Page 12 of The Never Queen

“Because they’re selfish shits.” Pan enters the kitchen with Vane just behind him. Pan pours himself a cup of coffee and adds a splash of bourbon. “You want one?” he asks Vane.

Vane takes the bottle of bourbon, forgoing the coffee.

“Let’s have a party,” Bash repeats.

Vane glances at Pan over the curved arch of the bourbon bottle as he takes a long swig.

“Why?” Pan asks.

“To celebrate our friends,” Kas says.

It’s a simple answer, not at all out of the ordinary, but the way he says it, the way he looks at Pan as he says it, tells me that there is nothing simple about it.

All four men go quiet, all of their attention on one another as if they are having some silent conversation that is either very much about me or so much not about me that I can’t be a part of it.

“What is happening?” I say.

“Fine,” Pan answers.

“Yes,” Bash says and shakes his fist victoriously.

“Hello?”

Bash kisses me on the mouth roughly and with the impatience of a kid running out to play, and then disappears back outside. “I’ll get the bonfire started!”

Kas kisses me on the cheek and then heads to the cellar. “I’ll tell the other Lost Boys and grab the fairy wine.”

I turn on the island countertop and eye Pan and Vane. “What is going on?”

Vane brings the bourbon to his mouth again and takes a healthy pull, following Bash outside without saying a word. Most days, on good days, I can sense what he’s thinking and feeling through the Shadow’s connection, but he, or the Shadow, or maybe both, have shut me out.

It’s just me and Pan now. I can hear Kas through the many twisting halls of the treehouse shouting at the other Lost Boys to get ready for a bonfire.

“What did I miss?”

Pan sets his coffee down and comes around the island, nudging my knees open, then grabbing my ass so he can scoot me to the very edge of the counter. “Make me a promise, Darling.”

I narrow my eyes at him.

Every day that has passed since he discovered he is a primordial star god has only rendered him more and more handsome. At this rate, in a year or two, he will be so hot, it will be impossible to look at him.

“Say you will.” He nudges at my neck, brushing his lips against me. I shiver.

“How can I say I will when I don’t know what the promise is? What if it’s that you want me to dye my hair blue? Or stop drinking? Or stop eating bread on Tuesdays?”

His laugh is a soft huff against my neck. “Here’smypromise: I will never take bread from you.”

“Well good. Because I would riot. I would escape into the Neverland woods and recruit the woodland creatures to wage a war against you and your house.”

He chuckles again and plants a kiss on my collarbone, then another on my shoulder, another on the curve of my neck. “Just promise me you will have fun tonight, hmm?”

I’m immediately suspicious. “Is that all?”

“Yes.”

“That’s too easy.”

“Then the promise should be easy as well.”