Asha replaces me hiding in my secret room. Its doorway is tucked behind a bookcase in one of the rarely used sitting rooms on the third floor. Hald gave it to me when I first came to the castle and realized I had no love for court drama and politics.
Sometimes I just need to hide.
And right now, I wish I could crawl into the shadows and never come out.
“I’ve been looking for you,” Asha says.
I’ve shed the dress and am now in a nightgown and silk robe with the Grimmaldi crest stitched in gold on the back. There is a log crackling on the hearth. When Hald showed me the room, he taught me how to start a fire too.
I tip my glass, half full of spiced wine, at Asha. “You’ve found me.”
Asha wasn’t at the supper tonight. She was on duty on the curtain wall. Or at least she was supposed to be. But now looking over her clothes, I have to wonder if she dodged her duties and went on a discovery mission.
She’s not wearing the soldier’s typical on-duty uniform, that of a single breasted short tailed coat with gold aiguillettes and cotton trousers.
Instead, she’s entirely done in black: black form-fitting coat and black leather breeches with supple black leather boots. Her dark hair is braided in a tight Winterland braid.
“The Crocodile was in the kitchen tonight asking questions.”
I sit upright. “Did he see you?”
Asha clasps her hands behind her back and straightens her shoulders. “Of course not.”
That’s just what I need, Roc going after my best friend, my only ally.
“What was he asking?”
“Too many questions,” she says.
Of course he was.
“Did he get any answers?”
She nods, rather grimly.
Great.
I set the glass aside and stand up. I was on my third glass and I wish I could say it’s made me tipsy, but it’s only made me more melancholy. There is nothing to do in this court other than drink and eat.
“Let me handle him.” I start for the door.
“Wendy.”
I stop, hand on the door lever.
“I’ve asked you to consider an escape plan for months and you’ve come up with excuses every single time. I’m not taking no for an answer now. The risks are too high.”
Closing my eyes, I exhale, promising my turning and twisting stomach that someday, things will be better, that I won’t have to feel this constant pit of anxiety, this incessant pulse of fear.
“I made Hald a promise.”
“You shouldn’t have to risk your life and your safety for a promise.”
I think she might be right, but in the years since Pan dropped me here, Everland has become my home. Or at least as close to home as a foreign land can be. If I don’t have Everland, then what is left?
A voice whispers in the deep, dark recesses of my mind: you have Roc and James.
When I accused Roc of abandoning me, he seemed surprised by it, almost offended.
Did Peter Pan tell them I never made it home? What about Smee? My time with her was always urgent and short. I was focused on getting my baby out of Everland and to safety, far, far away from Peter Pan and the Seven Isles.
I assumed she told James where I was, and that if James knew, then so did Roc.
I never stopped to ask myself what Smee would have gained by sharing my whereabouts. Nothing. She would have gained absolutely nothing. Instead, she would have risked James’s life at a time when he was already defeated.
Maybe this entire time, I’ve been blaming the wrong people for my fate.
Perhaps it’s time I faced Roc and James and found out what truly brought them here.
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