there are mermaids at the dock. Should we go and say hello?”
I give him an uncomfortable smile. “The mermaids don’t much care for me.”
“She’s right.” Calla shrugs, indifferent. “They don’t.”
Peter gives her a sharp look. “Why not?”
Calla shrugs again, this time like she’s innocent, but I think I see it skitter across her face that she’s worried that he’s cross at her.
Peter turns back to me and gives me a valiant look. “I’ll get to the bottom of this.”
“You don’t have to!” I tell him, but he’s already marching off. “Peter, it’s fine,” I call to him.
He ignores me and instead calls back, “Calla, come.”
She walks after him, her face all pinched with worry, and I feel sorry for her how I used to feel sorry for me.
Rye sighs. “I need a drink.” He nods his head towards a table filled with them.
“Did you bring a date?” I ask him with a light smile.
“No.” He shakes his head. “The person I wanted to come with came with someone else.”
“Ah.” My eyes fall to the drink he just handed me.
He stares over at me and says nothing, and I don’t know what to do so I do nothing.
“That’s my friend over there.” He points to a boy who looks about our age. “I’m going to say hi.”
I nod.
“You’ll be okay?”
I nod again.
Our eyes catch, and his face looks serious—angry, almost?—and then he moves away.
I throw back my drink and pluck another before moving out onto the balcony.
I don’t need some air—my entire life is air nowadays—but it feels more acceptable to be on a balcony by yourself. As though I’m perhaps being decidedly pensive, not just accidentally alone.
The air smells different here. On Neverland, it’s sweet. Like dew on fruit. Here it’s like pine and maple pecans.
And then a flower appears in front of me, offered on the hand I like best in the world. I know it before I even look up to see that it’s him. I know his hands impossibly well because it’s always felt so scandalous to think of his face when I’m lying next to Peter, but to think of Jamison’s hands? What’s in a hand? Nothing at all. Least of all me these days.
“I believe this belongs t’ ye,” he says, offering it to me.
“Keep it,” I tell him, flashing him a smile that I hope looks less threadbare than it feels on my mouth. “One’s grown in its place already.”
“Ah,” he concedes. “Ye love an enchanted dress, dïnnae ye?”
I give him a demure shrug. “I wear what’s given to me.”
Jamison’s eyes fall down me before they drag back up to meet mine. “This dress—”
I swallow, my eyebrows bending in the middle. “You don’t care for it?”
“Aye, sure, I care for it.” He gives me a playful look. “That fairy missed her wee calling there.”
I breathe out a small laugh. “I suppose she has.”
Jem holds the flower out to me again. “Put it on me.” He taps the lapel on his jacket.
I take a breath, but it’s shallow because I tend to lose mine when he’s around me.
I find the buttonhole in his jacket and poke the flower through it. I’m sure it’s going to fall immediately, but then quite on its own and rather magically, a little stem grows and fastens itself onto him.
He stares at it, confounded. “Did ye do that?”
I shake my head, and he looks up at me.
“Magic,” he says, staring at me.
I say nothing and drop my eyes but give him a smile before I turn back towards the balcony. I lean over it, looking down, and I hope he’ll stand next to me.
I don’t want to not be beside him. I’m just afraid he’ll see something in my eyes that tells him what I should have just put away. How stupid of me to hold on to it. Let it run its course? Pish. Give me the aspirin.
He sidles up next to me, arms on the balcony, leaning over it. His shoulders feel like a shield even though they aren’t around me.
“Y’are here wi’ Peter,” he says.
“Yes,” I say as I stare at Peter down on the dock with another girl. I hope Hook doesn’t notice; he will if I keep staring at them, so I look up at him instead. “Who are you here with?”
He gives me a long look, and I realise that’s a question I probably don’t really want answered. Morrigan, I think he’s about to say, but he flicks me a little look.
“Me marm.”
“Oh.” I laugh once, and I hope it doesn’t sound relieved. I give him a little shrug. “Most beautiful woman here then.”
He tilts his head in consideration. His mouth pulls, and he stares right at me. “Sure, I dïnnae ken if I agree.”
And somewhere far away, that bag I threw to the floor rattles around, begging to be remembered, but I can’t hear it, and even though it excites me, it incenses me also that he’d say that to me after what he’s put me through.
