43. The Shadow and the Sword
N ico shuddered awake, mind filled with blood and shadows. Viola fighting, Viola bleeding, Viola falling limp in his arms as he folded them into darkness, the taste of metal in his mouth—
“Steady now,” came Cordelia’s voice, as something cool was pressed against his lips. “Drink up.”
“Viola,” he gasped, ignoring her offering, “is she—”
“She’s fine,” said Cordelia, still pushing the water towards him, “she’s still sleeping. Drink. ”
Nico drank quickly, shoving his feet out of the bed. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe her. It’s that he wanted— needed— to see for himself.
“By all means,” Cordelia said, as he hobbled out of his room, “kill yourself trying to get to her. Don’t trust my judgement.”
“If it makes you feel better, Bones, I’d kill myself getting to you too, but for a slightly different reason. Mostly the same.”
“I think I get it,” she said. “Even if I don’t understand.” She thrust his cane into his hands.
Nico took it, forcing himself to slow. His body was still riddled with bruises from the fight, and there was a bolt wound on his arm. “How did you get either of us into bed?”
“Crafted a few skeletons to do it for me.”
“Resourceful.”
“That was the easy part. She was bleeding rather badly. I stopped it, of course. No permanent damage.”
Nico pushed open the door to Viola’s room. She lay against the pillows, stiff and still, with only the steady rise and fall of her chest to indicate that life existed inside her mortal shell. Her bronze skin had taken on a grey pallor, and he had to touch her hand to be sure she wasn’t cold as stone. Warmth lined her palm. Nico held on tightly, and sank to the chair beside her.
“I’ll bring you up something to eat,” Cordelia said, hovering by the door.
“How long have I been out?”
“Twelve hours. She’ll be out longer. But she will wake.”
He raised a hand to Viola's brow, curling a lock of hair behind her ear, no longer fully conscious of anyone else in the room. “I’ll be here when she does.”
Cordelia bowed out, turning towards the corridor. Nico was left alone with Viola and Zazzy, who was curled up on the other side of the bed.
“Traitor,” said Nico.
The cat rose his head as if to say you had Cordelia and Nico was forced to concede that he was indeed grateful that Zazzy had chosen to come to Viola’s side instead. The cat seemed to sense something from him, and curled around the other side of Viola’s sleeping form to allow Nico to pet him. Nico stroked his head until Cordelia returned, carrying a tray. She set it up on the nightstand and Nico picked at it, not feeling remotely hungry. He quickly gave up.
“I’ll leave it for you whenever you’re ready,” Cordelia told him, already heading back out.
“I love you,” Nico said suddenly, stopping her in her tracks. “I’m not sure if I’ve ever told you that before, and there’s more I should probably say, but that’s the short of it. I love you. The day I found you was the second greatest day of my life.”
Cordelia smiled at him. “Only the second?”
Nico glanced at Viola. “Don’t push your luck.”
Cordelia skipped back into the room and crept up to his side, bending down to kiss his cheek. She wrinkled her nose afterwards, like she wasn’t quite sure whether or not she’d enjoyed it.
“I love you, too,” she told him. “Sorry I’m not a hugger.”
“I don’t mind.”
“Liar,” she chimed, crossing her hands behind her back.
“If the cost of being your friend is a lack of physical affection, it’s a price I’ll gladly pay.”
“We’re not friends, ” she insisted.
“No? Then what are we? ”
“I don’t know,” she said, “I’ve tried to put a name on it before. I’m not your assistant or your minion or your sister or your friend. I’m just… yours. And you’re mine. It’s that simple.”
They shared a smile before she slipped away, leaving Nico once more in the silence. He took Viola’s hand again and squeezed her knuckles, hating the way she couldn’t squeeze back. Did she even want him here?
She came back for you, a voice reminded him. That must mean she cares, at least a little.
Of course, she might have saved him more for moral reasons than emotional ones. He hadn’t ruled that out.
“Is she right?” he asked Viola. “Is it really that simple?”
She didn’t respond, of course.
Nico slipped off the seat and sat down on the bed instead, fingers smoothing her hair, tracing over the bruise on her jaw, the cuts on her fingers.
