He looks back at his men—shadowy figures with “Lost Boy” patches on their tactical vests—and nods. “Pick him up. Carefully. If he dies on my floor, I’ll have to listen to his ghost whine about the bad form of it all.”
As his men swarm forward to pry Peter from my arms, Hook leans down, his gloved hand catching my chin just like Peter’s used to. He doesn’t squeeze, but thethreat is there—a cold, mirror-image of the possession I’ve spent weeks drowning in.
“You look like a masterpiece of misery, Wendy,” he whispers, his eyes tracing the red pulse of the tracker on my finger. “But the fire is coming for this house. If you want to keep your King, you’re going to have to learn to walk through the smoke without crying.”
The words hit me like a physical blow—a echo of Peter’s leash, but delivered with Hook’s frozen precision.
I don’t cry this time. I stand up, my gold chains clinking against the marble, my white dress a bloody flag of surrender as I follow the men carrying Peter toward the dark.
I look up at the man standing over us, and the breath catches in my throat. This isn’t just James Hook, the phantom of the docks. He’s a nightmare made of leather and cold steel. As he reaches down to adjust the heavy collar of his coat, the light from the burning tapestries catches on his left arm.
There is no hand.
In its place is a curved, wicked shard of sharpened chrome, a prosthetic that looks more like a claw than a tool. It’s elegant and horrific, reflecting the flickering orange of the ballroom fires. I can see my own distorted, tear-streaked face in the polished metal of the hook.
“Your… your hand,” I breathe, my voice trembling as I tighten my grip on Peter’s cooling body.
Hook glances down at the blade, then back at me, his expression one of bored amusement. “A minor disagreement with a clock and a very hungry predator, Darling. Don’t stare. It’s bad form, even for a girl whose wedding was just crashed by mortars.”
“Save him,” I beg, my fingers digging into the charcoal wool of Peter’s shoulders, my tears dripping onto the blood-soaked marble. “Please, James. He’s dying. Look at the blood—there’s too much blood. You have the resources. You have the men. Just save him.”
Hook lets out a low, mocking titter that sets my teeth on edge. He paces a small circle around us, his heavy boots crunching over the shattered remains of the $50,000 wedding cake.
“Look at you,” he muses, gesturing with the hook toward my shackled wrists and the weeping red ring on my finger. “Petrified, bleeding, chained like a prize poodle to a man who literally branded you so he could find you in the dark. And here you are, weeping over him like he’s the second coming of Christ. It’s fascinating, really. The Stockholm syndrome in this room is thick enough to choke on.”
“He’s my husband,” I snap, the rage flickering through the grief.
“He’s a sociopath with a God complex, Wendy. You’re falling in love with the cage because you’ve forgotten what the sky looks like.”
Suddenly, his head snaps toward the balcony. Without even looking, he spins, the long tail of his coat whipping through the air. His right hand pulls a second pistol from a shoulder holster, and he fires.
CRACK.
The assassin who had been crawling through the shattered glass doesn’t just fall; his head disappears in a spray of grey and crimson, the force of the hollow-point round painting the nearest mirror in a fresh, visceral coat of brain matter. Hook doesn’t even blink.He just watches the body twitch on the floor, the smell of burnt hair and gunpowder filling the space between us.
He turns back to me, ready to deliver another stinging barb, but he stops.
The wit dies on his lips.
I’ve stopped screaming. I’m leaning over Peter, my lips pressed against his sweaty, ash-covered forehead. I’m whispering to him, my eyes shut tight, my bound hands gently stroking the gore-matted hair away from his temples. I’m cradling him with a tenderness that is so pure, so utterly at odds with the carnage surrounding us, that the air seems to still.
I don’t care about the blood on my dress. I don’t care about the hook. I am pouring every ounce of my soul into the man who broke me.
Hook stares. For the first time, the icy mask of the pirate cracks. His blue eyes widen, a flicker of something like genuine shock—or perhaps a memory of something he lost—crossing his face. He’s taken aback by the sheer, devastating weight of my devotion.
“Well,” he whispers, his voice losing its mocking edge for a split second. “Perhaps the boy was right about you after all.”
The moment is shattered by a sound like a thousand windows breaking at once.
“CONTACT!” one of Hook’s men roars.
It happens with a terrifying, clinical precision. A flash-bang grenade detonates at the far end of the ballroom, white light blinding me, a high-pitched ring deafening the world.
I’m reaching for Peter, my fingers screaming for thetouch of his skin, but suddenly, the floor beneath me isn’t marble. It’s nothing.
A heavy, industrial-strength cable drops from the jagged hole in the ceiling where a mortar hit. Two men in black tactical gear, masks hiding their faces, swing down like spiders. They don’t go for Hook. They don’t go for the dying King.
They go for the prize.
