Peter Pan had a prophecy to answer, so he went to see his wife instead. The heir who would end his reign had wandered into Neverland weeks ago, remembering things Peter wanted buried. He should steal that child's future today. He knew it. But he swam down through cold water to Ursula's door, because he wanted one hour where nobody expected him to be a king. The Sea Witch Lair sat on the seafloor under a giant clamshell. Coral choked its stone arches. Green weed hung from every lamp. Ursula had not opened the door for him in a long time. He knocked anyway, the way he always had, and waited. She opened it. Small, gray-haired, black-eyed. She looked at him the way you look at weather. "You never come when nothing is wrong," she said. "I came to see you." "You came to hide." She did not move aside. "From what." He told her. A child had crossed into Neverland. The prophesied one. He was supposed to take the child's future, like he took the first, back when he still knew what love meant. He said the child kept remembering. He did not say the child looked like their own children once had. Ursula's face did not change. But she gave him less, not more. "Our son hunts in the Witch's Forest," she said. "Our daughter chases missing children through villages. You never took their futures." "They're grown. I couldn't reach them." "You didn't try." She stepped back now, but not to let him in. "You want me to tell you not to do it. I won't. You already know." Peter drifted closer to the arch. Lanterns glowed behind her in the drowned hall. He remembered a wedding no one had witnessed, two people who used to laugh in this water. "Ask me to stay," he said. "One hour." Ursula held the door between them. Her voice stayed flat. "I collect what people give up. Voices. Names." She looked at him. "You gave up the thing that let you love. Years ago. You handed it over yourself." The words landed like stone. "I keep what's given," she said. "I don't give it back. One woman tried for three years. She left without it." "You're my wife." "I was." She began to close the door. "You cannot spend time with me, Peter. There is no you left to spend it. Go take the child's future. It's what you have instead." The door shut. Coral scraped against wood. The lanterns dimmed behind the small round windows. Peter hung alone in the cold. She had answered him, and the answer was true. He had come here to feel like a husband and learned there was nothing in him that could. Only the taking was left. He turned upward toward the light. The child was still in Neverland, still remembering. Peter went to find the future he could steal, since it was the only thing he still knew how to want.

Peter rose from the sea and walked into the Witch's Forest. The child was here somewhere, still remembering. But the paths belonged to the woodsmen now. Peter counted three patrols before noon. They marched the trails with axes, checking every shadow. He could not hunt in the open like this. He needed a place to hide, a lair no woodsman would find. He had none. A pixie found him first. She darted out of the ferns, wings throwing sparks of blue light. Tinker Bell. She had followed him from Neverland without asking. She hovered at his ear and rang, sharp and fast, pointing deeper into the trees. She wanted him to follow. Peter almost took her future then, out of habit, on instinct. He stopped himself. She was still useful. He let her lead. She brought him to a crooked cottage swallowed by vines. Books cluttered every ledge. Clocks hung in the windows, all stuck at different hours. A man stood in the doorway, small, with a tall hat covered in gears and cards. His yellow eyes did not blink. Peter knew him from old days. The Hatter. A creature from outside time, who collected the moments the world had dropped. "This is mine," the Hatter said. "You want it." "I want a base," Peter said. "Hidden. The woodsmen watch every path." "The rent is high." The Hatter stepped aside, letting Peter see the cluttered dark within. "I don't lend. I sell." "Name it." The Hatter tilted his head. "A moment. One you'll never get back." He touched his own chest. "I pay for my stillness every day. Now you pay for shelter." Peter understood the trade. He had nothing left inside but the taking. He reached out, not toward the Hatter, but toward himself. He gave up the memory of Ursula's door closing, the last hour he had wanted to be a husband. The Hatter caught it from the air like a coin. It looked wrong in his hand, a small square hole where a memory should be. He tucked it into his coat. "Done," the Hatter said. Then, quieter, "You paid too easy. That means you had nothing to keep." He walked past Peter into the trees and was gone. Peter stepped inside and shut the door. The cottage held him now, walls thick with vines, windows blind with clutter. No woodsman would look here. Tinker Bell settled on a stuck clock, her light dimming to a glow. Peter had his lair. He could hunt the child from cover now, learn its routes, choose his moment. But the Hatter had walked out with a piece of him. And the pixie who trusted him watched from the shelf, waiting to see what he would do next. The refuge was won. What lived inside it was already less than the man who paid.