“I don’t care if you don’t feel the same about me,” he whispered. “Just wake up, Viola. Wake up and I will do whatever it is you ask of me.”
She didn’t, of course, and Nico felt foolish for even speaking to someone unable to answer back.
He sighed, brushing a shadow out of him, and sent it off to fetch a book. It returned with the one from his study, the old favourite that Viola had read to him when he was recovering.
It still had the unfinished watercolour inside of it.
Nearby, his shadow hovered, as if it already knew what Nico was going to ask it.
Viola dreamt she was lying under a tree beside the river that ran not far from her home. Miranda, maybe only five years old, was curled up in her lap. A warm presence rested against her shoulder. The presence. The one that had always been with her.
Until the day it wasn’t.
“You can’t stay here,” Sebastian told her, his voice older than the boy’s body that sat beside her.
“I know,” Viola whispered. “I know, but I want to. So much of the time.”
Sebastian smiled. “But not all of it? ”
“No, not all of it.”
A hand squeezed hers, and this time, she felt it. The warmth didn’t feel like Seb’s though, the shape of the hand both new and familiar. It wasn’t her brother’s hand, but she still wanted to go towards it, to let herself be pulled wherever it led.
“It’s time,” Sebastian whispered.
Viola’s throat was tight. “Can I still see you?”
Sebastian’s eyes brimmed with silver, but he kept smiling. “Close your eyes.”
Viola did as she was told. Sebastian leaned across and kissed her temple. His hand slid to her chest, pressed against her heart. A heart that grew alongside his.
“You can’t see me now,” he told her. “But you still know I’m here.”
Viola inhaled, her breath painful. “Is this your way of telling me that you’ll always be with me?”
“Why would I need to tell you what you already know?”
Viola woke in her room in Nicodemus’ castle, sunset spilling through the windows. Her middle hurt. Everything hurt, as if she were burning soup inside a fleshy shell. She shifted in the bed, hands on her in an instant.
Nico.
“It’s all right, you’re safe. Take it easy.”
Viola blinked, wincing as she tried to right herself. Nico placed a cup next to her lips, helping her to drink. Viola guzzled it down and sank back into the pillows. Her midsection was on fire.
Freya. Freya had stabbed her.
“Did everything happen that I think happened?” she asked, already certain of the answer.
“I imagine so. You confronted Jax about the giants, a fight broke out, we were both imprisoned and—”
Viola placed a hand against her bandaged middle. “Freya stabbed me.”
“She did.”
He looked like he wanted to say something else, some threat of violence like the one he’d uttered before Viola had stopped him. She’d not forgotten that part. He was truly ready to kill Freya for what she’d done. It was not an easy thing for Viola to stomach. She didn’t want anyone killing for her sake, especially not someone she cared about… even if they had stabbed her.
“You came back for me,” said Nico quietly, his anger seemingly abating.
Viola avoided his gaze. “You would have done the same for me.”
“You’re right. I would have.”
She glanced at him, mouth open.
“You were expecting me to lie to you, weren’t you?”
“I… yes, I suppose.”
“I have no intention of ever lying to you again.” He got up from his seat and bent into a kneeling position, despite the pain it must be causing him.
“What are you doing—”
“I’m making you a vow, knight girl—”
“I’m not a knight any more—”
“Farm girl, then. Woman. Viola. I’m making you a vow. May the goddess smite me if I ever move to deceive you again. I am yours to command. If you wish me to tear apart the world, I shall do it. If you wish me to set aside my revenge, I will do that too. If you want me to go far from your sight, I will teleport away right now, though every mile between us shall cut me like a blade—”
“I don’t want that,” she insisted.
Nico’s expression wavered with the flicker of a half-formed smile, a hope he was clearly trying desperately not to give weight to. “What do you want, then?”
Viola knew what he wanted her to say, but she couldn’t say it. Her thoughts were fixed on the way Jax had called Nico’s name, the familiarity expressed between them, however brief.
“The truth,” she said. “I want to know what happened between you and Jax. You owe me that much.”
