Unhooked

by Lisa Maxwell

  Already I can detect the faint sent of mold and rot. Rowan seems to finally have realized what’s happening. His hand grabs mine and pulls me back, farther into the cavern, away from the Queen and her threats. Away from the Dark Ones.

  Behind the Queen, the shadows have started to climb up the walls, slinking and creeping until they are as tall and wide as a man. But the Queen doesn’t notice until the sound of the rushing wind starts to rustle and echo through the cavern.

  When she realizes what is happening, her mouth twists into a snarl. “No!” she roars, and the cavern trembles and vibrates with the volume and tenor of her voice.

  Behind her, though, the Dark One is fully formed. Its inky black wings unfurl and beat in a steady rhythm that causes a gust of wind to course through the cavern, whipping my hair and clothes.

  It isn’t alone. All along the cavern walls, more shadows creep and bleed into one another, gathering and swelling. The whole cave is saturated with the smell of them—the dampness of rot, the swirling shuffle of wind rustling. Soon the darkness is rising, climbing up to our knees, up farther then, our waists.

  The Queen’s eyes meet mine, and there is a look of such pure hate and rage in them that I gasp. “You,” she snarls, pointing at me. “You have done this.” Her eyes are wild. “You dare try to rise against us?” She lets out a long, threatening hiss. Suddenly Rowan’s arms fall away from me.

  Startled, I turn and see that the steel hand Fiona had gifted Rowan with so long ago is at his throat—it looks like he’s trying to choke himself. The steel fingers grip, squeezing until the skin under them is red and his face had gone ashen. His other hand is tight on the steel wrist, trying to pull away, but the hand won’t release its grip.

  The vicious glee that has curved the Queen’s terrible mouth tells me she is the one doing this. She has taken the steel fist that is now so much a part of him, and she has turned it against him. I try to help him pull the hand away, but even I can feel how impossible a task it is. The metal fist is too strong, and the hand is too tight around his throat.

  He shakes his head, grimacing against the strain of trying to save himself, but his face has gone deathly pale, and the edges of his lips are beginning to turn an unhealthy shade of blue. His eyes are starting to get an unfocused look about them that has me moving before I’ve realized what I’ve decided to do.

  I press my hands into the wall of the cavern so firmly, I swear my nails are carving out pieces of Neverland’s heart. I feel for the pulse of the world beneath my fingers. It’s erratic now, a jangling rhythm that feels as unsteady and unmoored as I do. I close my eyes and I demand.

  When the walls of the cavern begin to vibrate beneath my palms, the Queen’s eyes go wide in surprise. I can’t stop my own vicious smile as she stares at me. As the caverns start to shake and stones fall from the ceiling. The world quakes at my demand, and I feel its pulse singing beneath my hands. Its pulse matches my own—wild and erratic. Answering to me. I focus all my pain, all my rage into the rock under my fingertips, and I demand Neverland heed my call.

  It happens quickly. The ceiling of the cavern cracks with a deafening sound, and rock pours down over our heads. Rowan is there in an instant, sheltering me with his own body, and I can’t be sure if I see a flash of light or if I only imagine it before the cavern collapses around us.

  • • •

  In the silence after the dust settles, I can feel Rowan’s weight heavy on top of me, his chest rising and falling with unsteady breaths. “Are you alive?” I whisper, knowing the answer but needing to hear it from his lips.

  “Aye, lass,” he says with a groan. “But I’m not sure for how long.” Then I hear his dark, wheezing chuckle tickling at my ear. “You brought the whole bleedin’ place down about our ears.”

  I shift a bit so his weight isn’t crushing me quite so much. “She was killing you,” I whisper into the darkness, stating the obvious. It’s the only explanation I can manage. “We have to get out of here,” I say.

  He’s silent for a long, tense moment, as though he’s still waiting for some other explanation. But I don’t offer anything more.

  It takes us a while to free ourselves from the heaviest of the rubble. The cavern is barely the size of a small room now, but there’s still some air moving through it, so even though we can’t see past our own noses, we know there must be a way out—if we can just find it.

