Page 66 of The Never Queen

I can keep up the facade.

Straightening, but staying on my knees, I hold up my hands in surrender. “I’ll give you anything. Just let my mom go.”

“Pathetic,” Gretel says. “You’d sell out your own just to save your ass?”

“Yes. If that’s what you want.”

She crosses her arms over her chest, and the movement reveals the hilt of a dagger at her hip. I force myself not to look at it too closely.

“All right.” She bends down in front of me, balancing on the balls of her feet. “When we’re done here tonight, I’d like you to go to Darkland and help us take care of your great-great-great grandmother.”

“Wendy?”

“Yes.”

She really wants to wipe out the entire Darling line.

Fuck this bitch.

I’m going to kill her.

I’m going to kill her with my bare hands if I have to. But I might as well start with the sharp pointy object and see how far that gets me.

When I lunge forward and go for the hilt of the dagger, there is nothing in my mind, body or spirit that believes I will move fast enough to steal it out from beneath Gretel.

So when I pull back, the blade firmly in my possession, there is a moment where I am just dumbfounded and Gretel is dumbfounded, and we’re both staring at me holding the weapon like it’s a snake I pulled from a bag of chips.

“Winnie!” Mom yells.

I’m up on my feet and swinging, the blade pointed at Gretel. I slice through her shirt, drawing blood on the underside of her forearm. But she catches my wrist, stopping the blade and then backhands me.

The blade is knocked free of my hand.

Gretel retrieves it and one of her men captures me, twisting my arms behind my back.

“You little bitch.” She stalks toward me.

I’m exposed and trapped, the man holding me out like a punching bag.

I fight to get free with everything I have. And it’s no use. The man has a death grip on me.

And then: WHACK.

Mom, with a metal folding chair, pulled from some recess of the warehouse.

The chair hits Gretel in the face, and she staggers backward, blood pouring from her nose, more of it spilling from a split in her lip.

As Gretel tries to recover, the man holding me lets his grip slip just slightly. I take the opening, stomping on his foot. He slips again and I get an arm free, make a fist, and swing it back, hitting him in the balls.

He goes down.

Gretel comes after me again, but I duck and spin. I may not have the buoyancy of the Shadow, but I’ve been practicing with it for months and the muscle memory is still intact.

As I spin, Mom thrusts a tire iron into my hand. “Here!”

Gretel comes around and I swing. Miss. But it sends her off kilter.

I realize all of this has thrown her. She didn’t expect me to fight back.