The Fae Princes (Vicious Lost Boys Book 4)

I’m drunk and Vane is pissed, but I don’t fucking care.

Nothing matters anymore, does it?

Everything is a fucking lie.

Now with Darling back in our midst and the Crocodile gone, having slithered back to some dank hole, no doubt, Vane drives me from the throne room and into the dining hall. The music is quieter here, just a low drum and twang across the room. The voices carry farther—laughter and cajoling and merriment.

Their happiness makes me want to scream.

To think I was some child birthed of a primordial Neverland power…

Pathetic, now that I think about it.

My thoughts turn darker and I snatch a glass from a passing server. I sling back the wine before Vane realizes I’ve gone rogue.

“Would you fucking stop,” he says to me and yanks the glass from my grip.

“Why does it matter?” I ask him.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

I gesture wildly at the packed dining hall. The ceiling is domed and vined here too, just like in the throne room. But there’s no dais, no majesty to the space other than its size. More lanterns hang from the vines, casting pulsing light over the room.

“Pan.” Darling takes my hand in hers and squeezes. “What did Tinker Bell tell you?”

I scoff and drop into the nearest empty seat at a long dining table. There’s a centerpiece of flowers and moss, forget-me-nots and firecrackers and star lilies.

Vane takes the seat across from me and Darling sits on my right, her hand still in mine.

“More wine!” I yell at anyone who will listen and a server darts over with their tray.

“No,” Vane says. “No more wine.”

The server hesitates, unsure of who’s in charge here. Clearly I am. I snap my fingers at him. He comes closer. Vane makes his violet eye go black, the bastard, and the server darts away.

“Why do you vex me?” I ask him.

“What did Tink tell you? Why are you acting like a whiny twat?”

I grumble and sink against the back of the chair. I can’t tell them. Either of them. The mighty Never King is not so mighty. Without the shadow, I am nothing, just as I feared.

The spirits’ words echo in my head again.

Drenched in darkness.

I don’t deserve the shadow. That’s what they were trying to tell me.

Maybe I should end all of our suffering and give Tink the shadow. Let her do what she pleases. It’s what she wanted all along, isn’t it? Teach me a lesson because I wouldn’t bend to her will. I clench my teeth, thinking about what lesson she might try to teach me now if I don’t give her what she wants.

And what Tink wants… is that ultimately what the spirits want? If they sent her back, did they give her a mission? Wrestle the Neverland Shadow from Peter Pan and give it to someone who will actually do some good with it.

Darling takes my hand and places it on her bare thigh. The heat of her skin, the smooth touch of it snaps me out of my misery.

“Keep touching me,” she says.

I swallow.

“Whatever Tinker Bell told you, we’ll figure it out,” she says.

I tilt my head toward her, pressing my fingers into her flesh. “I don’t think we’ll figure this one out, Darling.”

She pulls my hand closer to her center. “You’re the mighty Peter Pan. Of course you will.”

I had a mother.

And she abandoned me.

Maybe I was never supposed to have the shadow. Maybe there was always someone better.

Darling lifts her skirt higher, bringing my hand to the seam of her panties. She leans over. “Let Vane watch for once.”

I glance at him across the table. He’s got his back pressed into the chair, his body slouched a little, his eyes on us. He gives me the barest of nods.

As if I need his permission.

I slip in around Darling’s panties and graze the heat of her pussy. She exhales loudly, her eyes going heavy.

If there is nothing else, there is this. At least I can lose myself here, now, before I lose everything else.

Darling reaches beneath the table, placing her tiny hand on my thigh, fingers digging into my flesh as I tease her, circling her pussy, never quite touching it.

She readjusts in her chair, spreading her legs wider for me as she inches toward the growing bulge between my legs.

If I just focus on her, I can forget everything else. I can even ignore how dangerous it is to be drunk in the fae palace, teasing my Darling girl.

Heat builds between Darling’s thighs and when I finally give in, slipping my finger down her slit, I’m not surprised to find her soaking wet.

I lean over, mouth at the curve of her ear. “Is this Vane’s cum leaking out of you, Darling?”

She licks her lips. “Yes.”

If I focus on her and her words and her heat and the electric feel of her pleasure dancing along my skin, maybe I can forget that everything is crumbling around me.

I pull my hand out from Darling’s panties, out from beneath the table, and brush her bottom lip with her wetness.

“Taste it,” I order her.

Her tongue slides over the rise of her lip, cleaning up the mess.

“Full of Lost Boy cum, as always.”

Her gaze is fiery, and I sense her shadow writhing beneath the surface.

Vane sits forward. “We should go.”

“Yes,” Darling says.

