Page 129 of Stealing Tink

The Fate pauses. Traces her hands down the folded tapestry on the dais. “I’ll admit that I was there when the Nomad, as you call him, died for the second time. When the shadow of his spirt pleaded with my Sisters and me for another chance to find you. My Eldest Sister was easily persuaded. She thought it romantic. My Middle Sister craved the drama that would unfold, the violence, even.”

“And you?”

“Farin, wicked as he was, did not begin that way. I remembered him as a child. His insatiable curiosity. The way his innocent laughter was met with blows. Even after all he’d done, I still hoped for something better for him.”

“And me? What did you wish for me?”

“You already loved him by the time he came to us. I didn’t think you would find us granting his request cruel.”

“Even when our story always ended in tragedy?” I practically spit.

The Fate pauses. “I regret that I was…indisposed…for quite a long while. Unable to corral my Sisters’ insatiable love for dramatics.”

I fight the urge to roll my eyes, but the Fate continues. “You see, time works differently in the different realms. The realm in which you first met the Nomad was long, long ago compared to this realm. And the realm you remember hailing from, the world from which Neverland was splintered off and created—I myself lived several lives in that particular world.”

“Is that so? Perhaps we crossed paths.” I say it with a huff, and sardonically, but the Fate goes quiet.

“Yes, in fact, we did. Or, to put it more accurately, you crossed paths with a version of myself.”

I go still, and though my arms are still crossed, I turn around to face the Fate. To examine her shadowy features, the face hidden beneath the shade. “Who are you?”

“Someone who should have befriended you long before I did. Someone who owes a great debt to you.”

Her hands open, and in her palm I glimpse what looks to be a pocket watch made of adamant. It’s ajar, the contents swirling inside, feeding her shadows.

“Wendy?” I gasp.

“In a manner of speaking.”

I go stiff. “All this time, you were a Fate? Then why…” I don’t know where to start asking questions. Why allow Peter to abuse her? Why allow John…

Anger rears up within me, proof that the Fates care nothing for the lives of mortals standing before me, but this strange, shadowed version of Wendy hangs her head.

“I did not know who I was. It was a trick of my Sisters, I’m afraid. In fact, I never wanted to be this. I simply wanted to be Wendy. At least, after someone reminded me why I should come back. Why being Wendy wasn’t such a terrible thing. So I came back, and spent several years as her. And when I close this pocket watch, I’ll be her again. I don’t often open it. Don’t often become…this.” She motions to herself.

“So why now?” I ask.

She cocks her head at me. “It was the strangest thing. There was a knock on my door one day. I was playing with the children, and who was there except for the Queen of Irethden and the Prince Consort. I wasn’t expecting royal visitors, of course, but there they were, adorned so beautifully. They told me they had a message. The Prince Consort—he had not grown up in a royal class, and on his journey to climb the social ladder so he could ask for the princess’s hand, he had met the Nomad. I knew the Nomad, of course, but he had disappeared years before. I hadn’t heard from him, or from my friend since… Well, you remember.”

I remember bumping into her the night of the carnival, my heart going out to her.

“The husband regretted to inform me that the Nomad had died, strangely enough, at the hands of a faerie on their team. He had been shocked by the events, especially after the faerie was swept away in a gust of light. When the man had returned home, sure he’d lost any chance of being with the princess, he’d found in his home enough coin to pay for his medallion. It seems it had been left there since before the man had ever left on his trip with the crew. He entered the competition for her hand in marriage and won—by a landslide, apparently. The previous queen immediately abdicated the throne to her daughter, and the happy couple married and began their reign. The man remembered that with his money, there was a note, a request that, should anything happen to him, this man find me and tell me all that had transpired. It took them a few years to track me down with matters of the throne often taking precedence, but eventually, they traced the rumors all the way to our front door.”

My heart warms at the idea of Acel and the princess finding each other after all.

The Fate—Wendy—looks beyond me, out the window. “I’m not sure when the Nomad realized who I was. When he recognized me. I’ve been mulling it over in my mind, that, and why he didn’t tell me, but I suppose none of that matters. The princess and her husband left, regretting to inform me of the death of my friend at the hand of another. But I knew there had to be a reason the Nomad wanted me specifically to know if something happened, if something went wrong.”

She looks down at the open pocket watch, pondering. “So I dug this up from the grave in which it’s usually buried in my garden, and for the first time in years, opened it. And now, here I am. I must say, it’s not as terrifying as it once was. Before, I didn’t want to be Wendy again. I feared that in opening it, I would abandon my family. Abandon Nolan and the children.” But as it is, I find every second I’m away, I ache even more to get back to them.”

She looks up at me, a question in her silence.

My heart throbs with mingled pain and relief. Wendy got her happy ending. My friend got her happy ending. Somehow, Captain Astor escaped from the Middle Sister’s clutches, and… “You have children?” I whisper.

She nods. “Yes. They opened up a part of my heart I didn’t know existed.”

“I have them too,” I whisper, my voice cracking with my heart.

“I know.”