By the time the sun began to set behind the trees, I itched to go home. Home wasn't some fancy place, just a small apartment on the edge of The Zone, the not-so-great part of Wonderland. But I'd been living there for the last four years, ever since my brothers disappeared, and my parents didn't really try to make me leave. There were times I slept in the Blood Forest with the rest of the crew; usually, it was when Maryanne specifically asked me to because she was tired of the boys and their shit and she wanted to be around another female for a time. Even though I could be insanely jealous of the way she captivated Robin, I loved those nights. The two of us bonded in ways I never expected and it just continuously reaffirmed the fact that no matter how hard I tried, I simply couldn’t hate her.
Tonight, however, I was excited to get away back to my solitude.
“Who’s in the mood for rabbit?” Alexander and Phillip made their way back into camp, Alexander holding up the rabbits he hunted for the group.
It was definitely a sight to see—Alexander was tall, blond, and Viking. With pale skin, a clean-shaven face, and lean muscle, he could walk into a tavern and know he could bed whatever woman he wanted to. Phillip was a head shorter than Alexander with just as much muscle. His head was buzzed short and his chiseled face was always contorted into some kind of scowl, like he was pissed off with the world and didn’t care who knew about it.
“I’ve already got the fire going,” Maryanne said as she hunched over the growing flames. “Start skinning them and I’ll cook them.”
Although I had eaten plenty of meat this way, my stomach still rolled at the sight of them skinning cute creatures who didn’t deserve to die. I stood and headed to where I had been practicing my bow and arrow skills, deciding I could be helpful by taking them down.
Robin was still out. I wasn’t sure where he was, but I kept looking to the opening in the forest I knew led back into town every few seconds. I prided myself on not being so damn obvious, but apparently, even I couldn’t help myself. This unrequited crush was more trouble than it was worth, and I told myself over and over again that I would stop only to then encounter Robin again and feel all those feelings I attempted to suppress bubble up to the surface.
He literally told you to pretend to be in love with another man. If that doesn’t say he has no feelings for you, what else will?
I wasn’t actually sure. I tried to argue with that point. I tried to say I was pretty sure he’d tell Maryanne the same thing, except I knew that wasn’t the case. I was sure there was no way he’d risk sending her into the thick of it. She might be capable, but he wouldn’t risk her.
Me, on the other hand…
Don’t do that. You know he cares for you.
I did. The crew took me in when I wandered by myself. I could come and go freely. I had made a lot of headway in regards to my brothers’ case.
At the same time, I didn’t like that I was a pawn and Maryanne was a queen on this board of chess. I glanced over at her, chestnut brown hair swept up into one of those fashionably messy buns with tendrils of hair caressing her neck. How she could do that, I had no idea. Whenever I tried to put my hair in a fashionably messy bun, chunks of hair rested unevenly on top of my head, long locks of hair stuck out, and I pulled too much hair out of the bun instead of tiny little tendrils to frame my face. It was so impossible that I didn’t even try to make it cute anymore, utilizing the hairstyle as something like a tool and not as a way to draw any attention to my face.
I plucked the last bit of targets from the thick trunk of trees. The strong scent of metal overwhelmed my senses and made my mouth water, but not in the way where my stomach was ready to devour it. Instead, it was more like I was ready to throw up. This was another thing I hated when it came to eating food from the forest; it was difficult for me to get rid of this scent even when the meat had been seasoned and roasted over the fire.
“I heard you and Robin spoke about the lottery.”
Little John was not little at all, but he could make his voice surprisingly quiet if he didn’t want anyone to overhear it. Without saying anything specific, he took the targets from my hands and began to make his way to a supply shed Alexander and Phillip built six months ago, arguing the entire time. I found myself following him even though I had no obligation to. It wasn’t like he asked me the question.
“Well?” He looked over his burly shoulder at me, arching a bushy brow as he opened the door to the shed. A couple of weapons dipped out, including my bow, but Little John had surprisingly fast reflexes for someone so big and managed to catch them before they fell.
“He did,” I said.
“You don’t sound terribly enthusiastic,” he replied as he righted the weapons and put the targets inside.
“I’m not sure what you expect me to say,” I said. “I don’t know why you guys think I could kill anyone, and even if I wanted to, I’m nowhere near ready.”
Maybe I didn’t want to admit that I wanted to kill him. Maybe by admitting that, I was one step away from turning into a vindictive monster. But every time I hesitated, a flash of my brothers’ faces turned up in my mind, and I was consumed by such anger, it was difficult for me to see straight.
“Why don’t you think you’re ready?” Little John asked as he shut the shed door. “You’re the best archer in our band of merry misfits, save for Robin, and I highly doubt anyone could surpass him.”
“I don’t know why we’re even discussing this,” I said. “The fact is, there’s no way I’m going to win some lottery, okay?”
“And what makes you say that, darling?” Without warning, The Imp suddenly appeared, and with him, Alice Wynter.
A strange sensation of confusion bubbled up in my system, as it usually did when I saw the pair. They were both extremely attractive, so it wasn’t like I didn’t know that the two of them could see the other was aesthetically pleasing; it was difficult for me to wrap my head around so much power within one union. Alice was the daughter of the Mad Mage. To this day, no one knew where he disappeared to, though I was certain Rumpelstiltskin and Alice herself knew. On top of that, her mother was the former mayor of Wonderland, the Red Queen. Everyone initially thought Alice was some kind of magicless human adopted by Chief James Wynter, but the truth was, she had power that rivaled the Fae.
And Rumpelstiltskin was the most powerful Fae within his glass kingdom of Neverland. His brother, Pan, was less charming, more chaotic, and just as cold. And the daughter, Rapunzel, had disappeared. No one knew what had happened to her even today.