Of course, he doesn’t know he’s put me through anything, but it’s my right as a woman to hold him in contempt for that which he’s done without his knowledge. Of that I feel quite sure in this moment.
I square my shoulders and stare over at him coolly. “Friends don’t say things like that to one another.”
He swallows and clears his throat. “No.” He clears his throat again. “I s’pose they dïnnae.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “What, then, are you doing?”
Jamison presses his lips together, like there’s something he’d like to say but he’s not saying it.
“Old habits” is what he tells me.
Something about that deflates me, flattens me all the way back down to a pancake.
Old habits. That’s all I am.
“How’s the girl from your ship?” I ask him with a smile that tries its best to be bright, but it’s wilting.
Jamison juts his chin out and shakes his head, disinterested by the question. “I’ve no’ seen her since.”
“Ah.” I nod, clearing my throat as I glance away. “She sounds special.”
My voice is dripping with sarcasm, but it’s all I could muster that wouldn’t lead to tears. Something about that makes it worse.
He shrugs and tosses back his whole drink. Rum. Full glass. Neat.
“A wee bit heavy-handed coming from the girl whose boyfriend is a womanising toddler.”
I roll my eyes at him and give him a dark look. “There you go again, calling me a girl.”
“And there ye go, being one,” he shoots back, and it crushes me.
“Well then.” I lift my shoulders like his words mean nothing to me, like that yoke around my neck I feel all the time whether I’m with him or not isn’t now just choking the life out of me. I flash him a quick smile. “Don’t let me keep you. So many people here…so many women”—I give him a pointed look—“for you to choose from.”
“Aye.” He nods once. “Dïnnae mind if I do.”
He saunters away and I stare after him. My neck is prickly, and my eyes are burning, and I feel like I’m drowning, so I look around quickly for something to grab on to, but everyone I know has left me.
Without the distraction of Peter immediately in front of me, that thing that I should have dropped off that lives inside my rib cage—the thing that’s like a wild animal trapped inside my chest—it starts to howl again. Trying to claw its way out and find a way to tell Jamison what I didn’t get a chance to the day on his boat.
When Peter’s with me, it feels embarrassing and like a thought I used to think about. Something I could have done in another life, but I don’t have that life anymore. Which is true, I suppose. I suppose that I don’t, but it feels less stupid when I’m alone, the idea of telling him. When I’m alone, I can convince myself it might be something Jamison would like to hear.
Maybe he’d like to hear it?
That I think of him, of his hands to fall asleep. And something more about snow?
Maybe he knows about what the snow means.
I walk back inside to find him.
The ballroom is full of people, and it’s dark, even though it’s not entirely dark outside.
And right as I’m about to round a corner, I hear his voice.
“This dress,” he says to someone who isn’t me, and my heart crashes like a ship sailing right into a cliff.
“Do you like it?” the girl says. She sounds pleased.
“Aye,” he says back.
They can’t see me.
I lean against the wall that’s hiding me and listen with a macabre sort of hunger.
“Who was that you were with before?” she asks.
“Just some wee girl from my island,” Hook says.
I swallow heavily and wipe my nose.
“You seemed to be fighting with her?” the girl inquires.
“You ken how some people just rub ye the wrong way?”
“Yes.”
He pauses and it hangs there. “She rubs me the worst.”
The girl snorts a laugh at what he just said.
“No’ like that,” Hook says wryly before his voice changes to serious. “Never like that.”
Piano.
That’s enough soul crushing for me this evening, I decide, and I push off from the wall as quick as I can.
My chest is going tight. I think I’m going to be sick.
Air.
I need air.
Peter Pan has ruined me. Once upon a time, if my heart was breaking, I didn’t need air; I needed earth. Rocks. Stones. Soil composition. Dirt under my nails or my eye in a microscope, those were the things that would have made me feel better before, and now, it’s air.
As though how I feel about Jamison is choking it all from my body.
I don’t mean to, but I gasp a little once I’m outside.
I lean over the balcony and gulp it back.
“You’re not enjoying yourself,” says the deep, warm voice of Day.
I look back at him and smile as much as I can muster. “Don’t take it personally.”
