He’s lunging for me, his hand reaching out, but I see it before he does. A shadow behind the fallen piano. A barrel of a rifle levelling at my chest.
“DUCK, YOU STUPID GIRL!”
The scream snaps the final thread of my shock. Reality rushes back in—the heat, the noise, the smell. I don’t think. I drop to my knees, the silk of my skirt blooming around me like a target, and I lift the gun.
The crack of the rifle is a sound I’ll hear for the rest of my life.
I’m falling, or the world is, but Peter is faster. He moves like a shadow cast by lightning. He doesn’t just reach for me; he throws his entire weight in front of my body, his charcoal-clad back a shield of meat and bone.
The impact isn’t a clean sound. It’s a wet, heavy thud—the sound of lead meeting life.
Peter’s body jerks, a violent spasm that sends him crashing into me. We go down together, the white tulle of my skirt tangling around his legs like a shroud. Then comes the heat. A hot, rhythmic spray of crimson erupts from his shoulder and chest, painting the pristine lace of my bodice in a steaming red.
“Peter,” I whisper. My voice is gone, a ghost trapped in my throat.
He’s heavy. So heavy. I scramble to sit up, cradling his head in my lap, my gold shackles clashing against the marble as I press my hands to the ragged hole in his suit.The blood is everywhere—it’s slick, it’s iron-sharp, and it’s pouring through my fingers like I’m trying to hold back a river.
He’s still breathing, but it’s a wet, rattling sound. He looks up at me, and through the mask of blood and the soot of the explosion, he smiles. It’s that same dark, smirk that makes me want to kill him and kiss him all at once.
“I told you…” he rasps, a bubble of blood blooming on his lower lip. “I told you I’d die for you, Wendy. I just… I didn’t think it would be so fucking soon, Darling.”
“Don’t you dare,” I sob, the tears finally breaking, hot and jagged as they fall onto his face, washing away the blood in pale tracks. “Don’t you dare leave me in this dress, Peter. Don’t you leave me alone in this house.”
I lean down, my forehead pressing against his, the gold chain of my wrists draping over his neck. The ruby on my finger is pulsing a frantic, panicked red—a heart monitor for a dying king.
“I love you,” I say, the words tearing out of my chest, raw and unbidden. “I love you, you bastard. Please, just stay.”
He lets out a weak, wheezing chuckle that turns into a cough, staining his teeth red. “Of course… you waited…” he breathes, his eyes fluttering but never leaving mine. “You waited… until I was fucking dying… to tell me. Trust you… to have the last word.”
I let out a wet, hysterical laugh through the sobbing, my fingers clutching the fabric of his ruined shirt. “Trust you to be a smartass when you’re bleeding all over my dress. You’re ruining the lace, Peter. It cost more than a house.”
“I’ll buy you… ten more,” he whispers, his hand trembling as he tries to reach up to my face. His strength is failing, his fingers dropping to rest over the centre of my chest, right where he touched me before he left the balcony.
“You have… something of mine, Wendy. Keep it… keep it beating.”
His eyes start to roll back, the light in them flickering like the dying candles above us.
“Peter! Peter, look at me!” I scream, the sound echoing off the blood-stained vault of the ballroom.
Wendy
The silence following Peter’s collapse isn’t empty; it’s a predatory hum. I am still staring at the ragged, pulsing hole in his chest, my hands painted in a sticky, cooling crimson that won’t stop staining the white lace of my gown, when the sound of the ballroom doors being kicked off their hinges shatters the air.
It’s not the North End. This sound is heavier. More disciplined.
A man stalks through the smoke, his silhouette a sharp, lethal blade against the orange glow of the fires. He isn’t wearing a suit; he’s wearing a long, midnight-black coat that flares behind him like a cape of ink. His left hand is tucked into his pocket, but his right—gloved and steady—is levelled at the room with a massive, silver-plated .45.
“Hale,” the man says, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that carries an accent of old money and older sins.
I look up, my tears blurring the sight of him. This isJames Hook. I’ve heard the whispers in the dark corners of Peter’s estate—the man who runs the docks with a cold, mechanical cruelty that makes even Peter’s Council stay up at night.
He stops three feet from us, his gaze sweeping over the carnage, the shattered chandeliers, and finally, the girl in the ruined wedding dress cradling the dying King. He looks at Peter, then at me, and his eyes—cold, blue, and utterly devoid of pity—land on the gold shackles at my wrists.
“Well,” Hook murmurs, the corner of his mouth twitching into a dark, humourless smirk. “It seems the boy finally found a game he couldn’t win.”
“Help him,” I choke out, my voice cracking as I pull Peter’s limp head closer to my chest. “Please. You’re… you’re his ally. You have the ships, you have the doctors?—”
“Ally is a strong word, Darling,” Hook says, stepping closer until the shadow of his coat falls over us both. He holsters his gun with a click that sounds like a guillotine. He looks at me, and for a second, the “good girl” in me wants to shrink away from the sheer, icy authority radiating off him. “But I have a debt to Peter Hale, and I’m a man who hates being in the red.”
