“Look out,” I say, reaching for Olivia to pull her back. But I stop—it isn’t a dark creature that’s emerging from the cloud. “He made it,” I whisper, relief catching in my chest at the sight of him.
As Pan steps out of the gray mist, his eyes are alight with triumph. There isn’t a scratch on him. He gives me a wry smile that has me smiling in return. But then his expression grows serious. “We should go. I don’t trust the Captain or the Dark Ones not to return.”
“But the boys,” I say, thinking of the one who was so scared, of the others, who marched into the cloud as though death were an impossibility.
“There’s nothing I can do for them now,” he says, and the blunt matter-of-fact tone of his declaration makes me take a step back from him. He’s not even going to try.
“But—”
“What’s important is that we get you both back to safety,” he interrupts, and though I want to argue, there’s something in his expression that warns me it would be a mistake. “We’re safe enough in the light of day, but we need to get back before nightfall,” he explains, eyeing the fog warily. “Unless, of course, you wish to meet more of the darkest Fey when they’re at their strongest?”
After he says that, the rest of my objections seem pointless.
By the time Pan pulls Olivia to her feet, her eyes are already starting to lose the clearness they had just moments before. He tucks her under his arm, and she moves closer, taking full advantage of the protection of his body as he offers me his other hand. His grip is sure as he pulls me effortlessly to my feet.
My head is still swirling, but I resist the urge to lean into him as Olivia’s doing. Too much has happened. I need space to figure out what I think of it all.
“I’m glad you made it out,” I tell him, a peace offering.
“I assured you I would. After all, I have this.” He pulls his dagger from its sheath and offers it to me. Reluctantly, I take it.
It’s heavier than it looks, and though its blade is dark, it has a silvery shine that looks like it’s coming from within the metal.
“This is really all it takes to scare one of those things?” I ask, glancing up at him doubtfully. The metal feels warm in my hand.
“That’s not just any knife, Gwendolyn. It belonged to my mother, the Queen,” he explains. “Long ago the Queen traveled across the boundaries into the human world to find something to defeat the Dark Fey, who so often attacked her court in their attempt to take over this world. She brought back this—a dagger forged in iron and human blood and silver. Together they are deadly to the Dark Ones. To all Fey,” he said, nodding into the mist and taking the dagger back from me.
“She used that blade to kill the King of the Dark Ones and to banish what remained of his court to the far ends of this land so her people could live here in safety. They know well enough what this is capable of,” he tells me as he tucks the dagger securely back into the sheath at his side. “And they’re smart enough to avoid it.”
“Why don’t you just kill them all with it, then?” I ask.
“It’s impossible to kill a shadow, Gwendolyn. The Dark Ones can only be killed when they’re fully corporeal, and they have the inconvenient habit of melting into the darkness they’re born from. Besides, without the Queen to hold them in check, there are far too many of them for any single blade to do the job.”
I frown at his explanation. And I can’t help but glance at the dagger. He’s probably right—there’s no way that such a small weapon could defeat all the Dark Ones . . . But I only need one or two to get us home.
Pan’s expression flickers then, as though he’s sensed the direction of my thoughts and doesn’t approve. “As I was saying,” he tells me, his voice unwavering, “it’s time we go.”
Since he can’t carry both of us at the same time, and the fairy lights seem to have been lost in the fog, we spend the afternoon walking back to his fortress. Once we cross the flat, rocky stretch of land I saw from the air, the terrain begins to climb steeply into the mountainous middle of the island. I worry a little about making it all the way to the top—it’s been so long since I’ve done anything physical, and I’m already breathless only a quarter of the way up. Still, the burning ache as my tired muscles struggle up the incline is almost pleasant. It reminds me of something I’d felt before, something comforting and real from life in my own world. But before I can figure out what it is, Pan stops at a rocky outcropping and leads us through a hidden passageway that cuts directly into the rocky hillside.