Well, I promised myself I wasn't going to publish any new chapters until I finished all my uploads to ao3 so I can continue publishing concurrently but... well...
Here's Chapter 14 of Daughter of the Sky at fanfiction.net.
(This whole fic will also be uploaded to ao3 ASAP.)
Story Summary: When Tinkerbell disappears from Neverland, it starts the most violent war to date between Pan and Hook. But Tink has no interest in returning to Neverland... so it's the fairy's half-human daughter recruited to put an end to the war. When Margot Belle returns to the home she never knew, will the compelling and infamous Pirate Captain distract her from her true destiny?
By nightfall a warm rain had begun. It was thin at first, through palm and fern, until the whole jungle shimmered under it. The storm from the cave had passed, but its breath lingered. It was humid, restless, and metallic on the tongue. Somewhere beneath the canopy of trees, a single compass kept twitching, its needle stubbornly alive.
Hook watched it glow against his palm. Its faint, rhythmic pulse answered a deeper one within his chest, a magnetic ache pulling him east through the dark. The noise of his men crashed behind him — boots sinking in mud, weapons clanking, curses traded between trees.
“Keep to the line,” he said, cutting them off before they could question him. “Follow the riverbed north; I’ll meet you where it widens.”
Smee squinted through the rain. “Alone, Cap’n?”
“Orders,” Hook replied, simply, already turning away.
He left them arguing in low voices as he slipped into the deeper green. The path narrowed, vines slick against his sleeves, night insects humming in delirious chorus. Every few yards the compass tugged again and he followed, convinced he could almost smell her in the damp rain. The memory of her laugh caught him between leaves.
He had no map now, only the promise of her somewhere ahead. Neverland’s distances reshaped themselves for him now as they always had for Pan, but this direction felt truer and more reliable, not a passing boyish fancy. The island itself seemed to want him to find her. Or, perhaps, it just wanted to watch him try.
Thunder rumbled far out at sea. Hook quickened his pace, torch in hand.
The pull grew stronger, equal parts irritation and intoxication, until the trees parted in a sudden sweep of open ground. He stopped at the edge, heart hammering.
Through the veil of rainlight stood the figure he’d been chasing. Bedraggled in the rain and clutching some sort of device; a small, box-shaped thing in her hand, strange wires dangling from it. She clutched it as if it mattered, some charm from the world she’d fallen out of. It made no sense to him — perhaps a weapon, perhaps a trinket — but whatever it was, she held it like proof she still belonged elsewhere.
The crew’s shouting had ended by the time he reached her. All that lived in the clearing now was breath — heavy and ragged, wet with still softly falling rain.
Margot stood in shadow, half in torchlight, her dress shredded along one thigh, skin streaked in thin lines of blood. Scratches, not mortal, but too many for James to count.
His stomach twisted. “God in Heaven, Margot.”
She looked up, startled by her own name in that tone. “I’m fine.”
“You look like you fought the jungle itself.”
“Well,” she glanced down at her legs, at the new constellation of marks up her calves and thighs, “Peter Pan did say my dress was asking for battle scars.”
Finish the full chapter here!
