Tears roll down my cheeks. “You’re not angry with me?”
Nolan lets out a sigh. “Angry with you? For what? I was to spend the rest of my life enslaved by that awful creature. I…you gave me my freedom back, and you cast away your own future to manage it.”
I can’t decide which I feel more: relief at his lack of anger toward me, or sadness that he perceives what I’ve done as casting away my future.
Though I’m far from done with the answers I need from this conversation, Nolan looks around the garden as if for the first time. “Where are the rest?”
Of course. Nolan was taken away by the Sister before he saw the conclusion to the Nomad’s, Tink’s, and Peter’s involvement.
“The Nomad took Tink. But before he did, he let her at Peter.”
Nolan tenses, and I can’t imagine the warring emotions that must be inside him for the childhood friend who grew up to murder Nolan’s wife.
“She didn’t kill him. But the Nomad had Charlie craft a pocket watch made of adamant. He used it to trap Peter’s shadows inside, but his wings were still flesh. So Tink… Well, she cut one of them off.”
Nolan blanches. “Just one?”
I nod, and Nolan whistles. I gesture with my head over to the center of the garden, where the maiming occurred and Peter had subsequently passed out. But when I look, Peter isn’t there. “That’s strange. I didn’t hear him leave.”
Nolan and I survey the garden, but besides us, it’s empty. Nolan grimaces. “I’m not fond of not knowing his location.”
I’m not either, but there’s nothing to be done about it now.
“The others?” Nolan asks.
“The Nomad left with Tink. I think there was more to their connection than what he first told me. He called her Wanderer?”
Nolan shakes his head. “That name doesn’t sound familiar to me.”
“Before he left with Tink, I asked him to summon the Sister. You’re caught up to that point.”
Nolan nods, and just then, there’s a rustling in the bushes. Nolan jumps in front of me, my heart pounding as I await an attack from Peter, returned to exact his vengeance. But it’s only Maddox who appears, looking out of breath. “Captain—the Nomad, the Gathers—they’re gone. He’s left us.”
“Well, then, sounds like he won’t be requiring my services anymore,” says Nolan.
“So what’s next?” asks Maddox.
“Did he at least leave me my ship?” asks Nolan.
Maddox grins.
Before we leave the Whittakers’mansion, I wander back through the garden and through the glass doors into the house. The home itself is so massive, so empty-feeling. Though I know better than that. Hidden within its confines, growth and learning are teeming.
She must hear our footsteps, because Lady Whittaker appears in the vestibule from the other side of a door.
“Will you be taking your brother with you?” she asks, always to the point.
I bite my lip and glance at Nolan, who insisted he come with me to retrieve Michael. “I know he’s happy here. And learning here. And that I can’t give him what you’re providing for him…”
Lady Whittaker raises a wrinkled palm. “But you’re his family. There’s no need to have to explain that to me. If the other children had family to take care of them, I’d have nothing to do, and I’d be all the happier for it. Besides, it’s clear to me that Michael was raised in a family who loved him dearly. Understood him, too.”
Not for the first time tonight, tears well in my eyes.
Lady Whittaker disappears, then returns minutes later, Michael holding her hand.
As soon as he sees me, he slips out of her grip, his footsteps tapping against the marble floor as he runs for me and grabs my little finger. “Wendy Darling wants to play,” he says, matter-of-factly.
And just like that, I burst into tears. Michael is such a loving child, but I realize now that I’d been worried that after almost a year of separation, he wouldn’t remember me. Or worse, he’d be angry with me, thinking I abandoned him, and have no way to express it.