“Oh, I’d never.” He shakes his head. “This place has a way of…undoing people.”
I nod once. “Consider me undone.”
“Is it Pan who’s upset you?”
There’s something so dignified about him that I find myself folding my hands in front of myself and squaring my shoulders, and that’s when I place him.
Day.
The founder.
“Do you know with whom you’re here?” he asks gently.
“I do know.” I nod. “And just now, I’ve placed you also.”
He gives me a small smile before his head falls to the side curiously. “Do you really know who he is?”
I frown at him, trying to remember.
This is a bag I put away, I think. Something I’ve tried very, very hard to forget.
Think, Daphne, think.
What was in the bag? And why would it be relevant to founders? What was in that bag? A brown leather suitcase. Tattered with patches. What was in it?
Oh.
Fuck.
It drops like a penny in my mind. A stone on a tin roof. A loud clang that sort of jolts me.
Peter’s parents were founders.
Day flicks me a little look. “There it is.”
I shake my head at him. “That’s not a good one for me to remember.”
“I understand,” he says sagely. “But you should remember who you are with.”
I roll my eyes a little. “I know who I am with.”
He gives me a tall look.
“Some of him is Vee,” I remind him. “Some of him is good.”
“And some,” he says, “is pure evil.”
I sigh. “Do you not think that the sum total of our existence must amount to more than who our parents were?” I fold my arms over my chest. “Or are.”
I tack that on at the end because the insinuation of otherwise feels oddly personal.
Day gives me a peculiar smile that seems loaded with things I don’t know about.
“Family weighs much on this island,” he tells me right as Itheelia drifts over to us.
“I see you’ve met the Never Girl.” She gives me a tight smile.
“Indeed.” Day nods. “She’s quite charming.”
“So I’ve heard,” Itheelia says as she eyes me, and I get the feeling that I’m about to be in trouble.
Day’s face grows a bit more serious as he gives Itheelia a look. “We must speak before you leave.”
She frowns. “Of what?”
Day’s eyes flicker around the room before he speaks quietly. “Terrible stories have been reaching my shores.”
She looks at him impatiently. “They could be old.”
“There have been sightings.” Day gives her an ominous look. “A black flag flying.”
Itheelia sighs. “But has anything actually been corroborated?”
“No.” Day gives her a sharp look. “And we’d best hope for it to stay that way.”
Itheelia’s mouth purses. “I’ll find you later.”
Day nods at her and then turns back to me, squeezing my arm. “Chin up.”
I stare over at Itheelia, trying not to frown but still frowning a bit. “What was that about?”
She shakes her head. “None of your concern.” She peers around us, making sure no one around us can hear us before her eyes settle on me. “What is your concern is why are you here?”
I frown at her rudeness. “I was invited.”
“I meant with him.” She gives me a look.
I give her a long, measured look. “Itheelia, your son has made very clear his feelings for me.”
“Yes.” She nods once, giving me an exasperated look. “I do agree.”
I don’t know what she’s doing? Either she doesn’t know or she’s just being unkind to me. It could be either. There’s an edge to Itheelia. You wouldn’t like to cross her. If she thinks I’ve hurt her son, if she thinks I’ve wronged him, she could just be toying with me.
I breathe out and stare over at her. “He wants only to be my friend.”
His mother rolls her eyes, and I shake my head at her, insistent.
“Itheelia, he told me—to my face!”
“Told you what?” she asks, brows low.
“That that’s all he wants from me! And”—I pause for dramatic effect and hope he gets in trouble from her for this part in particular—“that I bring out the worst in him, and—”
She interrupts me. “So you’re here with the other?”
I stare over at her. “What would you have me do?”
“Listen,” she says, eyes wide and speaking with her hands, “with more than your ears.”
I let out a sigh and shake my head at her. “Itheelia, I don’t know what that means.”
“Yes, you do.” She stares at me sternly. “The universe is alive, and she is speaking all the time.”
I keep shaking my head. “To whom?”
Her head rolls back, exasperated. “To you! I know you know.”
I blink twice. “Know what?”
She grabs me by the wrist and pulls me farther away from the party. “What did the wind say to you on the mountain that day?”
“What day?” I blink at her. “The wind doesn’t speak to me.”
Does it? Did it?