Peter left the Hatter's cottage before dawn. The prophecy named a child who would end his reign. It did not name which one. But he had a guess. Long ago, before he gave up love, he had fathered twins in the mortal world. A boy and a girl. He needed to know which of them carried the future he had to steal. He would find the boy first. Tinker Bell rode his shoulder, her light dim, watching him the way she had since the trade. He found the boy at a hollow tree, marking bark with a knife. Hansel. Older now, a satchel at his hip, moving like someone who knew every root in the forest. Peter had never seen his son's grown face. It stopped him cold. Hansel looked up and did not startle. "You're on my path," he said. "State your business." "I'm looking for someone," Peter said. He stepped closer, reaching inward for the pull that told him where a future lived in a person. He had used it a thousand times. It always answered. It did not answer now. He stood before his own son and felt nothing to take. Hansel had memories, plans, a task he walked toward every week. But the thread of what he would become was already gone. Someone had cut it. "Your future," Peter said. "It's missing." Hansel did not blink. "Ask my sister. She's the one who kills things." He said it flat, no heat, and let it sit. Then he stepped past Peter and kept walking his line of marked trees. A raven called. Peter turned. A girl stood between two trunks, a carved staff in her hand, a satchel across her chest. Gretel. She had followed the bird, the way she always did. She looked at Peter, then at Hansel's back. "He talks to strangers now," she said. "He didn't used to." Peter reached for her without deciding to. The pull woke. It caught on something bright and unfinished in her, a whole life still bending toward what it would be. She had the future. Not the boy. Her. But she felt him reach. Her staff came up. The carved marks along it lit, one after another, cold blue. "Whatever you are," she said, "you don't touch me." The light flared. It threw Peter back a full step, and the air smelled like frost off a broken mirror. She did not run. She held her ground and waited to see if he would try again. He did not. Not here, not with her armed and ready. He had his answer, and it was worse than not knowing. The heir was his daughter. And his daughter could see him coming. Peter backed into the trees. Tinker Bell rang once, sharp, at his ear. He knew now which future to steal. He also knew it would not be given, and it would not be quick.

The frost off Gretel's staff still stung Peter's palm hours later. He had reached for her future and been thrown back like a leaf. Her magic knew him. It answered before she even chose to defend herself. He could not take what he could not touch. So he went to the one person who knew how his daughter's defense was made. He went to the sea. Ursula waited in her drowned cathedral, seated among coral and the bones of sunken ships. She was Peter's estranged wife, and she had once told him he'd given away his own heart. She did not rise when he entered. "You smell like her frost," she said. "You found the girl." "She won't let me near," Peter said. "Her staff throws me back. I can't reach the future if I can't reach her." Ursula turned a small pearl over in her fingers. "She learned that ward from me. Years ago. Before you forgot us." Her voice stayed flat. "It reads intent. The moment you want to take, it wakes." "Then how do I blunt it?" "You don't fight the ward. You feed it a lie." She held out the pearl. "This carries a voice I took long ago. A mother's, singing. Warm intent. Hold it, and the ward reads warmth instead of hunger. It will let you close." Peter reached for the pearl. Ursula closed her hand. "There's a price," she said. "The pearl only holds warmth if it has warmth to hold. It needs a true feeling, given by the one who carries it." She looked at him without softening. "You gave yours away. So you'll give the last thing you have of us instead. The name you called me. Not the title. The name." Peter went still. He had traded his memory of her door to the Hatter. This was less and more. A single word. He tried to find it and felt it there, small and warm, the only warm thing left in him. "Say it into the pearl," Ursula said. "Then it's gone. You keep the tool. You lose the word." He thought of Gretel's bright, unfinished life. He thought of the reign the prophecy would end. Then he leaned close and spoke the name into the pearl. It left him the way heat leaves a stone at night. He could not remember it a breath later. Only that it had been sweet. Ursula opened her hand. The pearl glowed faint pink. "Now it lies for you," she said. "Go close to her. She'll feel a mother's warmth and lower the staff." Peter took the pearl. It hummed against his skin, warm where he was cold. He had the key to reach his daughter now. He turned toward the surface without thanking her. "Peter," Ursula said. He looked back. "The warmth runs out. Use it once." She did not tell him what waited when it did.