  Rowan makes another torch, and we find the source of the air not much longer after that. With a little effort, we move enough of the boulders away to work free and crawl through the small opening to find ourselves in another cavern.

  It’s dark here as well, but though we listen and wait, there is no rustling. No smell of old leaves. “Do you think she made it out of there?”

  The torchlight flickers over the sharp lines of his face. He looks even more drawn, even more worn-down than before. “Aye. The Fey have a way of getting out of tight spots when they need to.” Frustration flattens his mouth.

  “Then we have to go back to the fortress,” I say, the dreadful certainty of it like a stone in my stomach. “We have to warn the others.”

  His eyes are pools of fury and pain when they meet mine. “If it’s not already too late.”

  In that new world, the boy was always happiest right before. When his blood ran cold, when his senses went dull to anything but the moment in front of him. The moment when chance would, by some horrible arithmetic, select the one who could not outrun death. Only then did he feel himself something more than a sack of skin and bone and endless breath. . . .

  Chapter 37

  THE TUNNEL EVENTUALLY ENDS AT a place where a small river rushes along underground. A narrow ledge clings to the side of the cavern wall.

  “I know this place,” Rowan says, his otherwise exhausted face brightening in relief.

  “You do?”

  “We’re just below the fortress.” He searches the roof of the tunnel. “If we follow this, it will take us to one of the older parts of Pan’s fortress.”

  Hope sparks in my chest. “Can you get us back there?”

  “Aye.” He scrubs a hand through his rumpled hair. “Though I’m not sure what good it will do.”

  “If we can get them out before . . .” But I can’t finish. Before what? Before the Queen takes back her land? Before she kills us all?

  “We can try,” he says, taking me by the hand and twining his fingers with mine to stop the futility of my thoughts.

  We inch along the narrow ledge with the river rushing beneath us, until we reach a point where another tunnel breaks off and leads back and away from the water. We move faster then, and soon we make it to the place in the fortress where the different tunnels come together. From the sound of the noises echoing in the distance, we’re too late. The attack has already begun.

  By the time we make it to the Great Hall, the entire space is bathed in an eerie silence. The floor is littered with fallen boys. I don’t know if they are Pan’s or Rowan’s, but it doesn’t matter anymore. None of them move. Each of their small bodies is mottled with dark lines, like cracked porcelain, and wherever they’ve landed, parts of them have broken away, shattered.

  I take a shuddering breath as I comprehend the destruction and the loss. Above, the door near the ceiling stands open, but no light shines from within it. I don’t think Olivia would be up there, alone in the dark, anyway. She’d be with Pan. I can only hope Fiona and the Queen haven’t already found them.

  “We should split up. I need to find Olivia, and you need find any of your crew who might be left.” He starts to interrupt, but I keep going. “We can’t do all of that together, not if we have any hope of getting out of here. After that . . .” Well, I can’t think that far ahead.

  Rowan frowns. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea, lass.”

  I pull my hand out of his. “I’m not helpless, Rowan. I can bring the whole damn place down if I have to. I’m going to check the gardens,” I tell him before he can argue. It’
s where I found Olivia last time, and it’s the only other place I know she might be.

  “And then what?” he asks, his jaw clenching in frustration.

  “I don’t know.” His expression is tight, and I know he feels the same fear, the same pull toward hopelessness that I do. “But I’m not just going to stand here and wait for the Queen to find us. Are you?”

  He runs his metal hand through his hair in clear frustration, but then his shoulders slump in surrender. “No.” To my relief, amusement tugs at the corners of his mouth. “Do what you must, but don’t be long. I’ll meet you back at where the tunnels split off.” His fingers brush against my cheek. “If I don’t arrive, don’t be waiting for me. Follow the second from the right, until it reaches the river. From there you should be able to find your way well enough out of this place.”

  I give him a sure nod and turn to go, but he snags my hand and pulls me back.

  “Try not to die, aye?” And then his mouth is on mine, fierce and demanding and so full of wanting that my knees go weak.

