by Marie Hall
He must have finally decided to play nice, because he was being good. Just rubbing her neck in soothing circles and it actually did begin to calm her. Trisha closed her eyes, losing herself in the touch, thinking of nothing.
The annelid began to move, and Hook was right. It was soft. Actually, it wasn’t bad at all. With eyes closed, it was easy to imagine it was the world’s smallest kitten.
“Now,” he nuzzled her hair, “pet it slowly, it must be lulled to weave its dream.”
Hypnotized by the sound of his voice and the movements of the glowworm’s furry little body, she played with the superfine fuzz. Seconds later, an image began to form in her mind, blurry at first, like a scrambled cable channel coming slowly into focus until the colors were rich and the image vibrant.
It was daylight, bright, with hardly a cloud in the sky. Birds were swooping and diving and she was resting on a large, hot rock—sunbathing. She loved sunbathing, and could so rarely do it. She hardly ever came to the Upper world. Maiven hated for her to leave the realm, said the humans could not be trusted, that her powers were only strong beneath the waves.
But it was only sunbathing, surely her grandmother worried too much.
Rubbing her hands down her pearl pink scales, she smiled as waves slapped against her rock. Nixie had chased her for hours today. It’d been fun, but now she was exhausted and needed a rest. Maybe if she just closed her eyes for a second she’d feel better.
She had no idea how long she’d lain there, but something jerked her awake. The sense that something, or someone watched. Heart trapped in her throat, she sat up with a cry of alarm.
A pair of black eyes stared down at her. Eyes as dark as volcanic rock, studded with flecks of silver. He was the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen.
Sircco had proposed to her last night, she loved him as a brother and had accepted out of a sense of love and fealty. She was to be his consort. So why in that moment could she not even remember his features? All she could see was the onyx eyes rimmed in starlight, trapped by his gaze as a dragonfly in amber.
Stubble dusted his hard, square jaw. And when he smiled the world seemed suddenly brighter. “What is your name, maiden fair?”
“Talia,” she whispered, unable to say more, to even think.
“Talia,” he leaned over the rail of his great ship, “you do not know me yet, but someday you will, and you will fall as madly in love with me as I have with you just now.”
His eyes, his smile, they were all hers, had always been and always would be.
Then the vision shifted again. This time she’d crawled upon the shore waiting for her lover to arrive. Tomorrow was to be their wedding. All of Seren would attend. Plucking at a water flower along the bank, she smiled and held it to her nose. Its lemony scent made her hum. She was happy, deliriously, wonderfully happy.
“Who are you?” a tiny voice snapped her from her reverie.
Startled, she sat up. A young boy with dirt smudged cheeks and greasy hair floated in front of her. Dressed in green tights and a dark green holey shirt, he looked a fright and in desperate need of bathing. Holding onto a small dagger, he flicked at its sharp tip with his thumbnail. His eyes were wide and filled with a warning light.
An immediate sense of unease filled her bones. Why was the boy looking at her in that way?
“Who are you?” he asked again. “I see you cavorting with that mercenary Hook and I don’t like it.”
She clenched her jaw. “What is he to you?”
James had never mentioned this boy to her. Who was this child that seemed to know her lover?
“He stole something from me,” the boy sneered, “something valuable and precious. I want it back.”
What was this child talking about? Talia knew Hook was a pirate and knew he looted, as any proper pirate should, but even James had scruples and she’d never seen him steal from a boy. James had only ever taken from those who had too much. Those who could afford to share.
“My pearl. I fished it out of the sea; it was a golden, magic pearl that could grant one wish. He stole it from me. It is the only one like it and I want it back!” he yelled, advancing slowly as he eyed her throat.
Gripping the chain around her neck, the one with a golden pearl dangling off it, she shook her head. “Child, I am of the sea, golden pearls have no inherent magic to them, and if you look hard enough you’ll find another. But he did not steal this from you. I found this.”
She remembered it well. It had been the first time they’d made love. She’d felt so overwhelmed by the beauty of the moment that she’d swam toward a coral bed she’d known housed the precious golden pearls. Bringing it to him, he’d made love to her again before lovingly piercing the tip of the fat pearl. Threading a chain through it, he’d slipped it around her neck and told her a pearl so beautiful deserved to be worn by someone more deserving.
It was the day she’d fallen madly, irrevocably in love with her Hook.
“No, boy,” she shook her head harder. “This is mine. I do not know where your pearl has gone off to, but I promise you that—”
“No!” he snapped and pointed at her throat. “Do you think I wouldn’t recognize my treasure? Give it to me now.” He stomped his foot in the air.
Swallowing hard, glancing over her shoulder, she could only pray that James would arrive soon. This child terrified her.
“No,” she whispered, softer now. “This is my gift.”
Light blazed in his suddenly inhuman eyes and a snarl curled his upper lip. “Tell you what, maiden,” he flipped the blade in his hand back and forth, “you can keep the pearl, if you play a game with me.”
