Chapter 1 #2
I brace for Adira’s admonishment, but she only says, “Be careful of ghosts, Willa. They will haunt the present with the past if you allow it.”
I don’t ask if she means the ghosts of the Hollows, or the ghosts of my heart. I only nod and bid her farewell.
Adira isn’t disapproving of the way I’ve spent my time and energy the past few months, but she doesn’t understand it.
And it isn’t just her—Tiernan and Sam have both tried many times to convince me to blink away the destruction that exists in the never-ending stone maze beneath the island and be done with it. Paint it clean, imagine it pure.
Start over.
I haven’t been able to explain that wishing away the ruin caused by the Strayed feels like a betrayal to those broken by them.
The Eternal Children had festered beneath the earth for far too long, and the evidence of their monstrous habits goes on for miles beneath the surface.
Pixies and humans and sirens alike, strung up in chambers that were once homes, all in varying states of torture and decomposition.
The sight of it is enough to turn even the steadiest of stomachs, as is knowing they’d been unable to die during the worst of it.
For over two centuries, the Strayed’s victims endured unimaginable agony.
For me, restoring the Hollows has been like repeatedly reliving my own torture in the Amelioration camps.
Each body I find—and there have been thousands—shatters my heart open anew.
I see myself in their broken forms; I feel their hopelessness as my own with each breath of the rotted air.
It is what has kept me returning, day after day.
To recognize their suffering in a way mine never was, and to honor the bravery of their endurance.
To be their witness. To let their stories live on in my memory for the rest of eternity.
With Sam essentially running the kingdom, I spend my days descending into the tunnels hours before sunrise and staying tucked beneath the earth long after sunset.
I paint the Strayed’s victims in my mind, whole and healed, so they can be returned to any remaining family.
I paint the chambers of their pain with newfound hope, washing away their blood and suffering, readying it for the new life.
I memorialize their suffering; I envy their deaths.
I inundate myself in their misery instead of coping with my own.
The tunnel veers to the left and plunges downward before opening to one of the thousands of chambers carved into the rock. I take a deep breath and step inside, bathing the small room in the soft light of my lantern.
My heartbeat skitters up into my throat as I take in the scene before me.
I should be accustomed to the horrors of the Strayed by now—should be able to view this as little more than a job—but each time, rage barrels through me until I see nothing but red, a furiously frothing wave that mingles with my magic until I can hardly think beyond it.
This time is no different. Magic burgeons from the pool behind my heart so forcefully, I sway on my feet.
Because on the opposite wall, hangs a pixie pinned to the rock by iron stakes.
They pierce through the delicate bones of her hands and feet, splaying her limbs wide at odd angles.
Crusted blood spatters the walls and collects in dried pools throughout the small chamber.
A jagged wound rents through her abdomen, torn apart and half empty, like it’s been feasted on by scavengers, something I can only hope happened after she was finally able to die.
I swallow roughly, sliding my attention to her wings. Blackened and curled.
The Strayed burned them. Like she was nothing more than an errant insect to tease and torture.
For a blinding moment, I feel only fury. A writhing pit of it.
I have lived most my life with the heat of anger in my veins. It has driven me forward; it has kept me alive.
Lately though, it is different—less like a wildfire and more like a starving beast. Like something fractured inside me the moment Niko died, a fissure through which the enraged animal escaped, its jaws hungry enough to devour me whole; its teeth sharp enough to snap every tether keeping me anchored to my humanity.
Choking down my rage, I draw close enough to lay my hands on the ruined pixie.
Her skin is cold beneath my palms, and when I close my eyes, the pixie’s face is burned behind my eyelids; etched onto my memory; intertwined with my regret.
I saved so many by anchoring myself to the island, more than I ever thought myself capable of.
But when I close my eyes, I only see the ones I didn’t.
The ones who waited in the depths of the Hollows for two centuries, forgotten beneath the earth, damned to an eternity of darkness and pain.
And though I know they were grateful for the relief of death, the injustice of it all still eats at me: that they suffered for so long; that their screams were silenced by miles of rock; that I saved so many when I brought Niko back to life, but only those who’d been near my magic.
The beast claws at my chest—its rage shadowing everything else, even as I close my eyes to paint the pixie whole in order to spare her family the pain of knowing the agony she endured. But as the painting takes shape in my mind with delicate strokes and soft highlights, the shadows remain.
No matter what I do: my rage always remains.
And when I push my magic outside of myself, this time, the shadows come out with it.
My eyes fly open at the painful tug in my chest, so much sharper than usual. A gasp chokes the air from my lungs, and I tumble to the floor, certain, for a wild moment, that my magic has somehow shredded through my heart.
I blink at the pixie who now lays beside me, her ruined body healed, her face so serene she could be asleep. I should be relieved at the sigh—my magic worked—but it is only heavy dread that settles over me as I slowly turn away from her ethereal face to stare directly above me.
Where the cave ceiling should be, there is only shadow.
An undulating mass, a void deeper than even Niko’s death. Like the fabric of the universe has been ripped, and I’m gazing into the nothingness that existed before it.
The shadows quiver, the unnatural movement sending a rush of nausea barreling up my throat.
Because I feel the echo of the movement in my chest. Exactly where my rage resided only moments before, but now feels…empty. Have I somehow given my rage form? Is this what it looks like? A tangle of horror and darkness?
I never get an answer. The dark mass stills as if it watches me. My heartbeat flails against my ribs as I stare back. Then, without warning, the shadows rush toward me with a violent howl and the world goes mercifully black, leaving a shocked scream still trapped in my throat.