“No more being compared to Little Miss Goody-Goody. I could finally shine.Me!”
Nothing Lily said made sense. “I never—” Tink began.
“No, you never knew what it was like to be me. Not as pretty, not as smart, not as skilled. Every day my parents compared me to you. Why can’t you be more like Tink? Even the elders just had to go on and on about you and pretend I didn’t even exist!”
Tink dry heaved. They’d always been together. They played together, studied together, shared secrets. Lily was her friend. Her best friend.
“You asked me to go with you. Always. You said you trusted me, wanted me with you.” Any time they snuck away to the human lands, Lily had insisted she come. Who could she trust better than her very best and closest cousin? Who else could she possibly want with her? Tears streamed down Tink’s cheeks.
“Of course.” Lily blew a lock of blonde hair out of her eyes. “If we got caught, you’d make sure we didn’t get in trouble. They justlovedyou so much. And…” She shrugged. “I kinda hoped you’d like it. Maybe stay? Get lost? But you have to do everythingso well.” Her laugh, once so comforting, grated like coarse sand.
Lily wanted her to be cursed and cast out. Her own cousin. Someone she’d loved, given everything for… Tink stared at the ground, unable to look at her. “You never even went back.” Nowonder no one came to look for her. They never knew where she’d gone.
“Oh, of course I did.”
Her head snapped up. “Then…what did you—”
“Say? See, I know you so well. Though apparently you never knew me, did you?” She bared her teeth. “They were distraught. ‘Poor Tinker Bell,’ they said. ‘We must find her at once. We have to help her.’ None of them cared a whit about me.Taken hostageby pirates.” She gasped in feign shock. “Barely escaped in time. I might as well have been invisible. So…I might have given them the wrong location.” She rolled her eyes.
“You—”
“Oh, and told them you sold your dust on purpose andaskedthe pirates to take you away.”
Her body shook. They couldn’t believe that, her parents, the elders. Everyone she’d ever loved…
“They were dubious, of course, but when they couldn’t find you. Well?” She stood and flipped her palms to the sky.
The move shifted something in her. Changed the tide from sorrow to fury. “You bitch.”
Lily straightened, her smirk vanishing.
“I gave everything.”Home. Family. My way of life.“Everything! And you—” Her nails cut into her palms. “You’ll pay for this!”
The other pixie threw her head back and cackled. “Everything?You think this is everything?” she mocked. Lily ripped the pixie bracelet from her arm.
Tink gasped as the beads scattered across the dirt.That shouldn’t…They didn’t break so easily.
“A fake.” Lily shrugged.
“Then you…” She’d cursed herself too.
“Of course. Who wants to stay where they’re not wanted?”
“You’re the one who sold dust to the bartender in Tortuga.” Hook’s icy words cut through her haze of fury.
Lily smirked. “There and half this side of the Cerulean Sea. Had to make sure my story would check out for anyone who came looking.”
Tink shook. That’s why James was confused when she told him she hadn’t sold dust in months. He’d come across Lily’s. It had led him to her.
“Enough.” Blackbeard stomped his way to them. “Ye’ve had yer fun,” he snapped to Lily.
Lily’s nose wrinkled, but she stepped back as Blackbeard circled near. He looked just as he had that awful night: tall, stalky. Jet-black hair tumbled from under a black hat to graze the back of his neck. Streaks of silver highlighted it, especially in his overgrown beard that covered the lower half of his face. From the way he wielded his cutlass with practiced ease, the man was still muscular beneath the thick, black jacket that covered him neck to boot.
“Now.” He twirled his curved blade and walked to James. “We’ve a few things ta…discuss.”
Tink blinked away her tears as she gazed at James where he knelt on the ground a few feet from her. The look on his face said everything: fury at Lily’s betrayal, heartache for her. And a promise: she hadn’t lost everyone who cared for her.
Chapter 32