  He pulls away before I’ve had nearly enough, and with a roguish grin, he’s off.

  I hesitate only a second to gather my wits before I run as well, taking off through the passage to the far right—the one that leads to the gardens and, I hope, to Olivia. I make my way quickly, my breath coming hard as I run for the enormous cavern where I last left her, hoping with each step that she will be there. Hoping that I find her before Fiona or the Queen does.

  When the tunnel opens itself into the gardens, I stop short. All around me, the once-blooming maze of flowers and trees are unbearably alive. If I thought they were beautiful before, it was nothing compared to what I’m seeing now. Their leaves are more lush, their colors more riotous. And they seem so much more menacing than they did before.

  But I hear singing. The soft notes of a familiar voice carry to me over the silence of the space, and I won’t be stopped.

  “Olivia,” I whisper, relief flooding through me.

  I pick my way slowly through the overgrown brambles. The vines make way when they can, lumbering aside with unsteady progress, but mostly I have to climb over or through them. When I finally reach the center of the gardens, I’m scratched and bleeding in more than one place.

  Olivia is sitting on a pile of fur near a small stream of water, alone in the center of a small clearing. She’s seemingly unaware of the danger she’s in. Her fingertips are stained dark from the blood drawn by the thorns of the dangerous-looking blooms she’s still weaving into garlands.

  “Olivia?”

  She looks up at the sound of my voice, but when she finds me standing at the edge of the clearing, her expression doesn’t change.

  “Come on, Olivia. We have to go.” I approach her slowly, because I don’t want to startle her, my hand out, beckoning.

  Her brows draw together, but she doesn’t move.

  At least she doesn’t run.

  “Olivia? It’s me, remember?” I coax softly. “Gwen. Your friend?” I take another step into the clearing and then another.

  She looks so different. Her once soft green eyes look hard and uncertain. They almost seem to glow from within, and her hair hangs in ragged disarray, an unruly halo. She looks as wild and untamed as the island itself, and if I didn’t know she was human, I would never have believed I’m the one with the Fey blood.

  I take a couple more steps into the clearing. “You need to come with me now. We need to get away from here.” I hold out my hand like I would to a skittish animal.

  But she doesn’t show any sign of moving. She just tugs at one of her long ragged locks as she studies me with wary eyes—and even with the wildness, I know my Olivia—the real Olivia—is still in there, somewhere beneath the surface.

  “Gwen,” she says slowly, cautiously.

  “That’s right.” I take another slow, cautious step. “I’m Gwen. And you’re Olivia, and we need to get out of here.”

  But her eyes are narrowed. “No.” She stands, circling away from me, and there’s a wariness to the way she moves.

  “It’s not safe, Liv,” I say, trying another appeal. “You don’t understand how dangerous it is here.”

  “Pan will protect me.” Her voice is steady, entreating, like she wants or needs me to believe.

  I follow her progress, circling closer so I keep the water to her back, to block her escape. “If we don’t get out of here, we are both going to die.”

  She shakes her head. “I’m not leaving.”

  But she isn’t the only one who can be stubborn. I step closer, determined to reach her. I hope that maybe my touch might bring her back to herself, but a rustling from the brush to my left has me pulling up short.

  “You heard her, Gwendolyn. Olivia doesn’t want to leave.” Pan’s voice is a low, dangerous song, every bit as tempting as it always was. Every bit as deadly. As he steps into the clearing, those crystalline eyes of his are as turbulent as the sea. “Olivia wishes to stay here with me.” A deadly smile curves his lips.

  “You can’t have her.” I try to put myself between Pan and Olivia, but Olivia is faster. She easily sidesteps around me and runs to Pan’s side.

  “I’m staying with him. You have no idea what danger we’re in—the danger you put us in—Pan is the only one who can stop it.”

  I stop short at her words. “The danger I put you in?”

  “Yes, Gwendolyn,” Pan says darkly. “You released the Queen, did you not?”

  My stomach sinks. He knows what I’ve done, and he understands just how dangerous things have become for all of us. “I wanted to get us home,” I say. “You weren’t going to take me.”

