Victor raises a brow. “Don’t tell me you’re the one responsible for that hook?”
“Well, technically, I didn’t craft the hook.”
Victor smiles, the shape of it plastered on his face like he’s stuck in time, gazing at me in wonder. “All that time in Neverland, I thought you were so helpless, and there you were, secretly having chopped off the hand of the most dreaded pirate in the world.”
Something tugs at my chest. There’s a part of me that still looks back at my time imprisoned with Peter with shame. Shame at not being strong enough to break my curse. Shame at what I welcomed he do to my body, just out of anger at Nolan. Shame at how I let my brother’s murderer touch me.
But there’s something healing about the way Victor’s looking at me right now. As if all along, I’d possessed more power than even now I give myself credit for.
“Anyway,” I continue. “The Eldest Sister doesn’t take kindly to her Marks being removed. Sees it as an affront to her ability to choose a Mate wisely for others. He fell ill as soon as the Mark was gone. He’s been battling that illness ever since.”
“You mean that he’s dying.”
I nod, squeezing my eyes shut for half a second. “Yes.”
Victor leans back further in his chair and stares up at the ceiling rafters. “So that’s why you’re here. You’re hoping the Youngest Sister can help.”
I bite my lip, suddenly self-conscious.
“Why are you looking like that?” Victor asks.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re ashamed?”
“Because I know that more than likely you think me a lovesick fool willing to grasp at legends and false hopes rather than accept that my time with my Mate is running out.”
Victor examines me with sharp eyes. It’s strange, looking at him now. His usually sallow cheeks have darkened from sun exposure, and shadows no longer leave bruises underneath his eyes. I wonder if the village girls and tourists fawn all over him. Now that he’s grown himself a beard, he looks to be in his mid-twenties, not the youth I know him to be.
Though, I suppose due to the fact he didn’t age in Neverland, he’s significantly older than that. Older than me, even. I keep forgetting that for some reason.
“I might think you’re lovesick, but I don’t think you’re a fool.”
“Really?”
“Really,” he says.
“So you believe then? In the Youngest Sister, I mean?”
“They say she cleans up her Sisters’ messes, right?” says Victor.
“So it’s said.”
Victor runs his hands through his hair. “Well, you and I are here, aren’t we? Escaped from Neverland? Happy, even. Or, at least, getting a taste of it. Seems rather impossible, when you think about it. At least without a little help.”
My heart goes warm with hope, genuine hope, for the first time.
Then I hear Charlie scream.
CHAPTER 19
Victor and I scramble from our seats. Victor is faster and beats me to the end of the hall, where the door to one of the bedrooms is splayed open, Charlie screaming my name from inside the room.
I turn the corner and as soon as I’m through the doorway, my heart falls through my stomach.
Nolan is on the floor. Face down.
“Help me get him turned over,” barks Maddox, and Victor complies, taking Nolan’s lower half as Maddox grabs my husband by the shoulders. They roll him over, then hoist him onto the bed.