“Rumpel–”
The Imp wagged a long graceful finger back and forth. “Uh uh uh,” he said, shooting Little John a warning with merely his dark eyes. “You know not to say my name, even if we do have a tentative alliance. I’ve come here to address your little group.”
“And what do you want?” Little John asked suspiciously. He pocketed the shed key before crossing his arms over his chest. “We already cracked the Never Glass with the dagger you provided. Phillip still had the scar on the side where one guard nicked his skin. What else could you want us to do?”
“Gather round the fire, Jonathan, and I’ll gladly inform you,” the Imp instructed. He squeezed Alice’s hand as he led her toward the fire itself, and I could swear I heard Alice murmur something about how dramatic the Imp could be.
I didn’t want to smile because I didn’t like the Imp and I didn’t know Alice enough to know whether I liked her, but it amused me nonetheless.
“I guess we should do as he says,” Little John muttered, but it was clear he wasn’t happy with this.
I wasn’t either. I had planned to go home with some Chinese food I picked up on the way. Maybe I would look at my wall filled with cut outs of newspapers or internet clippings, anything that mentioned my brothers even in passing.
Being a Darling was being a Royal until John and Michael disappeared. That had been three years ago, and someone went to prison for it. Mr. Jones, the PE teacher at their middle school. It was something I still wasn’t sure what to believe. They were still missing, and if he knew where the bodies were, he wasn’t talking.
I was determined to find the truth, no matter where that rabbit hole led me. Because there were no bodies, I found myself doing something as stupid as hoping that they might still be alive, even after all this time. But then I would steel myself from such a feeling because the likelihood that they were was incredibly slim, and grew worse with each passing day.
All I knew was there was a good chance their mysterious disappearance had to do with Fairy Dust, a new drug introduced to the Marooner’s Bay, a club which Pan owned. And Pan was a Fae, a royal one at that, and it was a known secret he had a hand in introducing and distributing the drug in Wonderland. For that, I wanted him dead. There was no other way to describe it. And I wanted to be the one to kill him, to get answers and then watch him suffer the way I had, but I wasn’t sure if I could actually…do it.
“Hello, Merry Men and women,” Rumpelstiltskin said as he reached the fire.
I glanced around again, hoping Robin would show up. I wasn’t sure if the Imp was going to tell us what to do again, but if that was the case, it was important that we had our leader so he could make the decision on whether we agreed to whatever the Imp wanted. It was always a dangerous thing, to enter into a bargain with him, but there wasn’t much else to do. Pan had been sitting mayor for a couple of months, and nothing had changed. Wonderland’s magic wasn’t returned to the population, even though the Red Queen had collected it under false pretenses.
Not that I expected him to do such a thing. Why would he? He didn’t want any threat to his claim over ruling us. This was probably the closest to a crown he would get. The Imp was still heir to Neverland, though whether he wanted it or whether his parents would bequeath it to him thanks to his alliance and romantic relationship with Alice, the daughter of their enemy, I didn’t know.
Pan finally had power. I highly doubted he would do anything that might squander it.
“I’ve come bearing good tidings,” he said.
“What the fuck does that mean?” Phillip asked as he roasted the skinned rabbit on a skewer.
“It means, I’ve a plan to take down my brother and remove the Fae from Wonderland,” he said, clapping his hands together like we were a group of unruly preschoolers and he was trying to get us excited about naptime.
“And how do you propose we do that?” Alexander asked, leaning against a nearby tree. He was much more difficult to read out of everyone in the crew because he could school his features into a stoic mask of indifference.
“We can’t just storm the place and kill the mayor,” Little John said.
I shifted beside him, trying to read the Imp. Unfortunately, it was trying to read a book written in ruins. I just couldn’t understand the language.
Would Rumpelstiltskin actually kill his brother? I wasn’t sure what the two felt for each other, but I knew he had no love loss for his parents. Did that extend to Pan?
“No,” the Imp agreed. “You can’t. But that isn’t to say there are other ways to take the power back.”
“And give it to who?” Maryanne asked. That she had the courage to even question the Imp made me respect her even more. Along with her beauty and intellect, her gentleness and grace, I wanted her bravery too. “You can’t remove one power without assigning it to another. Then, the entirety of Wonderland would collapse.”
“Yes, well, that’s not something I particularly care about,” the Imp said, flicking off lint from his expensive tailored suit. “If you have someone in mind, by all means, ask. But removing the cancer before it spreads is my primary goal. Which means we need to act quickly.”
“What do you mean, before it spreads?” Alexander asked.
“The lottery is tomorrow,” the Imp pointed out. “We all know it’s a farce. They’re going to pretend to enter the eligible women of Wonderland—human, those that aren’t Fae, but we all know they won’t. However, if I can finagle the results, they’ll have to abide by them. They’ve created these rules; they must follow them if they want to earn the town’s support. And because the town is still reeling from the truth of the Mad Mage and the Red Queen, I’m sure they’re slowly plotting but won’t make any moves yet because they don’t want to stir the pot and risk any sort of rebellion.”
“The Fae are coming,” Alice said. “Pan is planning to marry in order to strengthen his claim to Wonderland. The more that are present, the more difficult it’ll be to overthrow him.”
“So, what’s the point if it’s impossible?” Phillip asked around a large chunk of the rabbit.
“She said difficult, not impossible,” the Imp pointed out. “I think we should enter a human into the mix of names, force my brother to entertain the notion of marrying her. This way, there’s access to the ostentatious palace he’s built as well as information.” He smiled charmingly. “And I think one of you lovely ladies should be the one to do it.”