The Fae Princes (Vicious Lost Boys Book 4)

My eyes burn as I watch her leave, my twin standing just as still beside me.

We can’t seem to look away.

Is it real? Kas asks.

If it isn’t, it’s the best illusion I’ve ever seen.

Would our dear sister stoop so low? To trick us with a mirage of our own mother?

My heart is racing, my hands shaking. I can’t ignore the pressing weight at my sternum, driving me to do something. But what? What the fuck do we do with this?

If she’s real, how? How is she back?

I don’t know if I’m pissed or sad or bitter or awed or maybe all of those things. Maybe my emotions are like a bowl of Nana’s soup, all the leftover vegetables from the end of the harvest. Diced up, pureed, stirred and stirred and stirred.

Nana hated our mother. Back then I thought it was a normal thing for mothers and grandmothers to have a rivalry. After all, they were both supposed to love my father, and vying for the affection and attention of the king was no strange thing to me.

But now I realize Nana hated Tink because she was a cold-hearted bitch.

Nana hated Tinker Bell because Tinker Bell didn’t love my father. She used him.

Was she always like that? Sometimes I wonder what my mother was like before she lost Peter Pan and lost her fucking mind.

And now…

When the golden glow of Tinker Bell fades into the distance, I finally turn and check on Pan.

His gaze is caught on the same fixed point, but his attention is much farther away.

Visceral pain is etched into the fine lines around his eyes.

Mother may have hated most people and she may have given love like stones give blood, but there was always one person who made her seem like she had a heart.

A little part of me had always been envious of him because of it. What did he have that we did not, her own flesh and blood? Kas and Tilly and I were just more pawns in her games. Move us here. Move us there.

But Peter Pan…if we were her game pieces, he was the prize.

And how does she feel about him, now that she’s alive? After he killed her?

This is bad.

This is very bad.

What the fuck is the lagoon doing, and why the fuck is it doing it?

First Balder and now Tinker Bell.

I make my way back up the stairs and into the house, crossing the loft. I stop at the bar and reach over it, grabbing a bottle of the closest whisky. It’s an apple blend from the mortal world with a green label and a golden cap. It’s not the best, but it will do. I overturn an empty glass, pour two fingers of the liquor and sling it back.

The sweetness coats my tongue first, then the fire burns down my throat. When the liquor settles in my gut, some of the emotions untangle, and I can finally make sense of them.

Anger prevails.

Kas comes up behind me. “Pour me one.”

I oblige and hand it over. He quickly downs it and breathes out in a hiss, running the back of his hand over his mouth. “What the hell is this?”

Winnie and Vane file in behind us, then Peter Pan.

He looks like he’s seen a ghost. A living, breathing ghost.

Everything is about to change.

Fucking everything.

“It’s clearly a trap,” Vane says and waggles his fingers at me to pour him a drink too. I line up several tumblers on the bartop and fill them with a messy glug of liquor.

“Of course it’s a trap,” I answer and hand him off a glass. He drinks half of it back. His hair is a mess, several dark strands hanging over his forehead and in front of his eyes. Even though he lost the Darkland Dark Shadow and now has the Neverland one, his eye still bears the old scar from the Darkland shadow, three deep cuts over his right eye, the eye entirely black.

He may still have the scars, but he has changed. I’m just not sure how yet. Or what it means for us.

Now he shares something with Darling that the rest of us don’t, and I can’t tell if it’s gone to his head yet. He’s always been an arrogant prick, anyway. Maybe I won’t notice if he’s more of an arrogant prick.

Darling stands at the edge of the room, arms crossed over her chest. She hasn’t said much yet. What the fuck is there to say? My mother killed her ancestor all because she loved Peter Pan.

Darling loves Peter Pan.

I love Darling and so does my brother.

Tinker Bell has to go. She must be plotting already. She’s probably at the palace—

“Shit,” I blurt out. “Tilly.”

Kas’s dark gaze cuts to me, his eyes narrowed, his arms crossed like Darling’s. They are the most alike, if I had to put us all on a measuring stick. Kind and soft and gentle on one end. Brutal and vile and wicked on the other. My twin can be brutal, but he prefers to be gentle if he can get away with it.

Our dear mother will twist Tilly up, I tell Kas in our fae language.

We have been fighting against our sister, the fae queen, for a very long time, but it says something about my true feelings, when the first thing I can think of is to save her from our own mother.

Our little sister is no match for Tinker Bell. She never was.

But would our sister come willingly or would we have to drag her out of the palace kicking and screaming?

It’s for your own good, we’d tell her. Would she eventually believe us? We killed Father for the very same and look where that got us.

