She glances around the room again and is met with silence.
I find myself aching for an apology, though not expecting one. What has happened today is more than I could have ever hoped for.
“Well. You know the way out,” my Middle Sister says. As she turns to leave through the door to her bedroom, she glances back at me once more. I think to call out to her, but then she shuts the door behind her.
Shame is a strange thing. Significantly more painful than what she was experiencing. It provides no thrill, like the curse did.
“She’ll need time,” says the mortal man, but there is no relief in his voice.
My instincts draw me toward the winged creature, who still holds the child in his arms. He glances down at the boy, then back up at me.
“Peter,” I say, “give the man his son.”
The shadows obscure both of us, and though I can see nothing of his face, I can sense in the way they swirl protectively around the boy that he has no intention of doing so.
“He could still be mine,” he says.
“Look at him again,” I say.
The winged creature glances down at the child again. And as if for the first time, he sees all the features that make him distinctly a Descendent.
“He is not yours,” I say.
He looks at me, but something shifts in his stance.
“Darling—” The mortal’s voice is a warning.
The winged man dissipates with the boy, then reappears next to the fireplace. In a moment, he’s holding the child over the flames.
The sweet mortal baby—my baby—begins to cry, and my shadowed heart lurches in my chest.
“What are you doing?” I ask, finding my pitch rising to panic. I reel it in, channeling my voice until it booms, echoes through the room. “Give the child back to his father. I will not ask again.”
“You can have him back,” says Peter. “I don’t want to hurt him. Wendy Darling, can’t you see that?”
“I am not Wendy Darling. The girl is dead.”
The winged man doesn’t appear to hear me. “I just want us to be a family. I just want to be home. I don’t care if he’s not mine. I just want you. I will love him like my own, and I will give you whatever life you want.”
“I want my child back,” I hiss.
“And you can have him,” says Peter, taking one hand from underneath my child, holding him even more precariously above the fire.
My baby begins to cry and wriggle, sweat forming on his forehead, glistening in his dark hair.
Peter extends his free hand, the one he is not using to secure my baby, toward me. “Wendy Darling, this is the last bargain I’ll ask of you. Just be mine. Be my wife. And I promise you, I will love your son as my own. I will protect him?—”
I don’t hear what else the winged man says. All I can hear is the way my child is hiccupping in panic at being overheated.
With a shriek, I unleash my shadows. The winged man startles and drops my child.
But I am there first. My shadows overtake the room, dousing every light in it, including the fire.
I snatch my boy from the fireplace before he can hit the cold, fireless floor of the hearth. Clutching him to my chest, feeling the soothing relief at how he wriggles against me, I back away from Peter, soothing my son.
There should be fear emanating from Peter. But it is only anger. Disappointment. Loss. And it is foolish of him, seeing that he no longer has a bargaining chip.
Peter glances at my child one more time. Then at me. He has seen what I can do and knows there is no defeating me.
