Prologue

Killian still dreamed about those nights in Neverland.

Listening to the susurrus of the waves, the water, the wind, the creak of the Jolly Roger as she rode at anchor, a solitary lantern burning on the bow to keep watch for mermaids. The darkness moving over the face of the deep, the sky brilliant with a thousand stars, so huge and glittering that it seemed a single breath would send them tumbling to earth. The distant silhouette of the island on the horizon, black jungle overgrown in thorny tangles, crown of mountain buried in perpetual grim fog. The crash of waves on Skull Rock, the whispers of the Echo Caves. He'd always wondered what it did with all the secrets it stole from your lips, if it turned them into the fabric of this fey and unnatural place, fashioned your nightmares to order so Neverland knew just how to destroy you. Even after centuries spent there, he still didn't know, and wasn't bloody interested in going back to conduct experiments. It was only his two driving forces that had kept him sane: the first time, his desire to live long enough to have revenge on Rumplestiltskin, and the second, his love for Emma Swan and his utter, hell-bent determination to find a way back to her. The third. . . facing wrathful mermaids and murderous Lost Boys, Baelfire and Wendy, the ghosts of his past, nearly losing the son he'd only just discovered he had, faced the forces that wanted to turn him back to Hook for good and all. . .

But he'd beaten it. Three times he'd escaped Neverland and the twisted games of the boy who ruled there, and he was determined for this to be the end. He was so dead-set on not thinking about it, that it wasn't until the nightmares started that he was forced to face how brutal and how deep the scars were. He told himself that he'd manage. Pan was gone, Neverland's dark power broken. It couldn't touch him anymore. Couldn't hurt him anymore.

Free. He'd wanted that for so long, and yet now that it had come to him, he wasn't quite sure what to do with it, a piece of clothing that no longer fit. But he didn't want to burden his young family with his old demons. Not when they were finally starting to be one. He knew that Emma was having a tough time with the revelation that her parents were actually Snow White and Prince Charming, that she'd finally gotten her real memories back after a decade of thinking she had been an abused, abandoned foster kid, and that even now, there was some residual curse on Storybrooke that meant its citizens couldn't leave. That the Evil Queen, the former mayor, was disgraced and deposed, but still dangerous. That even though Emma knew now who she really was, those ten years of solitude couldn't be turned off like a switch. She couldn't just go back to being trusting and happy, the naïve small-town girl raised by her loving parents. She wasn't that person anymore, and as he knew from bitter experience, would never be again.

That was part of why she had been so eager to move to England with him. She needed space from all that, time to process. But there was, as Killian knew, a fine line between needing space and running away, and he wasn't sure where, or when, to bring up the issue with her. He trusted Emma's judgment intimately, believed fully in her ability to make the best decision for herself, but as he was struggling with the traumatic legacy of Neverland, the secrets it had revealed, the lives it had changed, he could see that she was as well. Asking her to face Storybrooke would mean asking him to do the same. It was only fair. And he didn't know if he could.

Besides, there was so much else to think about. Their new home in Kensington: setting up house, getting David enrolled at his new school, and Killian re-established in his teaching position at Oxford. He'd had plenty of fast talking to do to the head tutor at Wadham College, who was relieved but baffled that Professor Killian Jones had appeared from the blue seven years after vanishing into it, short a hand and an explanation but insistent that he wanted his job back and was ready to prove it however necessary. He told her that he was engaged, had one child and another on the way, and hence was ready to abandon his wayward bachelor lifestyle and settle down to sedate domestic responsibility. Eventually, something worked. Michaelmas Term had started three weeks ago, and he was tutoring three undergraduates, giving a lecture series on the eighteenth-century Royal Navy and British maritime history, preparing a paper for a prestigious conference in the spring, and otherwise settling back into academia. He'd rented a flat in Oxford, but was trying to commute from London, in order to spend as much time as possible with his family. The baby was due at the end of February, and he intended, after missing it all with David, to be there for Emma every step of the way.