Tink said she asked Tilly to revoke our banishment and return our wings to us.

Goodwill. Hah. More like bullshit.

Kas and I both want our wings back.

More than almost anything.

More than Darling?

I know what you’re thinking, Kas says.

No, you don’t, I argue.

Do I even know what I’m thinking?

Temptation is a damnable thing.

Kas and I are the only two people in this room without a shadow and no wings. We are grounded, when all we want is to fucking fly.

“Speak aloud, princes,” Vane says and empties his glass. When he sets it aside, his black eye is glinting. “This is no time for secrets.”

Kas sighs and leans against the bar. “We want our wings back.”

“She’s lying.” Pan steps further into the room. “I could always read Tink. More easily than most. And she’s lying. She didn’t ask your sister for your wings. In fact, I’d bet she didn’t even consult Tilly on bringing you back into the court.”

“They keep dangling that carrot in front of us,” my twin says. “I’m getting really fucking sick of it.”

“I know.” Pan runs his hand through his hair and starts to pace the loft. His steps are slow but deliberate.

“What are you thinking?” I ask him.

His back to us, he says, “I never asked you—where are your wings? How would you get them back?”

Kas and I glance at one another. Nana instilled in us a deeply held belief that anyone outside of the fae did not have the right to know our customs. But Peter Pan is just as much Neverland as we are, and anyway, we’ve been banished, so I’m not sure the rules still apply.

“Generally speaking,” I start, “if a flying fae loses their wings as punishment for wrongdoing, the wings are burned. But the royal line is exempt from that punishment, so the wings are stored in the vault in a magical vessel. We don’t know what vessel our sister chose.”

Pushing away from the bar, Kas continues. “Restoring them to us is just a matter of giving us the vessel. It’s the gifting of it that will unlock the binding magic on the vessel, thereby restoring our wings.”

“When is the last time you were in this vault?” Pan asks over his shoulder.

“Years and years,” I answer.

“How hard would it be to find the vessel?” He turns to us once he’s reached the Never Tree. The parakeets are quiet this morning, but the pixie bugs are winking in and out, filling the shadowed branches with soft golden light.

“The vault is vast,” I answer.

“And full,” Kas adds.

“But it wouldn’t be impossible,” I say. “We’d know it when we felt it.”

“What are you suggesting?” Vane meets Pan in the middle of the loft. “Break into the fae palace and into their vault and steal their wings back? Wings that are stored in some unknown magical vessel while the entire fae court is on top of us, helmed by a petty fae queen and her resurrected evil mother?”

Pan regards Vane for a beat and then puts a cigarette in his mouth and spins the wheel on his lighter, the flame catching. He brings the fire to the cigarette and inhales, then snaps the lighter shut. The long draw he takes makes the ember burn brightly between them as they continue to stare each other down.

After a long exhale of smoke, Pan says, “Yes.”

Vane turns away. “For fuck’s sake.”

“Even if we get our wings back,” Kas says, “we still have our mother and Tilly to deal with.”

Pan takes another hit, and ash flakes away from his cigarette, swirling down to the hardwood floor. I can’t seem to read him right now. Not that he’s ever easy to read. I just wish he’d give something away for once.

“I promised you I’d help you get them back,” he says. “And I need to keep that promise. Tink will know it’s the one thing that will motivate you, and while I know you’ve chosen your side and that side is me, I also know what I would do if faced with the same temptation.”

“Are you insinuating we’d choose our undead mother and our wings over you?” Kas asks.

“Are you insinuating that you’ll say no to your wings?” Pan counters.

Kas frowns and looks away.

It’s more complicated than that, of course, but when you pare it down, there is one undeniable fact: we really want our fucking wings.

We want to fly. We want to feel whole again.

Pan, Vane, and Darling can all take to the sky, and Kas and I being stuck on the ground has tipped the balance in our group.

We haven’t spoken this aloud, not a one of us. But it’s there between us like a crack fissuring the ground, a clear line that divides us from them.

The group dynamics are different, the power shifting. And what does that mean for us? I sure as fuck never expected Darling to have the shadow. Not that I can hold it against her. She didn’t set out to get it. She is a victim of circumstance.

But it still doesn’t change the facts.

Footsteps sound up the stairs. Not human footsteps, but wolf. Balder’s nails are loud clicks on the wood as he makes his way to us.

Perfect timing.

When he reaches the loft, he pays none of us any mind. Instead, he goes straight for Darling, circling her once before setting back on his haunches at her side, the top of his head level with her waist.