Nicodemus sighed, his expression dropping. “I owe you that, and more,” he said, getting up from the floor and sitting back down in the chair. He tapped his leg with his long, pale fingers.
“After my people were murdered, I found myself in the village of Centaur’s Crossing,” he began. “I was taken in by the temple at first. No one wanted to foster a strange child at the time, especially not a pale, silent, dark-haired one. The Crown had kept quiet about the slaughter of Umbra’s Children, but there must have been whispers… I couldn’t confirm or deny their suspicions. I couldn’t speak at all. My voice felt like it had been swallowed up.
“Then, one day, a kindly woman took pity on me, and took me back to her small holding outside of the village. I think she wanted a companion for her son, but she never treated me like a pet. She even taught me sign language to use until my voice returned to me. In time, her son became my brother. I kept my shadows from both of them though. I didn’t want them to fear me. The thought of losing their love kept me up at night.
“And yet, my shadows called to me, begging to be used. I’d take any task that had me working alone, just so I could stretch them out. Eventually, of course, my brother caught me. But he wasn’t scared. He thought they were marvellous. It was the first time I hadn’t been afraid in years, and to have someone that wasn’t just not scared, but fascinated by them… you can’t know what that’s like.”
Viola couldn’t, and she didn’t want to, but she hoped that Nico knew that she wasn’t afraid of him either, or that that fear had long since been replaced by something else, something more. His power was less terrifying than whatever she felt for him, however confusing everything else might be.
Nico continued with his story. “For years, we lived together happily. I cannot know what it is like to have a twin, but during that time, I truly thought of Jack as my brother, closer to me than my own shadows. He taught me everything he knew, defended me from the other village children who made unkind remarks about my dubious origins… loved me as an older brother should.”
Viola imagined Nico and his brother in the place of her and Sebastian, running through the fields, climbing trees, poking badgers with sticks, catching fish, dealing with scraped knees and splinters and everything in between. They might have been doing it during the same summers, and the same times, with nothing but a few miles between them.
Nico’s tale was far from over. “But then, one year—long before the famine—our crops didn’t grow as well, our chickens stopped laying, and our mother’s beloved cow stopped giving milk. With no other choice, it was decided she would have to be sold. Mother was so upset that we said we’d take her, and we headed off the next day to do just that.
“On the way, we met an old woman, who, seeing our tragic faces, offered to take the cow off our hands with the promise that she could live out the rest of her days in peace on her land far away. She offered us magic beans, telling us that they would lead us to a land of riches.
“It was so long ago now that I can’t be sure which one of us believed her, and which spoke of caution. But in the end, we both decided we wanted to believe. We didn’t want Buttercup to be slaughtered for meat.”
As he spoke, Zazzy appeared from somewhere, winding around his ankles. Nicodemus scratched the cat’s ears as he spoke, his expression far away.
“Well, we took the beans home, and of course, Mother was furious. She threw them out of the window and we went to bed both feeling very sorry for ourselves, only to find the next morning that the beans had transformed into an enormous beanstalk stretching into the skies.
“It was still early morning when Jack and I boarded one of my shadow creations and flew up to the top of the beanstalk, and there we found ourselves in the land of giants. We took out a sack we’d brought with us and filled it to the brim with giant strawberries, raspberries the size of our fists and enough wheat for a dozen loaves of bread. Then Jack noticed a house not far away, and we snuck inside to try our luck there. The house was home to a couple of giants and a miraculous goose that laid golden eggs. I told Jack that we should turn back, but before we could, we were spotted by the female giant, who scooped us up and told us that if her husband saw us, he’d gobble us up. Once more, I told Jack to run, but he wanted that goose so badly. And secretly, I wanted it too. Almost as much as I wanted him to always like me.
“He reminded me of my power, which could surely help us escape from a mere giant, and together we crept back into the house and stole the goose, binding it with my shadows and lifting it onto a platform. The giant spotted us. We fled down the beanstalk, the giant following. He was halfway down. Jack screamed at me to stop him. I tried to slice at the stalk, hoping that, if it wobbled, he’d give up his pursuit and return above the clouds, but I caught his leg instead. He fell, crashing to the ground. It was by sheer miracle he didn’t crush our house.
