“I remember what it feels like to burn,” Tiger Lily says.

Despite the softness of her voice, the words startle Wendy, sending a chill down her spine. Tiger Lily holds her arms out again, and for a moment, Wendy almost thinks she can see fire running underneath Tiger Lily’s skin.

“If Peter wanted to, he could snuff me out any time.”

“No.” The word is stronger, more adamant now.

Wendy thinks of moments she and Tiger Lily spent together years ago—without Peter, without the Lost Boys, just the two of them lying belly-down on sun-warmed and flattened grass along the banks of one of Neverland’s many ever-shifting rivers. She thinks of her fingers and Tiger Lily’s trailing in the crystal-clear water, fish with scales of silver and gold coming to nibble curiously, then dart away. Those moments were real. Tiger Lily is real, not just a Peter-created shadow.

There is so much she wants to tell Tiger Lily, about St. Bernadette’s, everything she suffered, and everything she learned. She wants to ask about Tiger Lily as well, how things have been for her in Neverland since Wendy saw her last. And she wants to tell Tiger Lily how much she ached for Peter in that time, how she never let go, how part of her aches still, and how she’s ashamed.

“Tell me one of your stories,” Wendy says instead, meeting Tiger Lily’s eyes. “One of the stories you remember from around the fire.”

She wants to conjure for Tiger Lily the picture she saw of safety and family, a place Peter can’t touch. She wants to root Tiger Lily in herself, remind her she is real, that she won’t burn or vanish in a puff of smoke just because Peter wills it.

“All right.” There’s uncertainty in Tiger Lily’s voice, echoed by the doubt in her expression, and dread pricks at Wendy’s skin. “But I can’t remember any happy ones, only the ones about monsters.”

11: The Forbidden Path

THE FORBIDDEN PATH

The scent of cooking meat fills the air, charred, on the edge of burnt; she’s never smelled anything so good. Fat drips from the spitted boar, crackling and popping where it hits the fire. Her stomach growls, and she feels sick at the same time. She watched Peter slaughter the boar, saw the hate in its eyes, and saw it rooted to the spot by Peter’s will. She watched the boar being butchered. She shouldn’t want to eat it with the remembered stink of its offal still in her nose, but she hasn’t eaten anything since Peter’s awful soup. And this is real—meat browning, sizzling and rich.