“We haven’t seen the twins yet,” I remind them.

Vane tips his head to the left, his eyes still on me.

I follow the direction of his gesture and find the twins slipping through the crowd, making their way to us. Their faces look as grim as I feel.

When they reach our table, Kas puts his hands on the edge and hunches over. “We didn’t find anything.”

No wings. No vessels. I’m beginning to think Tink invited us here just to gut me with secrets. She wanted to witness the carnage with her own two eyes.

“Not an entirely wasted trip, though,” Bash says and holds up an amber bottle.

Darling lights up, a little excited. “What is it?”

“Fairy lube,” Bash answers. “Unlike anything you’ve ever experienced.” Of course, Bash can find a positive spin on anything. No wings? Lube will do.

Sometimes I wish I had his optimism, or his unflinching ability to pretend.

“Perfect timing,” I tell him. “We were just discussing taking Darling home so we could fuck her until she makes us forget that—”

Until she makes me forget that everything I thought I knew is a lie.

Darling and Vane both look at me with searching gazes. They are connected to each other through their shared shadow, but they are connected to me too, on a quieter, lower frequency. But connected just the same.

I grin, to hide as much as I can. “—forget that it’s snowing,” I finish. “Let us warm ourselves in the heat of Darling’s pussy.”

Bash comes over to Darling’s side and pulls her hair free of its complicated knot. It spills down her back until Bash winds it around his knuckles and forces her head back, exposing the milky column of her throat to him. He wraps his other hand around her throat, just at the base of her jawline.

“Darling, did you ever in your wildest dreams imagine you’d get fucked by four men at once?”

Her answer is breathy but excited. “It was on my bucket list.”

Bash bursts out laughing and lets her go, offering a gentlemanly hand instead. “Then let us not delay your list of buckets. Whatever that means.”

She takes his hand, rises from the chair, and straightens out her rumpled skirt.

The twins lead us from the dining hall, through the palace, and out into the snowy night. It’s Vane who takes off his jacket this time to offer it to Darling, draping it over her shoulders. She drowns in it.

The light and the noise of the party fades away as we head back home.

My shoulders relax the further we get into the darkness.

Vane is brooding beside me, with Darling up ahead between the twins.

I let him stew in the silence between us for several beats, trying to make sense of what he may ask and how I may answer.

When we cross the next bend of the Mysterious River and officially enter my territory, I can take it no more.

“Go on then,” I tell him.

He cuts his gaze to me, and the weight of it is nearly stifling. I light a cigarette and take a hit, waiting for him to speak his mind.

When he doesn’t, I offer him the cigarette and he fills his lungs with a draw from the burning tobacco, then exhales in a sigh.

“Tinker Bell will tell you whatever it is she thinks will wound you deepest,” he finally says.

Bash comes to a halt up ahead and Darling climbs on his back, wrapping her arms around his neck, her legs around his waist. Their laughter echoes through the woods.

“Christ,” Kas says as his brother races away with Darling like they’re two kids on a playground.

“And what if she told me the truth?” I say to Vane as he passes the cigarette back.

“Tell it to me and let me decide for myself.”

Up ahead, Bash spins Darling around and what’s left of her dress lifts like a flower petal. She laughs, clutching to Bash tightly. Kas jogs ahead to join them, unable to stop his own laughter.

The snow slows, but the stars are still hidden behind thick cloud cover, and I don’t think I’ve ever missed them more.

Living only in the twilight for so long, they became my constant companions, glowing in the dark, guiding me through the night.

Vane stops me in the middle of the path where it rises up hill to the treehouse.

There may be no moonlight, no stars, but there is a distant glow from the lanterns outside the treehouse and it sends shadows across his face, turning his annoyance into sharper darkness.

“Tinker Bell coming back from the dead is not a punishment,” he tells me.

I sigh, the cigarette burning up, clipped between my knuckles.

“Listen to me for once, for Christ’s sake. Sometimes shitty things happen just because. Sometimes there is no reason and no one to blame, least of all yourself.”

“I know, Vane, and sometimes bad people do bad things and they must pay for their misdeeds.”

The spirits’ words haunt me again.

Vane’s expression falls. He knows exactly what I’m talking about. The Dark One has done many dark things.

It’s why we’re both so fucking desperate to lose ourselves in Darling.

She is a balm and when we are with her, our past transgressions fade away, and the sting of old wounds hurts just a little less.

“Come on.” I drop the cigarette and crush it beneath my boot, coaxing him toward the house. “Let’s fuck our Darling whore until she squirms in our arms.”

He knows there is nothing left to say.

He takes in a breath, shoulders leveling out, and follows me up the hill.