The sound rips through Wendy like lightning. She leaps up, forgetting her weariness, forgetting Peter, forgetting everything. She charges up the slope, but as she does, the stone buckles under her, knocking her down. Her knee strikes the ground painfully, and she bites back a cry. Gravity pulls her back into the bowl where Peter still lies shivering. Wendy ignores the throbbing ache, the feeling of her knee already swelling as she pushes herself upright. She uses her hands and feet both to claw her way over fallen and sliding stone. She has to get to Jane.

As she reaches the top of the bowl, Peter moans. Wendy looks back. It’s only a moment, but it almost undoes her.

“Go!” Tiger Lily shouts.

But her eyes are only for Peter, and she can’t tear them away. He lies curled on his side, shuddering, his monstrous shadow flared around him. It moves when he moves, irrevocably part of him. His eyes snap open, fixing on her. All the breath leaves her body. Wendy is flying for the first time, leaving the nursery far behind. She’s plunging through the dark, and everything wonderful is about to happen. Nothing bad can ever touch her. She wants to run to him. To comfort him, even now. She loathes him for it, and loathes herself even more.

“Go. Now!” Tiger Lily’s words snap Wendy back to herself.

Wendy looks to her friend as Tiger Lily gathers Peter in her arms. She stands, lifting Peter with her, dragging his shadow behind him. He weighs so much more now than he did before, and Wendy can see the strain, but Tiger Lily straightens, meeting Wendy’s gaze, the set of her mouth a feral thing.

It’s Tiger Lily’s eyes that hold Wendy though. They are embers, daring Wendy to defy her. She is beautiful and terrible, still burning, still cracking, but not breaking. And all the while, everything inside Wendy is as fragile as glass. If she speaks Tiger Lily’s name, if she says anything at all, she will shatter. And her daughter needs her. Wendy turns away.

The simple motion is everything, a wound deep at the core of her, but she cannot afford pity now—not for herself, or any other kind. She runs, as much as she’s able, limping through the throb in her knee. Her pulse thunders, and the sound of it is a name: Jane, Jane, Jane.

The cave is still trying to rip itself apart. Above the chaos comes the broken sound of sobbing. It is a sound tied to every mother’s heart, and it goes right to the core of her. Her daughter, crying.

Wendy puts on a last burst of speed. Relief almost steals her legs out from under her as she sees Jane crouched on the cavern floor. But something is terribly wrong.

“You have to get up,” Jane says, voice tear-choked.