She stares at me, defiant and nodding. How sure she is makes me wonder.
Is that what’s in the leather pouch?
“No.” I shake my head, but I’m less sure. “It never has.”
“It did when you were with Jam.” She folds her arms over her chest, searching my face. “What do you remember about that day on the mountain with my son?”
“Nothing, really. Nothing happened.” I shrug. “We came and I met you. That’s all it was. There was no more.” Something blows around in the back of my mind, and I squint as I try to think of it. Except I think there was more.
“Oh.” She nods once as she looks me up and down. “You put it away.”
My chin drops to my chest, and I feel like I could cry. “Not everything.”
“What, just enough to hate him?” she asks, eyebrows up, and I shake my head defensively.
“I don’t hate him.”
“Not yet,” she tells me. “But spoiled lo—”
“Don’t say it.” I glare at her, shaking my head. “Don’t say that word.”
“Hey,” Peter says, grabbing me from behind. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I say, staring at Itheelia, my eyes begging her to say nothing.
Peter nods his chin over at her. “Witch.”
“Pan.” She gives him a curt smile.
Peter spins me around to face him. “Girl, is she bothering you?”
I shake my head. “I’m fine.”
Peter searches over my face, and he goes serious as he does sometimes and almost exclusively about me. He touches my face with his thumb, presses into my cheek a tear that I didn’t know was there.
“Are you sure?” He frowns, glaring up at Itheelia.
I nod quickly, always wanting Peter at his most defused self.
“She’s my friend,” I tell him, even though I’m not really sure she is.
“Oh. All right then.” Peter shrugs, indifferent but relaxing. “Itheelia.” He nods.
She nods back. “Peter.”
He hooks his arm around my neck and pulls me away from her. “Let’s go now anyway.” He nods his head in the other direction. “There’s a mountain peak I want to show you.”
And thank goodness, because I want to be shown a mountain peak. I want to be distracted—desperately—from whatever it was she was trying to make me remember.
It’s a short flight up there, and it’s freezing once we land, but it’s worth it because it’s beautiful. That and I have a feeling that I’m ever so fond of the cold? What a strange thing to have an affinity for. Is there something cold in that pouch? I wonder as a few snowflakes rustle by my ear, but I brush them away because they’re distracting me from what I’m trying to remember. Except do I even want to remember, I wonder now that I’m with Peter. To what end does remembering take me to?
There’s a little clearing on the tippiest-top of the mountain the castle’s nestled up against, and you can see as far as the eye will let you.
Peter stands behind me, ducks, then rests his head on my shoulder. He points to a distant light. “See that?”
I nod.
“That’s our island.”
I turn my head to look at him, and our noses brush, and through me cracks an interesting whip. Some sort of strangled wistfulness for Jamison, some kind of relief and fragile hope that I’ve Peter here all the same. “Our?”
He gives me a half smile. “My.”
I look away, rolling my eyes, but I don’t move away from him. A bit because I’m cold, a lot because he’s being the Peter that I think I came here for.
Peter slips his arms around me from behind. “Are you happy here?”
I stare out at all of it. “Sometimes.”
“Just sometimes?” He sounds bothered.
I don’t look at him. “Yes.”
Peter turns me around. “I want you to be happy here.” His eyes dance over my face like he’s looking for clues. “Is there something I could do to make you happier?”
I lift my brows playfully. “You could…remember my name…”
He rolls his eyes. “I know your name.”
“You could…” My voice trails as my eyes fall down his arms that are holding both of mine. I pick off a shiny scale. “You could not make out with mermaids.”
“I kiss mermaids,” Peter says, pulling a face. “I don’t know what make out is. It sounds stupid.”
“It’s the same thing.”
He shrugs. “I knew that.”
“You could not be weird when it’s my birthday.” I give him a look.
Peter scoffs. “I don’t even care that you turned old. I’ve been good about that.” He gives me a defiant look. “I haven’t brought it up once. You don’t look old. You just look the same, so that’s good.” He gives me a little shrug.
I poke him in the ribs. “You could…not leave me to die with a minotaur.”
And then something peculiar happens. Peter’s countenance changes. Something rolls over him that I haven’t seen in him before. Guilt, I think? Remorse, maybe? Regret, as though he feels actually bad for what he did. Peter’s eyes drop from mine, and his face pulls uncomfortably.
