“Peter saw nothing else but me until you came along. I put magic at his fingertips, and he still chose you!” Tinker Bell screams as Wendy urges me to put my weight on her, in order to help me stand. My eyes catch Tinker Bell’s and I watch as they grow sad, but I have nothing left in my heart that will ever care for her, for anything we ever had. Not after the way she’s always stood between Wendy and me. “I even had Hook for a while…”

“You never had me…”

“Until I let him get word that you were alone, Darling. Because I knew he couldn’t resist you. He’d bring you back to us. Where I could finally finish the fight we started. Kill you. Control him. Once and for all.”

A flash of lightening lights up the night sky. A crash of thunder booms endlessly in the distance.

“A person is not something you can control. It’s not like…”

“Magic?” Tinker Bell snaps and Wendy flinches from the use of the word. “Magic is something I can control. And with you out of the way, Darling, Neverland will finally be the way I always wanted. We’ll have Peter. He’ll rule by my side as Hook. And you’ll be nothing but a dream he only vaguely remembers but can finally, no longer make his way back to.”

Chapter 27

Wendy

“It was the terrible tick tick of the crocodile, and immediately every head was blown in one direction: not to the water whence the sound proceeded, but toward Hook.”

Peter & Wendy

- J.M. Barrie

Tinker Bell pulls a second blade from her side and quickly thrusts it in my direction. I jump back just as Peter steps between us, and it slashes his left arm. He crows out loudly. His signature sound thundering through all of Neverland. Rearing back, he stabs forward with a blade of his own and misses. Tinker Bell reacts quickly, bringing her sword up once again and striking down quickly with a fatal blow.

He falls to the floor, and I scream. Without thinking, I pull the hook I took off his waist from behind me and strike when the fae isn’t looking. When her head is downcast and she’s staring at Peter’s dead body.

Dead. My Peter. Dead.

Vengeance is all I know, all I feel, as I swipe the hook up and clip the fae’s wings. She screams out in shock, and something takes over me. Something breaks inside me. My heart stops beating as I think of Peter and all we shared laying on the floor at my feet.

Taking her wings is not enough. Will never be enough.