And so, now, settled in his Wadham office on this cold October morning, watching windblown students chase their umbrellas down Parks Road, Killian was doing his best to ignore the other issue he preferred not to think about: the fact that the loss of his hand was proving to be more of an inconvenience by the day. Typing and note-taking were a bloody pain in the arse, and the constant stares or awkward questions were wearing thin on his nerves. Sometimes he sorely missed his hook, which he had thrown into the Thames upon his return from Neverland. He couldn't have kept it, not with everything it represented, how he was still afraid it would be too easy to fall back. But after three hundred years, he'd learned how to do most things with it. Getting back his hand after his deal with the fairies, that had been heaven. . . but then he had lost it again at Pan's blade, and he wasn't going to get a third chance. This was it.

Killian had tried a few clumsy prosthetics, but they invariably drove him crazy, and despite the generous inheritance he had been left in Wendy Darling's will, most of that had gone to buying their house in London. A junior Oxford professor did not make enough to purchase the top-of-the-line device he wanted, and he was afraid of appearing selfish by asking Emma if they could splurge for one. And even more afraid of appearing selfish to himself.

"Son of a bitch," Killian muttered, having now reached for his coffee cup with his stump for the third time and set it rocking dangerously atop the pile of essays it was balanced on. He still had to mark those before the weekend, but he couldn't summon up the motivation to wade through the delights of undergraduate prose just yet. All he could look forward to was the fact that it was Friday, and Emma and David were taking the train up from London this afternoon; they'd spend the weekend exploring Oxford and the countryside. Good, quality family time, the kind to make him feel better about still keeping so much from them. When he strolled with Emma down Merton Street's quaint cobbles, when he ran after his son in Christ Church Meadow, whooping and laughing, he felt whole, despite all his damages. David didn't care that his father only had one hand. He cared that he did have a father, after so long. That was what was important. That was what Killian needed to remember.

"You're the bloody luckiest bastard on the face of the planet, Jones," he reminded himself. Talking aloud; another old habit of Neverland, when he sometimes wasn't sure who was really there, or if it was only him, had only ever been him. "Stop your griping and be happy about it."

His face stared back at him from the laptop screen. It did not look particularly happy. Thin, pale, cheeks sunken, dark stubble unshaven, blue eyes hollowed out in the fine, angular bones of his face, black hair untidy. Killian had taken to wearing reading glasses, something else that made him wonder if after three hundred years of youth and immortality, however ill-gotten, he was finally starting to age, to grow old. And while he should have, he had never quite learned how not to be afraid of death. As bitter, as bleak, as hopeless as his life had been, still somehow he'd gotten used to it. The thought of facing it, after so long. . .

Once again, he told himself that it didn't matter. He had Emma; he would rather spend one lifetime with her, than face all the ages of the world alone. He'd done that for too long, and knew its terrible, soul-sucking price. If becoming mortal again meant her and David and their child to come, he'd do it. He would. With no second thoughts and no second glances. Yet still, like this, one-handed, short-sighted, an old man, an old useless man. . .

Suddenly, with a violence that startled him, Killian slammed his computer shut and shoved back from his desk, surging to his feet in a wild flash of anger that abated as quickly as it had come – leaving him standing in the middle of his office breathing hard and not quite sure what to do with himself. They'd been coming more and more often, these liminal spaces where he wasn't Killian and wasn't Hook – was caught between both, pitched headlong into nothingness and struggling to steal a gulp of air before the water closed over him again. Drowning. He'd been near to it a few times in his long and eventful career as a sailor. This was what it felt like.

"No," he muttered, shaking his head. He wasn't like this anymore; he'd pulled himself from the abyss and damned if he wanted to go back. Nonetheless, his concentration was shot. He'd been working hard all week, and it wouldn't be the end of the world if he took a brief break.

Killian shrugged on his jacket and scarf, slung his leather satchel across his shoulder in case the urge should strike to grade papers whilst away, and trotted down the stairs, out across the lawn, and through the side gate, out into Broad Street. He hung a smart right into Blackwell's Bookshop, and headed up to Caffé Nero. It was bustling, warm, weakly sunlit, crowded with students, and it made him feel better. He stepped up to the counter, ordered a fresh coffee and a cinnamon bun, and was fumbling for his wallet to pay when someone tapped him on the shoulder. "Excuse me, but you're out in public like that? You're frightening children!"