“I would never let you die.”
I nod because I believe that he believes that.
“Perhaps not on purpose.”
That makes him frown more. He licks his bottom lip and stares at me. “You are my favourite one, do you know?”
I tilt my head patiently. “Your favourite what, Peter?”
“Girl.” He shrugs. “Ever.”
I stare over at him, surprised. “Really?”
He nods, sure.
“Why?” I ask, genuinely curious.
“I don’t know.” He shakes his head. “There’s something—” He grabs my hand and puts it over his heart, places his hand over mine. “Do you feel it? Like strings?” He looks for my eyes. “From me to you?”
I nod. “The Darling girl and the Pan.”
“Yes, but no.” He sighs as though I’m misunderstanding him. “It’s more than that. It’s…you.” Peter shrugs like it’s hopeless. “You are more beautiful than the others. And better, I think. I like your face.” He touches it with his big paw hands. “I think about it all the time. Sometimes I get angry at it because I’ll be doing important things like painting the sky or fighting a monster and your face just—bang!—pops into my head and distracts me from what I’m doing.” Peter looks truly bothered by this, and he swats his hand through the air. “It’s annoying,” he tells the smile on my face.
“Sorry,” I tell him, but I don’t mean it.
He stares at my mouth. “You kiss better than the other ones too.”
I square my shoulders and take my hand back from his chest, instead unbuttoning one of the buttons of his shirt.
“Are you kissing lots of people then?” I ask, not looking him in the eye.
He knocks my chin up with his finger so I’m looking at him. “What’s lots?”
I give him a defiant look. “You tell me.”
Peter shrugs again. “The mermaids are good, but usually it’s slippery and kind of salty.”
I grimace. “Right.”
“Marin is okay at it,” he goes on. “The best one out of them. Calla is good too, actually.”
I give him a long look. “This doesn’t make me happy here, Peter.”
His brows cross. “Why?”
“Because.” I turn away, indignant he’d have me explain it.
He stands in front of me. “Because why?”
I cross my arms over my chest. “Would you like it if I talked about other people I was kissing?”
And then he grabs me, a hand on each of my arms, grips me tightly. It hurts me a little, but I know it wouldn’t be on purpose. He just gets swept up in moments. He shakes me twice. “Who are you kissing?” he yells.
“No one.” I shake my head quickly, thankful I can say it and mean it. Grateful Jamison never did because I’m worried of what Peter might have done if he had.
“Who!” he yells more. “I’ll kill them. Give me their names.”
I stare up at him and I tell myself that I’m not afraid, but my voice comes out small.
“No one, Peter.”
And then he hugs me.
It’s a strange hug—desperately tight. He wraps his whole self around me as much as he possibly can.
“I would kill them,” he tells me.
“Okay.” I nod.
Peter shakes his head. “I won’t share you, Daph.”
“Okay.” I pause, glancing up at him. “Well then, I’d prefer not to share you also.”
Peter looks confused. “With who?”
“With anyone.” I give him a funny look. “Not with Marin, not with Calla—”
And then Peter laughs. “You don’t have to worry about mermaids.”
“And Calla?”
He lifts his giant shoulders like she’s a beetle on them. “Or Calla.”
“Do I not?” I blink. “She’s with you every chance she gets.”
Peter sniffs, amused. “Yeah, but everyone is.”
“Peter.” I fold my arms. “She likes you very much. Maybe even more than that.”
He frowns a bit. “She more than likes me?”
I nod.
“Like on the lily pad?”
I scratch my cheek before I fold my arms again. “I’m sure if you wanted.”
“Oh.” He thinks for a few seconds, brows low, and then the thought’s gone. Flies away, right off his face. “If she makes you jealous, I won’t see her anymore.”
I stare over at him, surprised. “Really?”
Peter nods. “Yeah.”
“Do you promise?” I ask cautiously.
He bows dramatically. “On my honour.”
I stare at him for a couple of seconds, then nod. “Thank you,” I tell him.
“Daphne, girl.” Peter hooks his arm back around my neck. “Of all the things I have, you’re my favourite one.”
* Even though I don’t technically have a leg to stand on.