This was a terrible idea; she knew it, to the bottom of her soul. “What game, boy?” She clenched the pearl for strength.
“Chicken. Spread your arms and lay very, very still.”
Fear made her mouth dry and her voice weak and scratchy. “Why?”
“Because I’ve been practicing,” he smirked, “and I want to see how good I am. I won’t hurt you, I swear it.”
“No.” She shook her head, scooting back on her bottom, digging her fingers into the sand as she retreated toward the safety of the water. In the water she was strong, and fast. But the tide had pulled back and where ten minutes ago the waves had lapped at her tail, it now seemed impossibly far away.
“Don’t move.” He sneered, moving so fast that in seconds he was upon her, hands gripping her shoulders as he dragged her back to where she’d been.
She screamed, bucking and twisting, trying to push him off her. But the child was covered in fairy dust and unbelievably strong. He simply gripped her tighter, almost lifting her off the ground. He tossed her none to gently to the packed sand, making her lose her breath.
Yanking a rope from off his belt, he wrapped it around her wrists and then bound them to a rock above her head. Panic threaded through her head, filled her eyes with tears.
“Please,” she pleaded, “release me. You can have the pearl, whatever you want.”
He crowed like a rooster, and shook his head. “I don’t want it anymore. I want to play.” Reaching into a back pocket he withdrew an apple. “Take this in your hand and do not move.”
She tried to curl her fingers under, but the strength of the bindings wouldn’t let her budge an inch.
“Hold this.” He shoved it into her half curled fists.
“No.” She tried to toss it away, but there was no momentum behind her swing, it simply rolled to the ground.
Growling, he grabbed the apple and spread her fingers manually and none too gently. She sobbed. “Release me, boy.”
“Hold it right, or I shall fillet you like the fish you are,” he spat.
Trembling, confused, she bit her lip. “Why are you doing this?”
“Ugh,” he sighed dramatically, “I will not hurt you, wench. Hold the apple, I will throw the dagger and pierce its sweet flesh, that is all.”
“But the blade might tear through my hand.” Couldn’t he understan
d how dangerous and stupid this was? Didn’t he realize or care that he’d hurt her?
He shrugged. “It will heal. You stole my pearl, I deserve recompense.”
Threat still ringing in her ear, she held onto the apple all the while her jaw shook violently. She didn’t dare move or breathe too hard. The maiden healer could fix her hands if he cut her. Trying to relax through the panic churning through her gut, she held very still.
He sailed into the sky, framed by a shaft of sunlight. She could barely make him out. Squeezing her eyes shut, she turned her head and prayed to the goddess that the boy’s throw was true.
A women’s scream pierced the absolute stillness. “Peter Pan, no!”
Snapping open her eyes, Talia saw the world move in slow motion. A tiny fairy flew at them just as Peter looked up, his arm already in the process of releasing the blade. And seeing that come at her, she could no longer hold still. She rolled to the side, dropping the apple.
The silver wink of metal tumbled through the sky and then there was fire.
Sucking in a sharp breath, Talia looked at her stomach with eyes gone huge in her face. Blood welled like a blossoming petal upon her lily white skin.
Shock kept the pain at bay, all she could do was stare.
And then time spun forward.
“I didn’t mean to,” Peter wailed, dropping by her side. “Tinker, help. I didn’t mean to, you startled her. Help her, Tink. Please. I didn’t mean to…”
A feeling of weightlessness took over her body. Talia closed her eyes, she was so tired.
“Oh no,” Tink moaned, “What have you done, Peter? What have you done?”
Talia knew she should feel pain, knew it should hurt more than it did. But it didn’t, and she was grateful. A maiden’s body was fashioned of the sea, and to it her body would return.
Her final thought was of James and how much she loved him. Then she felt it, the water. Her limbs were turning soft and cool.
But she felt something else too. The tingling ripple of fairy energy. A second before her body disintegrated into the water it once was a tiny hand reached inside her and pulled her out.
After that, there was no more….
Suddenly the vision blurred and tears choked Trisha’s vision. She needed a second. Now she knew the truth, what’d really happened to Talia, what Peter had actually done and why Hook hated him so much.
Lifting her hand, she handed the worm back to its rock.
The memory might be gone, but not the overwhelming, all-encompassing warmth of Talia’s love for James. It breathed inside Trisha, filled her every pore and crevice, every dark part of her radiated with it.
“What did you see?” Hook asked, touching the small of her back with his big, warm hand.
“You loved her,” she sniffed, wiping her nose with the back of her hand, “and she loved you. I saw her, Hook. I saw, Talia.” She covered her eyes with her hands, feeling suddenly raw and exposed. “I saw what Peter did.”
He went still. “What did he do?”