I go to him. “What do you know about the lagoon bringing our mother back from the dead?”

Balder peers up at me, his amber eyes bright. Darling buries her fingers in his ruff, giving him a scratch, and he sinks into her touch.

“Silent now, are you?”

His eyes close.

“We’re not going to get answers from a dog.” Vane drops into one of the leather side chairs and props his boots on the low table. “But just so we’re all clear, I think this is a stupid fucking idea and if the twins want to fly, I’m happy to help. I’ll drop-kick you off the edge of Marooner’s Rock. You’ll really fly then.”

“Don’t be a shit,” I tell him.

He sits up straight. “What is that mortal saying, Win? The one about fools.”

She squats down beside Balder, and he nudges her beneath the chin with his nose. “‘Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.’”

“That’s the one. How many times has your sister fooled you?”

I cross the room and shove his boots off the table so I can sit on the edge. Elbows on my knees, I lean toward him. He scowls at me. “Look, Dark One. Would I rather get shit faced and tie Darling to my bed and fuck her until she screams or deal with my undead mother and conniving sister? Obviously, I want the former. The latter makes my head hurt. But once upon a time, you had a sister too.”

He tilts his head, the line of his jaw hardening, eyes narrowing. “Careful, prince.”

“But you did questionable things to avenge her.”

“Yes, avenge,” he repeats. “She was already dead.”

“And if she weren’t? If she were alive, what would you do to save her?” My voice catches, and even though I thought I had dissociated myself from feeling anything at all for Tilly, my body betrays the truth of it. Tears burn in my sinuses. “Would you save her, even if it was from herself?”

“My sister never tried to kill me,” he points out.

“If she’d lived long enough to see you turn into an asshole, she might have.”

He lunges at me. We spill over the edge of the table and slam to the floor. He’s on top of me, the air growing darker, swirling around him. He cocks his arm back and brings his fist down, but I’m a second ahead of him and conjure an illusion that transforms me into Darling. It’s just enough to throw him off for a split second, to force him to pull up. Long enough for me to hook my leg around him and drive him back. I scramble over top of him and land a fist to his jaw.

“Stop it!” Darling yells.

“Cheap shot,” Vane says and catches my second punch. His grip is immediately crushing, and pain shoots down my arm.

“Like you’ve ever played fair,” I counter and make a fist with my left hand. He catches that too, so I slam my forehead into his face. Blood spurts from his nose. The force makes my teeth clack together and the coppery tang coats my own tongue.

“Pan!” Darling yells. “Do something!”

“Let them fight, Darling,” Kas says. “They do this sometimes.”

“That doesn’t make it okay.”

With my fists trapped in his grip, Vane rolls us and gets the upper hand. He lands a blow on my jaw that sends a reverberation straight down my spine.

He winds back for another blow when a lithe figure barrels into him, shoving him off of me.

I sit upright as darkness pervades the loft, blotting out the gray skies and the glowing pixie bugs.

“Stop,” Darling says, her voice an eerie echo. She’s straddling Vane, his back flat on the floor. “Or I’ll sweep the floor with both of you.”

Vane glares up at her, but I can’t help but laugh.

Darling turns her black eyes my way, fury etched into the space between her brow.

“Sorry, Darling.” I hold up my hands to show my innocence. “I don’t doubt you. But seeing a slip of a girl like you take out the Dark One is practically a comedy sketch.”

Darling climbs off Vane and he gets to his feet. Blood is still running from his nose and he uses the curve of his knuckles to swipe at it. It leaves behind a smear under his bottom lip.

“This is exactly what Tinker Bell would want, wouldn’t she?” Darling’s eyes fade from black to her bright green. “Us fighting amongst each other with the twins pulling away from us.” Her attention slices to me and real pain turns her mouth down at the corners.

Darling is worried? Well, shit. I don’t know why she’d doubt me.

I go to her, blood still a bright tang in my mouth, and wrap her in a hug. It’s easy to swallow her up. She’s half my size, barely a sliver of a girl. “I’m not leaving you.”

She melts into me and wraps her arms around my waist. “It’s your mother.” Her voice is barely audible, muffled against my skin. “And your sister. Them or these assholes. How can you choose?”

“Maybe I won’t have to.”

Darling pulls away, but her arms are still linked around me. She has to crane her head back to meet my eyes. “Pan didn’t want to choose,” she reminds me. “And look where that got him.”

Over the top of Darling’s head, I find Peter Pan. He’s at the window now, gazing out at the gloomy Neverland sky.

No one knows better than Peter Pan just how cunning my mother can be.

Is he worried?

I get the distinct sense that he is.