Killian tensed, fleeting moment of peace destroyed. Turning, he saw it was some middle-aged busybody, staring in disapproval at his missing hand, and he let her see his teeth when he smiled. "Terribly sorry," he said pleasantly. "Lost it in the war, you know."

She blanched, at which he felt no shred of guilt whatsoever. That was his standard response whenever he wanted to make someone feel bad for butting into his private business; they were far less willing to utter a word against their precious bloody soldiers than to cast aspersions on him alone. If you only knew how frightening I can be, you'd never sleep again. Without a word, he scooped up coffee and pastry, ignoring the cashier's tentative enquiry if he'd like help, sir, and navigated to a corner table. No, he didn't want bloody help. He wanted his hand back. Emma might insist that it didn't bother her, and David might not notice, but it mattered to Killian. Gods, it did. Mattered so much that it felt like battery acid taking apart his insides, mattered so much that it scared him. Because Killian Jones only knew how to do one thing with that kind of passion, and it wasn't to give up.

It was possible. He'd avoided thinking about it, not wanting to give himself ideas, but the fact remained. Magic could accomplish almost anything, for a price, and there was magic in Storybrooke again, albeit no one who would be disposed to wield it on his behalf. Regina was a prisoner and had never liked him, Gold was still missing and liked him even less (though Killian would chop off his other hand before asking the crocodile for a bloody toothpick, far less a favor of this magnitude) and no one else had enough power. Yet part of Killian's research here in Oxford involved finding a way to break the residual curse on Storybrooke, the one preventing its people from crossing the town line, and he wondered suddenly that if he did that, would the magic leak out as well? If so, if he could conveniently keep from uncovering the solution until they worked a way to give him what he wanted, that would be the best course of –

No. Horrified, he halted himself in his tracks. It had been far too easy to slip back into that, that selfishness where his was the only happiness that mattered. He was well aware that he had no slack to spare. They might be engaged, living together, and expecting their second child, apparently happily ever after at last after their years of missing or damaging or destroying each other, but Emma knew too much about him. If he went down that dark path again, she might be understanding. Or she might not.

Killian gazed at his cinnamon bun, appetite gone. He got to his feet abruptly and left it there, along with his half-drunk coffee, then wove through the crowded tables and overloaded bookbags, down the stairs, and back out into the brisk autumn air. Headed up the steps of the Bodleian Library across the way, adroitly shouldered through the courtyard full of tourists, and inside, up the creaking stairs to the gallery reading room. Then he filled out a call slip at the librarian's desk and waited, pacing back and forth. More research. It was the only way to drown out the nattering guilt in the back of his head. The sense that he wasn't doing enough, that he should have tried something else, or perhaps didn't want to –

"Dr. Jones?"

He glanced up with a start; he still hadn't gotten used to being called that again. "Aye?"

"I have your order." The head librarian beckoned him over. "As you'll be aware, it's only usable in the special reading room, so if you'll step this way and put on the gloves – glove, sorry – "

"Never mind," Killian muttered grimly, feeling a sudden urge to disembowel even this inoffensive, bespectacled bibliophile. He pulled on the glove with his teeth and stepped into the reading room, unsealing the case and removing the manuscript. Handwritten, dating from the late 1770s, the work of some old professor at Merton named Crane; his was one of the few oeuvres Killian had found that consistently dealt with curses, the strange and esoteric and occult. But no matter how much he searched the cramped, ornate script, he couldn't find anything that seemed to pertain to their particular problem. Just an arseload of taradiddle about witnesses and horsemen and plague, fire, flood, and famine, unless –

Unless. Killian's finger stopped suddenly, tapping the worn brown paper. There was this bit about blood magic, about undoing ties that bound. Shocking that Crane had written that in the starched, prim, proper Anglican hothouse of Oxford in the eighteenth century and not been promptly carted off to the lunatic asylum, but then, he had clearly taken care to keep this secret. So there might be a way to dissolve the last of Storybrooke's curse. Blood magic was the darkest, the foulest, the most dangerous of all. . . but undoubtedly the most effective, if all they wanted was the job done. Yet at what price?

