More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Vane. He grumbles as he comes around the island fixing the cuff of his jacket. “Whoa.” I stop chewing. “Sweet baby Jesus.”
“He’s going to be okay,” I tell Vane, but I sense I’m trying to convince myself as much as the Dark One. “I know,” he says, his gaze still on the horizon.
“There is always room for nostalgia, even if it hurts.”
He bends down, planting a kiss on my forehead. “We don’t deserve you, Darling.”
We’re ushered in through the gate without any resistance from the guards who seem oddly vacant when they pull back the doors.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that when I’m happy, loved, and safe, I have no need to move.
“Insult him again and I’ll strangle you until your eyes bleed.” My voice has turned hollow and echoey with the shadow, and the shadow is pleased to make an appearance.
“I assumed you had no finery for my boys. No offense.” She means all of the offense.
Spirits of the Lagoon,’” Tink says, mimicking the old version of me, “‘do I have a mother?’”
Tink had a mother who was dead and I had only a hole where my mother might have been. The island was our surrogate.
“I learned the answer to your question,” she says and comes closer, lowering her voice. “While I lay in the bottom of the lagoon all those years, listening to the spirits talk, I heard their answer.”
Apparently us Darlings have a thing for morally grey assholes with rock-hard abs and cunning good looks.
“Our family founded a society known as the Bone Society. Keepers of Time. Creators of Time.
“And everything probably would have been fine had I not accidentally devoured a Lorne princess.”
time means nothing to heartbreak.”
Forget-me-nots are traditionally given to a person you love. It’s a promise, or a reminder. Never forget me.
But what if you forget yourself? Who you were and who you wanted to be? What if you thought you knew what you wanted only to find out you were groping around blindly, in pursuit of something that, once you had it, did not feel so important?
Of course, Bash can find a positive spin on anything. No wings? Lube will do.
He tips my chin up to meet him and kisses me gently,
She killed my ancestor, and that one decision propelled us all on this journey, right now to this very moment.
“Those runes on your back? The lagoon saw them when you went swimming with that tasty snack of a Dark One. I think the runes were carved into your back to protect you, correct?”
“Except they’re just a little off. A mortal error, no doubt. Instead, they’re a binding spell. That shadow you hold? It’s never coming out. The lagoon said as much. You would be the easy target, yes, if not for that.”
I spin around just in time to see a Lost Boy slam a lid overtop of me.
Shit!
thunk, thunk-thunk—three more blades sink into Vane’s chest and he drops to a knee in front of me, his eyes black, his chest covered in streaks of blood.
My baby angels!!!! 😭😱😭😱
“I’m sorry, Tinker Bell. I’m sorry we loved each other so much we destroyed one another.”
And then I became the Never King, the wicked, ruthless Never King. Drenched in darkness. And I don’t want to be that man anymore. Not for Darling. Not for Vane. Not even for the twins. I want to be someone else, even if I don’t know who that is.
it was never supposed to be me. The shadow writhes to the surface. I sense its shape, its weight, the great heaving wave of it as it surges from the throbbing wound in my chest. I purge it like an infection, eyes bulging, watering, body shaking. It leaves me behind and surges towards the twins, enveloping them in bright, searing light. The twins drop to all fours.
And then… The darkness subsides and the twins stand up.
And behind them, dark, shimmering wings unfurl.
Something pries into the lid and wrenches it back. And when I blink into the dim light of darkness, it isn’t any of the boys I see, it’s Tilly.
I thought love was something you had to wait for, quietly, desperately, and that sometimes even when you waited, it would come to you in only pain.
I never wanted it. Never even dreamed about having it. But now that I do, there is a rightness at my core, like it was always meant to be mine and my brother’s.
I suspect the Never King is no more.
“And what reason does the Never King have to shed a tear or two?”
“I’ve lost everything I am,” he admits.
“Hindsight is a zero-sum game where time is the winner and you’re the loser. Always.”
“There is no point in the future where it doesn’t hurt right here”—I tap at my chest—“when something you love breaks or abandons you. There is only now and what you do with that now.”
You cannot have light without darkness. That I know for certain. But very few are willing to go so fully into the dark. To destroy themselves on the descent, so that they may climb out transformed.
I catch the last moment he is alive, when his eyes search for me through the lace of water, when his mouth pops open and the water floods in, and his body gives one final jerk.
“I wanted to give him a home,” the Mother says. He’ll have one someday.
“And I will watch from above.” The wolf nods and the Mother flies off, returning to her place in the sky. She’s easy to spot if you just look up. She’s the brightest shining light in the dark. The second star on the right.
That punched me right in the heart
A geyser of water comes up and Peter Pan, glowing like a star, shoots off, burning through the clouds. Peter Pan can still fly, it would seem. I suspect gods need no shadow to take to the sky.
Drenched in darkness, terrified of light.
In the distance, I hear shouting, fighting, the clashing of steel, and the voices of my chosen family. The one that never abandoned me, never traded me for another, and would never betray me. I’m coming, I think to them, and I know they hear it.
Somehow, through shadow and light, we are all connected now. And no one, not even Tinker Bell, will stop us.
I follow in their direction and see an orb of light in the dark night sky and I swear I hear a voice say… I’m coming.
“What have you done, Peter Pan?” she asks. “Found my own light, Tink,” he tells her.
“Goodbye, Tink,” Pan says. She hangs her head back, face pointed toward the stars, and screams.
She disintegrates in our grip, bursting into a thick cloud of fairy dust.
I swear there has been a stain on the entire length of our rule.
