PETER PAN

Vane finds me brooding in my wingback chair, a cigarette burning between my knuckles. A lamp is turned on from its perch on my end table but it still feels oppressively dark in here.

I can still taste the daylight in the air.

The interior door of my tomb creaks open and a faint slant of light spills in around the broad shoulders of the Dark One. He brings with him the scent of salty air and bruised cloudberries. It reminds me immediately of the Darling.

Winnie Darling.

Our Darling.

Every afternoon, she goes for a swim in the ocean and directly after, the twins feed her toasted bread slathered with salted butter and cloudberry jam.

Sensing my mood, Vane shuts the door behind him and then leans against the wall beside it. He takes his time, letting me wallow in the swelling tide of my personal annoyance.

He pulls out a cigarette and lights it in the cup of his hand. The sharp orange flame skims his face before going quickly out.

He takes a long drag and slouches in a way that makes him look both bored and deadly.

He exhales. “Why are you brooding?”

“I’m not,” I say quickly, defensively.

The end of the cigarette swells with heat as he pulls in another drag.

He waits me out.

I sulk more and finish my own cigarette, stubbing it out in a nearby ashtray.

Vane could always read my moods. Even before Winnie Darling, before he took on the Neverland Dark Shadow. Before everything.

“The Summer Solstice approaches,” I say. “The longest day of the year.”

The cigarette burns shorter.

Beyond my tomb, the sun is approaching the end of the world and my impatience grows.

I sigh. “I’m stuck down here in the dark while you and Darling and the twins go fuck around in the ocean and eat cloudberry tarts in the fucking sunlight.” I groan. “Are you happy?”

“Oh no,” he says, mocking me. “The all-powerful star god must endure a few hours alone in the dark while the children play without him. How will his tender heart survive?”

“Christ. You’re an asshole.”

He takes another hit from the cigarette, exhales and pushes away from the wall. “We’ve all rearranged our sleep schedules to match yours. You get Win all to yourself every other night. And yes, she does wake before you and yes she does come up for a swim. And yes, the twins, who barely sleep might I remind you, have already prepared her breakfast by then.”

“Yes, I know,” I say, slightly exasperated by all of the truth he has thrown in my face. But he’s not done.

“Do you want us all to sleep in the tomb with you? You’ll need a bigger bed.”

“We’ve tried that. It’s like sleeping with a pack of dogs.”

“So what do you want?”

I scrub at my face. “The right to brood, I suppose.”

“Permission granted.”

I lay my head back against my chair. “The days are long and they are growing longer still. I am just...impatient,” I tell him. “I long for the shorter winter days.”

The cigarette disappears with a flick of his wrist. “It’ll be here before you know it.”

“Mmm.” Of course I know he’s right, but it doesn’t feel that way now. I feel like a whining, insolent child. But I was never allowed to be a child even when I tried desperately to remain one.

It’s impossible to be a child when you have no mother, and no father.

“I know what might cure you,” Vane says.

Of course he does. That’s easy.

“Win.”

He says her name softly as if she is standing in the room with us.

Above, the twins are teaching her how to undo their many knots, making it a game of escape. But when she hears Vane say her name, their chatter dies off.

“The king calls?” Bash asks.

“I’ll be back up in a bit,” she says and then she’s coming toward my tomb.

She doesn’t use the winding metal stairs, preferring instead to fly down, either because she likes walking less and less these days now that she has possession of half of the Shadow, or because she wants to be as silent as she possibly can as she approaches, sensing a game is afoot.

Vane returns to his position beside the door, his back flat against the wall. When she pushes in and steps over the threshold, Vane grabs her by the back of the neck, taking possession of her.

A breath rushes down her throat. Vane has her held steady so that she can’t turn to him, which forces her to keep her gaze on me.

For most of my life, I was unaware I was a god.

It wasn’t until Winnie Darling that I started to feel like one.

She’s looking at me now like she wants to worship me and most days, I welcome this, open arms, like the asshole I am. I’ve told her many times to get on her knees for me and she would sink to the carpet quickly, easily. So amenable, our Darling, her mouth always ready, her pussy always dripping wet.

I know in the beginning, when I first brought her to Neverland, that she used sex to undermine me. But over the many months she’s been with us, I have come to learn that sex is as much her weapon as it is her indulgence, but the part that she won’t admit to is that sex is also her distraction.

When she is angry, when she is sad, when she is bored, I will either find her bent over a table with one of the twins jammed into her, or in the library, draped over Vane’s lap like a hellcat wanting to sink her claws into flesh.

I have come to admire her for all of her facets, but most of all, I admire how I cannot contain her, even when I want to.