We reached the bottom with the goose, our mother screaming at the colossal body on the ground… who was still alive, by the way. Just.”
Nico broke off to stare at his hands, and Viola could guess the part that happened next.
“That was the first time I ever killed.”
A silence followed, before he clenched his fists together, as if the death happened too long ago to trouble himself with it now, or the blood had been washed away by other, more recent killings.
“Needless to say, Mother was furious at first, but she was in a much better mood once we explained what the goose could do. We buried the giant beneath the wheat field and burnt what remained of the beanstalk. Sadly, the goose didn’t live forever, but the dozen eggs it gave us purchased us a very comfortable home and bought the silence of anyone who might have questions about what had happened. Jack, meanwhile, decided he quite liked slaying monsters. He purchased a small airship and weapons and declared we were going to take on the world. I didn’t want to join him, but as I was the one with the power, I was worried what would happen to him if I didn’t go with him.”
“How old were you when— ”
“Eleven.” Nico sighed. “I was only eleven when I left behind my foster mother and followed my older brother out into the world. Jack was not yet fourteen, but he looked older, and he had a confidence and charisma and a way with words that convinced everyone he was a master hunter. The results seemed to speak for themselves. No one would ever have suspected his quiet little brother of being capable of doing anything other than polishing his weapons.
“Sometime later, whilst dispatching a manticore outside of Drakeswatch, I accidentally exposed myself to some nearby bandits, who quickly saw what they thought was an easy way of gaining a few crowns. There’s still a decent bounty on anyone who turns in a shadow or necromancer, you know. They attacked us. Jack tried to defend me, but when they went for him too…” Nico swallowed, his eyes turning dark.
“Nico?”
“I killed them,” he said. “I ripped them apart. I decorated the glade with their insides.”
Viola stared at him. She’d known he was capable of brutality, but there was something in the way he said this, like he was just as horrified as she was. How many nights had he lost wishing he could go back and change it? What else had he lost when he ended those lives?
Nico cleared his throat, and continued on.
“After that, Jack said he didn’t think it was a good idea that the two of us travelled together anymore. He set off on his airship, leaving me behind… but I followed in secret, sticking to the shadows as I’ve always done. Eventually, Jack made himself a new group of friends, all of them eager for knighthood, which Jack thought he’d try his hand at seeing as monster hunting was proving difficult without me. One night, he and his companions took shelter in an abandoned building. It was a cold, wet night, so I crept inside after I thought everyone was sleeping. They weren’t. One of them caught me using my shadows, and alerted the others. The look on Jack’s face when he saw it was me…
“I could have killed them, but they were Jack’s friends, and I didn’t want to. I still felt bad about the bandits, and the giant. I begged Jack to make them let me go. In my panic, I told them we were brothers. He looked me in the eyes and said he didn’t have a brother… and then he attacked me. He told the others to down the lights, that I would be powerless in the dark, and he chased me through the building. It was completely dark—
“And suddenly, I was falling through it, the house coming down on top of me. I awoke in the morning, leg crushed, face bleeding. No one there, no sign of Jack. But just enough light trickling down for me to use my shadows to lift the building off me, to stitch my wounds together, and to summon something to take me far, far away. To the temple of Umbra, where I was reborn again. To the mountain where I carved out my home. Where I watched from afar as the boy who crippled me became the King who saved us all.”
Viola had seen this coming, and yet the confirmation still startled her. “King Jax is your brother.”
Nico nodded. “I suppose Jax sounds a bit more royal to him, but he is nothing but what he has always been—a boy playing hero, taking credit for the work of others. The minute I heard about the Farm, I knew something was afoot. I returned to our childhood home, and discovered he’d replanted the beanstalk at the base of the mountains, heavily guarded and behind a veil of mist. Easily traversable for me, of course.”
“You’ve known about the Farm all this time—”
“I did say I wasn’t a hero, Viola. I was thirteen when I crawled out of that building, when I let anger overtake any feelings of compassion I’d once I had. I’ve grown used to killing, to suffering. If I was appalled when I saw what Jax had done, it was buried beneath my fury. What did I care for the suffering of others when this was what was done to me?”
