Page 3 of The Never Queen

Vane’s attention is the daily bread I can never get enough of.

Stuff me full of carbs.

He looks at me. Looks down at the rope. Screws up his mouth. He once told me, in a very stern voice, “Darling, never let the twins tie you up.”

But I am nothing if not a glutton for all of the things I’ve ever been told not to do.

Which begs the fucking question, why am I shrinking away from the challenge Doren and his fae allies have put before me?

Because in this, I am a coward.

“I’m waking Pan,” Vane says and then disappears from sight, his boots thudding down to Peter Pan’s tomb.

2

PETERPAN

Vane finds me brooding in my wingback chair, a cigarette burning between my knuckles. A lamp is turned on from its perch on my end table but it still feels oppressively dark in here.

I can still taste the daylight in the air.

The interior door of my tomb creaks open and a faint slant of light spills in around the broad shoulders of the Dark One. He brings with him the scent of salty air and bruised cloudberries. It reminds me immediately of the Darling.

Winnie Darling.

Our Darling.

Every afternoon, she goes for a swim in the ocean and directly after, the twins feed her toasted bread slathered with salted butter and cloudberry jam.

Sensing my mood, Vane shuts the door behind him and then leans against the wall beside it. He takes his time, letting me wallow in the swelling tide of my personal annoyance.

He pulls out a cigarette and lights it in the cup of his hand. The sharp orange flame skims his face before going quickly out.

He takes a long drag and slouches in a way that makes him look both bored and deadly.

He exhales. “Why are you brooding?”

“I’m not,” I say quickly, defensively.

The end of the cigarette swells with heat as he pulls in another drag.

He waits me out.

I sulk more and finish my own cigarette, stubbing it out in a nearby ashtray.

Vane could always read my moods. Even before Winnie Darling, before he took on the Neverland Dark Shadow. Before everything.

“The Summer Solstice approaches,” I say. “The longest day of the year.”

The cigarette burns shorter.

Beyond my tomb, the sun is approaching the end of the world and my impatience grows.

I sigh. “I’m stuck down here in the dark while you and Darling and the twins go fuck around in the ocean and eat cloudberry tarts in the fucking sunlight.” I groan. “Are you happy?”

“Oh no,” he says, mocking me. “The all-powerful star god must endure a few hours alone in the dark while the children play without him. How will his tender heart survive?”

“Christ. You’re an asshole.”