Losing Wendy: A Dark Fantasy Peter Pan Retelling (The Lost Girl Series Book 1) by T.A. Lawrence

Author:T.A. Lawrence [Lawrence, T.A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-05-28T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 30

When the dance is over, Peter pulls me back into his chest and flies me to the top of a tree on a nearby cliff. We settle into the shelter of its branches, Peter slipping his arm around my shoulders as I lean into him.

It shouldn’t, but it fills me with an assurance of safety I can’t describe, can’t quite get a grasp on. While the joy in the sky jolted the melancholy out of me like lightning fraying a mast, nesting in Peter’s arms smothers the heaviness in my chest in the blanket of his embrace.

His wings are too large for our resting spot, so he cocoons them around us both, casually tracing my shoulder blade with his thumb. I’m as high on excitement as I was plummeting through the sky, and all it takes is his wayward touch.

“How did that feel?” he asks, his voice a whisper riding the breeze.

My attention is so focused on the warm trail of his touch, it takes me a moment to realize he’s talking about flying. Falling.

“It felt like letting go,” I say, and I’m reminded of entering Neverland, of Peter’s command. I hadn’t considered it much before now. Perhaps that’s due to the glamour he used on me. “Did you use magic to take away my fear of you when we first arrived?” I ask.

“It’s not quite as simple as that,” Peter says. “I can’t compel you with my glamour. Only suggest. Whether my suggestion takes root depends entirely on whether you let it. And even then, it doesn’t work on everyone.”

“Why does it work on me?”

He pauses. Considers. “It only influences those who already want it to.”

I bite my lip, waiting for the horror to skitter up my spine. It doesn’t. All my life, I’ve been afraid, and though there’s part of me, the part my parents trained into me, that screams I should quake at Peter’s power over me, it’s not my fear. Not really.

“I was frightened of you, you know. They wanted me to be frightened.” For the first time, I wonder how my childhood would have gone had my parents not taught me to be afraid of the dark. Would I have learned to dance with the shadows earlier? Would I have set aside the vain pursuit of finding a husband and lived out my youth like the other children, unconcerned with the future?

There’s something else, though. Something that threatens to steal away the enjoyment of how it feels when Peter touches me. And I’m so very tired of the pleasure being leached out of everything I do.

“I suppose I was frightening,” Peter responds, his voice light, though it’s softer than it normally is. His hand twitches ever so slightly. I wonder if he’s as uncomfortable as I am, if we’re thinking the same thing.

Probably not. The fae from the ancient stories had a tendency to steal their human brides away at an age rather younger than what aristocratic society would deem appropriate.

“Wendy,” Peter says, his voice knowing.

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