“Peter?” I call, feeling nervous, and I worry quickly that something’s happened, that someone’s hurt or maybe worse. Maybe someone (not naming names) hurt someone smaller by accident, and I swear at myself in my own mind for wondering it, and I tell myself it’s wrong, that it couldn’t be true. He loves them. He’d never— And then, from under a blanket, Calla’s head pops up, shortly followed by Peter’s.
“Oh” is what I say as I stare at them.
She’s straddling him, naked, I think? Or mostly so. His hands are on her—on her, you know. He keeps them on her as he looks over at me.
“Daphne!” He looks surprised but not entirely inconvenienced by the interruption. He gives me a big smile.
Me? I stare over at him in disbelief. “What are you doing?”
He stands up and climbs out of the bed we share. His bed, not ours. He is always very specific about that.
He is, in case you were wondering, fully naked.
I’ve never seen him fully naked before. Partially naked, many times, of course. The boy lives his whole life partially naked. But here he stands, entirely nude, and I feel strangely light-headed.
“We figured out what the more was!” he tells me with a lazy smile.
I’m definitely going to be sick.
I blink at him. That’s all I do.
“It’s so good,” he tells me, stretching his arms up in the air before extending his hand to me. “Come join us.”
Calla’s head rolls back, sullen. “No, Peter.”
Peter gives her a look like she’s silly. “She can play too.”
“Are you mad?” I shake my head at him a tiny bit. I feel like I’m in a dream. “You said you wouldn’t see her again.”
Pan looks over at Calla and rolls his eyes, scrunches his face up, and nods his head back at me. “I wouldn’t say that.”
“You said that!” I yell at him. “Thirteen days ago, you said that.”
His face folds to a scowl. “How do you know about days?”
I ignore that strange question and instead counter it with a different one. “What are you doing with her?”
“This.” Peter shrugs, then nods his head towards the bed. “You’ll like it. Come! Lie down here with me.”
“No!” I yell, shaking my head.
“Why are you upset?” Peter frowns for a second before his face fractures into a strange laugh. “Your face goes funny when you’re sad.”
“I’m not sad.” I glare over at him. “I’m revolted.”
Peter shrugs and sits on the edge of the nest. “Maybe you wouldn’t be if you would have just done it with me when I told you to.”
I put my hand on my cheek and nod a lot, my mind racing, thinking about what I’m to do from here. I flick my eyes over at him. “How long have you been doing this?”
He scratches his neck, then shrugs. “The mermaids showed me at the ball, so just all the time since then.”
I press my lips together and let the mental image of Peter doing this with Calla and the mermaids in every spare moment he had without me soak through every good memory and feeling he gave me since then also.
I nod my head to the side. “Get up,” I tell him, and do you know what he does?
He just laughs.
So Calla laughs.
And my neck goes hot, and my eyes start to sting, but I grit my teeth and glare over at him.
“Now, Peter.”
He scoffs. “You’re not the boss of me.”
“Get up now!” I demand and he stands, then floats over to the other side of the room, eyeing me like he does an animal before he tries to catch it.
“You don’t talk to me like that.” He shakes his head, hovering high above me. “I’m the king of these woods.”
And then I grab his wrist and yank him down to the ground. “And I am its queen, and you treat me like shit!”
“Yeah?” He stares at me. “You’re a bad queen, so you’re fired.”
“Fine.” I turn on my heel and start racing around the room, grabbing anything I can see that belongs to me.
Which isn’t much, really. I don’t have many belongings here.
My dresses, my shoes, the dagger that I keep in my boot at all times anyway. The book from Hook.
I find a blanket and start tossing them into it, looking over at Peter as I do. “So which one is it?” I call to him.
Peter glances over at me, disinterested. “Wendy, I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
He catches eyes with Calla, who laughs and stretches her arms up over her head without a word, inviting Peter back to her.
He swallows heavily, then looks back at me.
“Well?” I blink.
He frowns. “Well, what?”
“Are you a liar, or are you a cheat?”
Peter rolls his eyes. “What are you talking about?”
Calla laughs again, and I decide that she really is quite intolerable, rather an awful person.
“You said I’m your favourite. You said I was the most beautiful. You said you wouldn’t see her if it made me uncomfortable. You called me your girlfriend, said that we had a string. So were you a liar then, or are you a cheater now?”
Peter’s shoulders square, and his eyes go defensively dark.
“I don’t like your questions,” he tells me, shaking his head, and even though both his feet are on the ground, he towers over me. “This is my tree, in my forest, on my island. You’re here at my pleasure.”
“Oh, well!” I roll my eyes. “It’s all about your pleasure tonight.”
“Yep.” He nods. “And it always will be.”
I tie the edges of the blanket together and make a little sack, heaving it up as I glare at him. “You know, they were right about you.”
Peter’s eyes pinch. “What about me?”
“Oh, you know.” I shrug, baiting him. “Just what they call you.”
His eyes cloud over, and so does the sky behind him.
“What do they call me, girl?” he growls, and thunder cracks, but I don’t flinch for a second.
“They call you deficient.”
His face pulls tight, and the little muscles around his mouth start twitching.
“How am I deficient?” he asks in a whisper that might have frightened me on my weaker days.
I look him square in the eye and deliver him the blow Hook’s been delivering to me all this time. “You’re just a boy.”
Peter makes a sound like a bark, snatches my makeshift rucksack from me, and shoves his hands through his hair angrily.
“What more do you want from me?” he asks, and it starts streaming outside.
“Nothing, actually.” I shake my head at him, and I completely, entirely mean it. “I don’t want anything from you.” I snatch my things back from him. “We’re finished.”
Peter shakes his head. “We aren’t finished till I say we are.”
I roll my eyes at him and turn to leave.
“Don’t walk away from me!” he yells after me, and thunder claps.
I ignore him and pick my pace up, heading for the door.
He flies after me and grabs my sack. “I said, don’t walk away!” he shouts. “Daphne! I’m not finished with you yet.” He drops my things and grabs me instead by the wrist, yanking me back in towards him.
I shove him off me, but he grips me tight.
“You are mine,” he tells me, eyes undaunted, and slams me into a wall behind me.
“Get off me!” I squirm, trying to shove him off.
He presses me harder into the wall, and I am aware of his hand placement on my body—how with every shove, his grip gets closer and closer to my throat.