Tink’s eyes watered. How could it be? And here of all places. She stepped toward her cousin, ready to race to her side and throw her arms around her, but Hook blocked her path with an outstretched arm.
“Let me pass.” Tink shoved at him.
He edged farther in front of her. “Could be a trick. Magic.”
“It’s Lily!”
“Tink.” Her cousin raced forward, stumbling through brush. “You’re here. It’s really you!”
Smee and the others closed in around them, weapons raised. Lily slid to a halt, nearly falling.
“Stop!” Tink yelled, finally shoving past Hook. “Don’t hurt her!” She sprang into the jungle, heedless of anything but her cousin. It was her. Those clear blue eyes, her lithe build—though the tight breeches and billowing shirt, so like her own, were new. Even her wings, with their slightly green hue, were just as she remembered. It was her, the cousin who’d been at her side since they’d first learned to fly as children. It had to be her.
“Oh, Tink!” Lily threw her arms around her, pulling her into a crushing hug when they finally met among the underbrush.
Hints of citrus and jasmine teased her senses as she leaned into her cousin’s embrace. It was her. A sob cracked from Tink’s throat without warning. Impossibly, somehow, it was her. She was alive. She was all right. But…
Tink pulled back. “Why are you here?”
She should be home.Safe. Happy. Tink had given everything for that.
“Why areyouhere? I’ve been looking everywhere.” Lily’s gaze shot up before she gasped and jumped back.
Tink felt him before she saw him. James loomed just behind her. Tink twirled around on the balls of her feet, lips pursed, arms outstretched. “Don’t hurt her.”
James frowned. She didn’t fail to notice his fingertips drumming on the hilt of the sword sheathed at his side. “I know you want it to be her…”
“I won’t hear it,” she snapped. “It’s her. Real as anything.”
“Iamreal,” Lily said. Tink didn’t even need to see the wrinkle of her nose or her hands on her hips to know her cousin stared down the pirate in front of them.
“And just here, on the Shrouded Isles, where no one goes, and right where—” He cut himself off.
He didn’t want to share the details of their purpose with her?Fine. But she sure wouldn’t let him send her away, tie her up, or any of the other nonsense she could see brewing behind his pinched brow and stiff jaw.
“I can explain that,” Lily said. “If you’ll let me.”
“Of course he will.” Tink glanced past him to the rest of their companions. “They all will.” Something slithered past, stirring up the brush at her feet. Tink screeched, jumping toward James, who had the decency to pull her close.
Lily sidestepped away. “Perhaps at my camp?”
Chapter 25
Hook
Another pixie.
Tink’s cousin.In the bloody, weird forest. On an island everyone avoids like a plague.
None of it made sense. Oh, she looked real enough. Could have been Tink’s sister with their similar build and coloring. But there was something in her face, a twist to her smile, a glint in her eyes, that repulsed him. Too much like the woman he craved, and yet nothing like her.
The smoke belonged to a campfire she’d lit, the center point in a small clearing that sported a rough lean-to and a few half-rotted logs his crew attempted to use for stools—attemptedbeing the key word. Smee tumbled to the ground the moment he sat on one. Half the side gave way, spilling him into the rotting leaves coating the ground. Nearly everything was damp from the foggy mist. How she got the fire lit was a mystery.
Lily clung to Tink, their fingers twined. She tugged her down on the one good log. “I was so scared,” Lily said. “You weretalking to that big, burly man, so I started talking to this handsome redhead. Before I knew it, I’d had too much to drink, and I was on a ship. There were all these men—”
“No.” Tink clutched Lily’s hand in hers. “They didn’t…did they?” Her face flushed in a rush, the way only a pixie’s can.
“No, no, they were nice actually.” She shook her head.
