“Perhaps it’s not Peter,” he says.
I’m not sure which is more terrifying—the idea that it’s not Peter, or that itis, and he’s somehow found a way to heal himself. Although, as I consider that, I wonder if that could turn out for our benefit. It could mean he’s made a deal with the Sister. Perhaps he’s found his way back into her good graces, and she healed his wing.
Our gazes, much like the crowd’s, follow the winged figure above us in a somewhat panicked awe—a dread longing to be fulfilled. Wings outstretch and down swoops the creature, the man. He comes to rest behind the ringmaster, his fists digging into the ground as he lands in a crouched position, head down. Still, the way the carnival has chosen to cast the light, I can see nothing about his features, just his shape.
But then he lifts his head and stares into the crowd, seemingly directly at me. We make eye contact, and my heart hollows out in my chest. Blue eyes, familiar as a recurring nightmare, burrow into mine. It’s the gaze of a hunter, a predator, having finally found his match, his mark.
Suddenly, an emotion I can’t read crosses his face—confusion, perhaps. I imagine it was the same look on myface when Nolan first stormed into the Nomad’s quarters. The look of someone who has been searching so long for a ghost in the crowd that they can’t quite believe their eyes when the apparition they’re expecting is solid enough to touch.
The ringmaster’s voice echoes over the crowd again. Peter’s attention snaps toward him, and for the first time, I notice that this is not the Peter I remember from Neverland, nor the wounded Peter I remember from Lady Whittaker’s.
“His wing,” says Maddox.
My gaze follows the course of my once-Mate’s shoulder. At first, I had thought his wing had regrown, had been healed somehow. But now that I look more closely, I recognize the mismatch of colors. Where one wing comprises dark patagium, the other catches the light just slightly differently. It has a sheen to it, one of slick metal.
“Adamant,” says Nolan. The same metal that made up the box that Charlie and the Nomad used to capture Peter’s shadows.
“They’ve made him another wing,” I say.
“Behold,” says the ringmaster, “a creature of your nightmares, created from the darkness of the old magic and the ingenuity of the new.”
He gestures toward Peter’s wing. There’s an eeriness to the way it extends behind him—a stop-and-start motion that’s not quite natural. I can’t tell if it actually creaks, or if it’s just my imagination.
“Technology and magic combined,” explains the ringmaster.
The crowd has long gone hushed, hanging on his every word.
“When this dark creature came to me, seeking shelter from the woes of a world that did not accept him,” says the ringmaster, “he came wounded. Incomplete. But my engineers had another plan for him. A liberation.”
On cue, Peter launches, taking off into the sky. The crowd cheers as he flies around the ring, swooping over the stands. Women hold out their handkerchiefs to him, hoping he’ll grasp one of them.
I can’t help but remember the words of Lady Estrias before Peter killed her murderous husband.You never longed for it, as a girl? To be stolen away by a dark and terrible creature?
I watch the same sentiment unfold as a handful of women in the crowd faint, not from fear, but desire.
Something recoils in my gut.
Peter swoops above us, reaching his hand out as if part of the show. It grazes my shoulder, and my entire body freezes. Maddox has to jolt across my lap and grab onto Nolan’s wrists to keep him from launching himself in Peter’s direction.
“We need not draw attention to ourselves,” Maddox says, his voice soothing but commanding as he waits for Nolan to calm down.
Nolan takes in a shuddering breath, then nods, pulling me sideways into him. I close my eyes, breathing in Nolan’s scent, reminding myself that all is well. I am safe with him.
But being in the same room with Peter is suffocating. It’s not fear—not really. Not in its purest sense. It’s not quite disgust either, though it likely should be. My body’s reaction lingers somewhere between the two, and I’m reminded of the years Peter spent haunting me at my parents’ manor, the way the terrifying shadows still managed to draw me in.
This is different, though. It’s as if my body desires to flee from his presence—my heart racing, my feet preparing to run, knowing that danger is near. But I cannot quite bring myself to move. Instead, I am paralyzed.
I can’t take my eyes off of Peter.
As I watch him circle overhead, a thousand memories, tired of being stuffed deep down, pierce my mind, overtaking mysenses. A thousand touches I thought I’d erased. Memories I’m not sure are actual memories, because I had hidden myself in the dark corner of my mind when I’d experienced them. They are dreams, but not the vague sort, somehow still potent.
My body feels the pressure of his hands as deeply as if we are still back in that cot in Neverland. Even from high above, even without his shadows, his tendrils have still found a way to reach me.
My chest tightens, ropes narrowing around my ribs. But I will not flee. I will not stay still either. I am not immobile, I remind myself. I can move.
“We don’t have to do this,” whispers Nolan into my ear.
I turn to him and witness the concern on my beautiful husband’s face.
