“No,” I say, heart cracking in two. “No, Nolan, we’re so close. We’ve almost made it.”
“I can feel the light going out, Darling,” he says with a sad smile. “What I wouldn’t give for another day with you. But if this is the last night I’m granted, I want to die holding my wife.”
He reaches out his hand to grasp mine, to pull me close. I go still at his clammy touch, then sit up, my spine rigid.
“Darling,” my husband says, and I can’t stand the betrayal in his eyes, the hurt.
But more than that, I can’t stand to watch him die. To feel his spirit leave his body. To hear his last shuddering breath.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “But I can’t lose you.”
With a sob, I clutch my mouth and follow Victor out of the room, Charlie and Maddox parting the way for me, wide-eyed.
We race down the hallway, Nolan’s voice wringing out from behind me.
“Darling, please.”
I shut it out and run.
CHAPTER 20
As we sprint down the hallway, I hear footsteps behind me.
“Winds.”
I spin around to find Charlie and Maddox in the hallway. Charlie races up to me, placing her hand on my shoulder.
“Let us go,” she says. “You stay with the captain.”
I breathe heavily, considering her offer. For some reason, it causes anxiety to well up within me. Panic raps at my skull, threatening to tear my ribs apart piece by piece. I know I should stay with him.
I’m his wife, after all.
But I can’t.
“I can’t.”
“Charlie’s right,” Maddox says, coming out behind her. “She and I can travel up the mountain. We’ll find the Sister.”
Not for the first time in my life, the words escape me. They’re inside of me, but they’re buried deep down in the cavern of my lungs, evading the tip of my tongue. How do I explain why I can’t stay here while they go in search of Nolan’s cure?
And suddenly, at the idea of staying here, I feel the walls of the Den encroach upon me—not this den, but the one underneath the reaping tree in Neverland.
“Charlie, I can’t.”
Her eyes go wide, searching me like she’s trying to understand.
It’s Victor who speaks. “She can’t sit here and wait for the two of you to come rescue her.”
Charlie’s face falls, and Maddox looks as if he’s been slapped in the face.
Now that it’s out there, now that Victor has put it to words, my tongue loosens.
“It’s not a lack of trust,” I say. “I just—I need to go. I need to do something.”
Charlie’s brow knits together, but then another voice speaks up from behind her.
“We’ll stay with him,” says one of the Twins.