One hand pointed to his face, the other clenched against his thigh. Those wounds played a part of it, Viola was sure, but there were other scars, other wounds that ran far deeper. Nico had been betrayed by the person he’d once loved most in the world. The blade of betrayal cut deeper than anything else.
Viola looked down at her lap.
“Do you care now?” she asked.
Nico ran his hands down his face. “A bit,” he admitted. “Nothing like how much I would once have cared. I look back at the boy I once was and hate him for his compassion as much as I envy him for his kindness. I’m not a good person, Viola. I’m not sure I ever will be one again. But you make me want to be one. For your sake, if no one else’s. Even my selflessness is selfish, see.”
Viola pondered on his words, unsure of her own feelings. She couldn’t deny the sting she felt at his secrets still, and the fact he’d known for years what the Crown was hiding and done nothing but stay here, planning his revenge and growing richer. He was selfish. He had a power he could use to help people but he’d used it for nothing but personal gain, whereas she had no power and fought to be of use in the world.
But even if he was selfish, there were parts of him that weren’t as ugly as he led others to believe. He’d saved Cordelia. He loved her. He clearly cared about Viola, too. He was still capable of compassion.
And maybe, like her, he wanted to be better than he was.
And what was she, now? She wasn’t a knight anymore. She’d left everything behind to save him. She was a traitor to her country, a fugitive. The Crown would be after them both, especially as Jax knew she was aware of the true nature of the Farm.
She’d had to run. She’d had to save him. But it was a lot to lose in a short space of time. She’d lost her home as well as her job, she owned nothing she hadn’t brought with her. She’d left her friends. Blackberry. Heindrich.
She didn’t even want to think about Freya. She wasn’t sure she wanted to think at all.
“What now?” she asked finally.
“You rest, you recover,” he told her. “Whatever you want to do after that—whatever you want me to do—I’ll help you. I’ll do it.”
Viola wasn’t sure what she wanted. The giants freed, Jax punished, her family’s ghosts still and quiet—
Him. The version of him she’d seen glimmers of before. The person he once was and the person he could be.
All of that and more.
But not today. Not right now.
“And where does this leave us?” she asked.
Nicodemus sighed, as though this question pained him. “Wherever you want us to be.”
Viola bowed her head. It was the perfect answer, for someone who proclaimed himself as selfish. And he was, but not with her. Not with Cordelia. That compassion was still in him, and she wanted it, but not yet. Too much had happened, too much was still to process. Her head hurt just thinking about it, almost as much as the ache in her chest, the hollowness she felt at the loss of the life she’d had just yesterday.
Her eyes fell to the painted sketch on the dresser behind him, her hair now a trail of browns, reds, purples, all glinting softly against the sunset. “You finished it,” she remarked.
Nicodemus glanced down. “I had time.”
A part of her wanted to ask him what that meant, to hear what he wanted and how he felt, but she wasn’t sure she was ready to hear it, or how she’d respond to his declaration.
Time.
“That’s what I want.”
Nico raised an eyebrow. “Come again?”
“Time. I need time to think. Time to work out what I want, what I feel. About… about everything.”
“Time,” said Nicodemus slowly. “I can give you that.”
He got up as if to leave, but Viola reached out, pulling at her stitches, and stopped him in his tracks. “You don’t have to leave,” she told him. “Not if you don’t want to.”
Nico managed a weak smile. “And if I never want to leave? ”
“In time, I think I’ll be all right with that.”
His smile broadened, and he reached out to stroke a lock of hair behind her ear. “Permit me to read to you?”
Viola grinned her response, and he settled back into the seat beside her. They stayed together as the sun sank over the trees, Viola allowing herself a quiet moment to enjoy his voice, trying not to think of those out there suffering while she rested.
But not forever. Not for long.
She swore herself to them like she’d once sworn herself to the Crown.
I am a knight of the people, a champion of justice. Though I may feel fear, I will never be conquered by it. I will fight from the shadows to bring forth the sun. I shall defend the innocent and punish the guilty. This is my oath. This is my promise.
No matter the cost.