Troubled, he jotted down a few notes, skimmed through the rest of the manuscript, and checked his list to see if there were any other leads to investigate before he had to get back for his afternoon tutorials. None of them were likely to be out on call; they all tended strongly toward the obscure. The School of Night, Invisible College, Star Chamber. . . all of England's historical magicians and mysterious manipulators, dismissed as a load of tosh by the upright academic establishment. Killian often wondered how much trouble he'd get into if his superiors found out about his actual work here, or if he could spin it off as research for a book about folk magic and secret societies. But the arcane, the weird and wild and sorcerous, had existed in this world long before the Evil Queen and her curse. It was just a matter of putting the right pieces together.

He checked his watch. Intriguing as these possibilities were, they'd have to wait for tomorrow. He reconstituted Crane's manuscript, put it back in the case, and returned it to the reading room desk, then submitted his bag to the perfunctory search at the door and exited the Bod, determined not to think that he was grateful. Emma wouldn't want it done with dark magic, so why follow that avenue? Good thing (or was it?) that the crocodile was missing, that Robert Gold hadn't been seen in Storybrooke since the day he double-crossed Killian and Emma, stole the magic retrieved from Maleficent under the library, and made his way to Neverland. Where he'd gone from there, Killian had no clue. Hell, hopefully. But if he had still been in Storybrooke. . . there was no way they could break that curse, unleash the bastard on the world. . .

Killian was halfway back to Wadham when he felt it. Something invisible pummeling him in the chest, stronger than the autumn wind, as if it had gone through him, stomach to spine, making him stagger. He stopped dead on the sidewalk in front of the King's Arms, trying to regain himself, knowing beyond all doubt that something had just happened but hell if he could tell what. It wasn't good. That could only be some kind of. . . well. . . magic. Some new force emerging in the world, something he had thought he was done with.

It felt too damned much like Neverland.

Utterly unnerved, Killian nonetheless regained his dignity and completed the short walk back to college, ducking into the porter's lodge and retrieving his post from his pigeon hole. Throwing it into his satchel, he broke into a run across the quad, suddenly overcome with the urge to phone Emma and see if she was all right. Fool. It's nothing to do with her, get hold of yourself. Nonetheless, he didn't stop until he'd hurtled up the stairs to his office, unlocked the door with suddenly shaking fingers, and stepped inside.

Nothing. No one. Everything where he had left it. Gods, he needed to stop spooking at his own shadow. Life here in the comfortable confines of Oxford was dulling his edge, making him back into the professor and not the pirate. Perhaps he should start training again with his sword; one-handed or not, there were few who could match him when blades came out in earnest. Once upon a time, that was. And who was he intending to fight, anyway?

He threw the mail viciously on his desk, wishing he could find a better way to express his vexation, and fished his mobile out of his pocket, debating the merits of calling Emma. Likely she'd felt nothing, was getting the tasks of her Friday done before preparing to come up with David. He'd see her tonight, and she'd tell him if anything odd had happened. No use worrying her unduly beforehand.

Killian put the phone down, forcing himself to clear his head. Bloody hell if this hadn't been the bitch of a day, but it would soon be over. He'd be better with Emma, he always was. Tonight if he had another one of those dreams about Neverland, she'd be there in bed with him to make it go away, to sort out the hazy space between memory and reality that he seemed to be having so much trouble finding these days. Just a few more hours, then he'd leave here and go meet them at the train station. He lived for the knowledge of it.

A rueful smile twisted his lip, and he let out a long, jagged breath, pulling his chair up to his desk and removing the essay for the student that he expected in twenty minutes. Good style, but he wanted to see better command of the sources, and a more consistent thesis. But he had barely started marking in a few additional corrections when he heard the creaking tread of footsteps on the stair. Early, but then, most students in Oxford were overachievers.

A knock on his door.

"Oy, give me one minute," he called, underlining a particularly troublesome sentence in red. "Then you can – "

"No, Killian." The door opened. "No more waiting."

At the sound of it, he turned to ice and stone. Could feel hundreds of years fleeing from him, could feel the ground beneath his feet crumbling, could feel himself falling, falling, falling, into a place where only darkness and memory haunted him, where this wasn't possible, where he was hearing anything but what he had just – no, it wasn't –

His voice came out in a croak.

"You."

"Hello, little brother." Liam Jones smiled. "It's been a long time."