Looking into his eyes she debated what she should say, how much to reveal. Did he really need to know everything? Should she tell him how cruel her last moments had been, how the terror had engulfed her, made her unable to even defend herself. Was that fair to him? Talia was dead and him knowing all this would never bring her back. Would only enflame the hate worse. Right or wrong, she decided she cared for him too much to share every single, awful detail of Talia’s final seconds.
“It was an accident. He should never have tossed that blade, but he didn’t mean to kill her.”
“I’m glad to hear it. This doesn’t mean I’ve forgiven or forgotten, but it helps to know he hadn’t meant to steal her from me.”
She covered his cheek with her palm and in the stillness she listened to her heart.
From the moment she’d seen Talia, a dam had broken through her soul. What she’d been denying, what others had constantly pointed out. She cared for him.
No, it was more than that.
He’d filled the broken pieces inside, the bond they shared, the past they’d once lived together…she may never remember specifics, but she felt it all. “I…I…love you,” she choked out and then shook her head. “I’m so confused. I feel all these emotions and I’m scared that maybe they aren’t mine. That they belong to her.”
Grabbing her hands, he pressed them tight to his chest. She looked into his face, seeing him as Talia had, big and brawny and so unbelievably beautiful and her heart shattered.
“Little bird.” He leaned in, then pressed a kiss to her temple, the tip of her nose, and finally her lips.
It felt so right; honestly it had from the beginning. She’d fought it because she hadn’t understood it, and still didn’t.
Love was foreign to her, something to fear, not embrace—something to push away and keep at a distance. But Talia had reveled in it and now she realized, so had she. When he’d kissed her, moved inside her, touched her body…he’d been talking, speaking the words her heart had feared to recognize.
She sighed into his mouth as he gently pulled back.
“I did love her. Do still. A part of me always will, because she taught me how to love. I was a cold man, Trishelle. Before I met her there was nothing but boozing and fighting and women, she taught me it was okay to be more. That loving someone didn’t mean you had to lose yourself. And since she’s been gone, I’ve not felt that kind of passion for another.”
She clenched her jaw, nodding, refusing to accept the fact that his words actually stung. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not in three days, it was impossible. Improbable. Absurd. Ridiculous. And yet…it had happened. Sometime between the first denial and the tenth, she’d fallen as hard for this man as the mermaid had, and the worst of it was, it’d happened so slowly she hadn’t even recognized the symptoms for what they were until it was too late.
Refusing to let him see how those words hurt, she smiled. He wiped the tears from her eyes with his thumb and said, “Until you. I knew the moment I’d set eyes on Talia that she’d be mine and I knew it with you.”
Trembling with joy, with confusion, she clenched his hand. “What if this isn’t real? What if I wake up tomorrow and everything changes? It’s only been three days, Hook. It doesn’t happen, this doesn’t happen.”
“Doesn’t it? Even in your world, are there not stories of lovers marrying after only knowing one another for a few days?”
She laughed, not worrying about wiping the tears up anymore. There were too many to check. “Yes, but…those are fairytales.”
His smile was sure and deep. “And are we not in one now? Someday, Trishelle, there will be a story written about us. This is the land of stories. Stay with me.”
This was so stupid, so reckless, and she didn’t even know why she was giving this serious thought.
This had only been three days. But Danika and Betty both had told her repeatedly, a day in Kingdom was a month on Earth. And it had felt like months. She’d keenly felt the length of each day. Time was different here. Each day had felt like an eternity and in the time she’d spent with him, she’d learned one indisputable truth… Captain James Hook was a good man. And he was hot.
Like, super crazy hot. And the hook, her stomach curled, she was positively addicted to that thing, the way he played her body with it. Strummed her like an instrument… Oh yeah, she was one hundred percent lost.
Her, the girl who changed out guys the way another girl changed out purses had finally found a man who made her want it. Love.
The thought was terrifying as hell.
He must have sensed her indecision, because he kissed her lips. A quick peck, nothing intense, but it held a wealth of meaning. Wrapping his hooked arm around her waist, he whispered against her lips.
“I am sorry for your sister, and I think the bastard deserves to rot in hell for it, but I swear to you, I am not him, Trishelle Page. I would honor you, make you the other half of me. Your pain will be my pain, your joy, mine, you
r happiness, mine. All of you, everything, all mine and treasured above everything else.”
“I’m so scared,” she whispered, “scared that this will end, scared that you’ll wake up one day and realize I’m not her after all. That you’ll regret this and I don’t think I could take that. I’ve never given my heart to anyone.”
Bringing her cold fingers to his lips, he kissed each and every one. “Give it to me and trust.”
Trust, she was so bad at that. Trisha liked to believe that she wasn’t really jaded, but she could see now how she’d always doomed any relationship to fail from the get go, because trust was something she’d taught herself not to do. And she’d always said it was to honor her sister, but in the end, she saw it was really because she was a big, fat coward.