  “Yet here you remain,” he says darkly. “Did you truly believe the Queen would take you back? Fiona used you, and you were too stupid to see it, ” he practically spits.

  For a heartbeat, I feel the truth in his words. He’s right. I freed the Queen and put us all in terrible danger. . . . But then the absurdity of that thought startles me, and I shake away my own cloying sense of guilt and focus.

  I look at Olivia, who is clinging to Pan. “You can’t listen to him, Liv. He’s the reason we were brought here. You think he wants you?” I ask when her mouth turns down defiantly. “You’re nothing to him. He wanted me all along. You were just an innocent bystander.”

  “You’re wrong.” Her voice is as stubborn and unyielding as it has ever been. It is the voice that convinced my mom to let her come to London, the voice that convinced me we really were friends. Even though the words are all wrong, that stubbornness gives me hope—Olivia is still there somewhere, below the madness of Neverland.

  “I’m afraid she’s not, pet.” With a quick motion, Pan locks an arm around Olivia and holds his dagger to her throat. “You see, Olivia, I’ve been searching for one like Gwendolyn for some time now. I’m sorry, my dear, but lovely as you might be, you’re nothing compared to what she can offer me.”

  Confusion and hurt rocket through Olivia’s expression. “Let her go,” I growl through clenched teeth.

  His blue eyes appraise me with a nauseating combination of excitement and anticipation. “No, I don’t think I will. Your dear friend provided the incentive for you to leave Rowan’s ship, and I think she’ll provide just the incentive I require for you to see things my way.” He smiles then, a carefree boyish grin that makes my blood run cold. “I won’t allow the Queen to win, Gwendolyn. Not after all I’ve done to make this world my own.

  “Have you any idea what it is to discover the only mother you’ve ever known hates you for what you are?” He smiles then. “The Queen thought I was weak and insignificant. She believed man to be less than Fey, but it was I who defeated her. I, a mere human, who remade this world for my own pleasure. . . . Do you truly believe I’ve come so close to finally being able to destroy her only to let you stand in my way?

  “I will not allow all I’ve done to be undone, and I won’t allow you to get away from me again, Gwendolyn.” He presses the knife until it den
ts the tender skin at the base of Olivia’s throat. “It would be such a waste if I had to kill this girl just to make you understand reason.”

  “Please.” I close my eyes, trying to think. Trying to find a way out of this. “Please, just let her go.”

  “Not until you surrender to me completely,” he taunts. “Not until you vow to sacrifice your power and your life to me. Once you do, I will finally be able to finish what I started ages ago. Once the Queen has fallen, I will control the boundaries between our worlds, and only then will your dear Olivia have any chance of returning.”

  I consider it—really consider it. I know what’s at stake, just as I know that even as we speak, the Fey are already taking back their world. When that happens, every human in Neverland is doomed. “What about the rest? Your boys and Rowan’s crew?”

  Pan chuckles, a dark dangerous sound that is more derision than mirth. “What few who remain may have their choice.”

  I take a step back, away from him, my mind racing with possibilities—none of them good.

  But as I’m still struggling with my decision, a rustling comes from the deadened brush, and two ragged-looking boys emerge. They’re dragging Rowan between them—his face is bruised and bleeding, and a dark stain is spreading across the front of his drab-colored coat.

  “No—” I step toward him, but Pan steps between us, Olivia still in his grasp.

  “Ah, Rowan. How delightful of you to join us,” Pan drawls. “Gwendolyn was just deciding how much she values the life of her friend.”

  Rowan coughs, blood dripping from his mouth. “Too late, Pan,” he says in slow, halting words. “You’ve lost.”

  Pan smiles. “No, my dear boy, I don’t think I have.”

  “Any minute now the Queen will be coming for you.” Rowan tries to struggle, but the boys hold him tight.

  “True enough,” Pan says, “but by then Gwendolyn will have made her choice. Because she knows I am her only hope of stopping the Queen. Of saving her dear friend.”