THE RAGE OF AN adult who has been outsmarted by someone younger is distinct from the many angers of the so-called grown-up. This rage is bitter. It is generously spiced with indignation and insult. Pitch felt all these variations of outrage. He felt them in the extreme. He felt them to the depths of his dark and dangerous soul.
But he kept silent.
As his ebony tomb peeled away and slowly rematerialized into his Nightmare Army, he stood erect but said not a word. His daughter greeted him coldly.
“Follow me. Tell your army to do as I say or you’ll face the consequences.”
With the meagerest of nods, Pitch agreed. His army fell into line behind him as he followed Emily Jane, who led them up through the dark, glistening tunnel of dark matter and toward the Earth’s surface. Pitch kept one hand on his chest over the wound North had given him—the wound that was meant to kill him. The pain of Jack Frost’s demonstration with the dagger still radiated around his heart. Pitch seethed with silent hatred. He had been so patient. He had planned his escape and revenge so thoroughly. And to what end? Complete humiliation at the hands of this eternal boy.
He was so clever, Pitch fumed. He wiped his memory clean of anything that might help me. He only let me hear his misdirection. His real plans he kept hidden even to himself.
As Emily Jane now ushered them out of the tunnel, Pitch saw the full extent of Jack’s and the Guardians’ growing power. Millions of leaves manned by the tree fairies churned above Santoff Claussen. The leaves spiraled into a seemingly endless tunnel up into the sky. Though it was near midnight, the cloudless evening glowed with waves of aurora-like light.
Mother Goose’s Mythosphere, I suppose. Pitch narrowed his eyes. Though this display was meant to prevent Pitch from escaping, it had the further effect of humbling him.
Then he saw the citizens of Santoff Claussen. He’d terrorized them for generations, but he saw not a lick of fear on any face he looked upon. Not on any man, woman, child, squirrel, or insect. And for the first time in centuries, Pitch felt, for one instant, a flicker of fear himself.
He stamped this feeling out like an elephant stamps a flea.
With the wind at her command, Emily Jane sent her father and his army blowing through the tunnel of leaf fairies toward Transylvania. She followed close behind, full of hope for the first time in a very, very long time. She trusted Jack to not only protect the children of Earth, but to somehow bring her father back to a life that cast no darkness on the world.
But her father had one last trick—something Jack had revealed in his long story to Katherine and one he was certain that Frost would not be ready for.
