Chapter 26: Their Vicious Darling: Chapter 25

“Get him up!” Pan screams.

I hook one of Vane’s arms around my shoulder while Pan takes the other. Vane is practically dead weight and he can barely get his feet beneath him.

Blood is fucking everywhere.

“Vane!” Darling screams again and Bash hooks into her, yanking her back, trying to keep her from slowing us down.

The air smells of violence and regret.

We get him in the house and up the stairs to the loft and drop him on the sofa.

He’s listless and pale. His arm drops from his side as his eyes roll back in his head.

“Fix him,” Darling says. She has her tiny hands fisted in Bash’s shirt. “Fix him!”

“We’re trying, Darling,” my brother says. “Calm down.”

“Calm down?

?!” She comes over to the sofa and hangs over the back. “Can’t he heal? Why is he so pale? Why isn’t he healing?”

Pan tears off Vane’s shirt to reveal a large, gaping wound just below his heart. “Rags,” he orders. “Wet ones. Now.”

I race to the kitchen, my hands on autopilot.

Why the fuck isn’t he healing?

Out of everyone on the island, I suppose Smee is the one who might know how to defeat the Dark One. But why the hell would she wait until now to do it?

We promised her we would bring Cherry back and we lied.

Oath breakers, the lot of us.

If Smee had been a few minutes later…

Or earlier for that matter.

Which begs the question why she was there at all.

When I come back out to the loft, Vane’s breathing is labored. Darling is sitting on the floor beside him, his hand in hers, her eyes glassy with unshed tears.

“Vane,” Pan says and smacks him. “Come on, wake up.”

I hand my brother one of the wet rags and we get to work cleaning the wound so we can see what we’re dealing with.

Nani taught us a lot about healing, but our medicinal work revolved around the fae. Salve was Nani’s favorite cure, but I’m not sure a bit of faerie goop will heal this wound.

Bash and I both look at one another when we see the state of things.

The wound is edged in black and there’s something dark leaking out of him, something other than blood.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d say it was the Death Shadow. It’s airy like ocean spray but dark like shadow.

, Bash says.

“Hey,” Pan says and snaps his fingers at us. “You talk to me. You tell me what’s going on.”

“Honestly?” Bash sits back on his butt on the floor. “This is unprecedented, even for us.”

“You’ve got the shadow,” Darling says to Pan. “Can’t you heal him?”

“It doesn’t work like that.” He looks down at Vane sprawled on the couch. “Besides, I can feel his shadow pushing me away.”

Darling brings Vane’s hand to her mouth and presses a gentle kiss to his bloody knuckles as the tears finally spill over her lids. “Then what do we do?”

My twin meets my gaze behind Pan’s back.

, Bash says.

Behind us, Balder trots into the room. He comes up behind Darling and curls into her, resting his chin on her shoulder. A soft whine sounds in the back of his throat and Darling cries harder.

“We’re going to fix him, Darling,” Pan says as he wipes away one of her tears. “You hear me?”

“Do you promise?”

Pan hesitates before he answers. Even he must know he can’t promise this.

But he nods anyway, because I think he needs to believe it just as much as Darling does.

None of us want Vane to die.

I think I’m coming to realize we would all die for one another.

When did that happen?

When did I suddenly feel more loyalty and allegiance to this disparate found family than I did my own flesh and blood?

I feel the rightness of it though, thumping like a wild thing in the center of my chest.

Balder lifts his head and looks right at me and blinks at me with his bright blue eyes.

Nani used to love saying that to us when we were boys and I’m not sure if I’m just conjuring her words or if Balder is actually reciting them in my head.

I look at the wolf again. The resemblance to the original Balder is uncanny. I didn’t want to believe that it was really him, that the island could do something so profound as bring someone back to life.

And yet here he is.

Balder’s tail thumps loudly behind him.

“Get him to the lagoon,” I say.

Pan looks at me.

“The lagoon. Now.”

Winnie lurches upright. “Yes. He loves the lagoon and the lagoon loves Vane. You said it yourself, Pan, the waters can be healing.”

“Yes but they can be fickle too. Ask the twins.”

Bash and I shrug. “At this point, it’s worth the risk, isn’t it?” Bash says.

Pan sits back on his butt and drapes his arm over his upturned knee, thinking.

He must know we’re running out of options.

But he’s always been wary of the lagoon.

“Fine.” Pan grumbles. “Get him up again.”

This time, Bash and I each take one of Vane’s arms and hook them around our shoulders. He’s completely out now and there’s no helping us so his legs drag as we make our way out of the house and through the woods and down the dirt path.

Rain starts to spit from the sky and by the time we get Vane down to the beach, thick, fat drops are falling from dark, swirling clouds.

It’s almost like the island is matching our somber mood.

When we reach the water’s edge, Bash and I move to drag him in, but Darling stops us.

“I’ll take him,” she says and when I glance at her over my shoulder, darkness is writhing around her eyes, just itching to take over.

“Darling,” Pan says, “I don’t think that’s such a—”

“I’ll take him, Pan. It has to be me.”

There is new determination in her voice. She’s not just our naughty, bold Darling. She’s something else now, something that does not back down even when standing against Peter Pan.

“All right.” Pan finally relents and steps back. “We’ll be right here if you need us.”

She comes in close to me and wiggles in under Vane’s arm, taking his weight.

Despite the fact he’s like twice her size, she barely droops beneath the new burden.

Bash unhooks Vane’s arm from around his shoulder and says, “You good, Darling?”

“I’m good.” She keeps her arm hooked around Vane’s waist and drags him into the water.