Chapter 2
Chapter two
The shadows burn. Mine, they call as they slide down my throat, singeing my lungs. Mine, they whisper as they fill my mouth, stifling my screams. Mine, they croon as they dive into the pool of magic behind my heart, staining the shimmering colors with their void.
I writhe wildly, but I find no air. No light. Only an endless chasm that is at once barren and smothering. It takes and takes until I am empty, then fills the emptiness with shades of sin, each one an agonizing lick of flame. How can something made of me feel so foreign? So wrong.
My panic surges as I flail, fighting in vain against the invisible force. I tumble into the recesses of it, clawing to keep from losing myself entirely. But I find no purchase, for there is nothing to hold onto. There is nothing but me and the shadow.
Come to me now, Darling.
The whispered voice is icy, a soothing balm against the heat of my fear.
It is only an echo in the recesses of my soul—a fleeting feeling of a past I still ache for—but it is tangible enough to grab hold.
I dig my fingers desperately into the memory, drawing black blood beneath my nails, clinging to the small comfort in the endless void.
Come to me now, Darling. I’m what’s true.
The words flow through me, expanding in a buoyant cloud until I’m no longer falling, but floating. Toward the only thing that’s ever felt true.
A breath shoots from my lungs as I jolt awake.
I blink up at the cavern ceiling with stinging eyes.
My lantern lays shattered on the floor, the only light coming from the blue-green glow of the moss.
There is no sign of the horrible mass of shadows; no sign of the voice that’s haunted my dreams for the past year.
The only sound is the rapid beat of my own heart and the soft tick, tick, tick, of water dripping down the cave walls.
There is nothing here. Only me and the dead.
What the fuck just happened? Did I imagine it all?
My mouth and throat feel like they’ve been stuffed with cotton, each swallow painful and dry. My head is throbbing, my muscles achy and sore like I’ve run ten miles. I breathe out a pained huff and attempt to get my arms beneath me. They wobble uselessly, and I collapse back to the stone.
Tiernan has been nagging me about pushing myself too far.
The island isn’t entirely healed yet, and its demand on my magic is draining enough beyond what I’ve been doing down here every day.
Maybe he’s right. Maybe the lack of sleep and the constant anxiety have finally pushed me over the edge, and I’ve had some sort of fit.
Even in the land of dreams, shadows aren’t alive. They don’t burst from people’s chests and attempt to swallow them whole.
Niko’s imagined voice proves it was only a desperate hallucination. I have spent the past year determined not to think of him—determined never to imagine that obsessive onyx gaze; the cruel beauty of his smile; the spread of his elegant fingers and the ice of his death.
It’s the reason I don’t sleep. It is easier during the day, when my mind is immersed in the pain of others, to keep my thoughts from straying. But my dreams wander, no matter my resolve—they ache, they long, they imagine.
I have kept the armor of my mind impenetrable, lest I paint my most shameful desires into reality and draw Niko back from the mainland. That I’ve now lost control during waking terrifies me far more than ominous shadows.
Pushing the thoughts away, I shove myself to sitting with a grunt. I’m working up the strength to stand, when the brush of invisible fingers over my arm sends me toppling to the ground once again. Stars flash in my vision as I land hard on my back with a weary oomph.
Before I gather my wits enough to draw the dagger strapped to my thigh, an arm flickers into existence followed by the rest of a familiar form.
“For fuck’s sake, Marina,” I hiss, my heart still pumping uncomfortably fast. “You scared me to death!”
Don’t be dramatic, she signs. You can’t die. The little pixie throws a hand on her hip, her expression indecipherable as she watches me flop to my stomach in graceless attempt to return to sitting.
I blink dumbly at her, as unmoored by her presence as I am comforted by it. I haven’t seen Marina in months, and I don’t know how to feel about her appearing during a moment of vulnerability.
“What are you doing down here?” I ask warily, before another, far more troubling thought occurs to me. “And why were you invisible?”
Marina’s magic demands a high price. That she would have reason to use it now sets my teeth on edge.
Just be thankful I was.
It isn’t an answer, but before I can press, she ducks beneath my arm to help me to my feet. I sag against her, my legs wobbling beneath me. If it weren’t for her steadying hand, I’d probably fall right back over.
When I manage to regain my balance, Marina steps back, her hands quick and concise as she signs, What happened?
The honest answer is that I don’t know, and for a moment, I consider admitting it to her.
Before everything happened last year, Marina and I had been something like friends—or, at the very least, headed in that direction.
But since that horrible moment when Niko lay dying on the floor of the Lunaedon, a divide has existed between us—one forged of hurt and anger.
I’d once cherished her unfailing loyalty to Niko, but now I cannot bring myself to forgive her for it, as it was the same fierce devotion that kept her faithful to his wishes, even when she knew it led to his death.
And it is the same loyalty which prevents her for ever forgiving me for sending him away,
It is a chasm we haven’t been able to cross.
She moved out of the Lunaedon a few days after I banished Niko and no one has heard from her since. Not even Sam or Tiernan, though they’d searched for her for months.
Now I know why. She’s been invisible.
Willa, whatever is happening with your magic should not be ignored.
“I—I think I just overdid it,” I hedge. “I haven’t been sleeping well lately. Probably just need some rest.” I release a breath through my teeth, the action doing little to soothe the raw fray of my nerves. “Don’t tell Tiernan. He’ll be insufferable knowing he was right.”
At Tiernan’s name, Marina visibly stiffens and my heart fractures at how long she’s spent alone.
“Are you—how have you been?” The question is stilted—as awkward as I feel—and Marina steels her spine against it like it’s an attack.
Fine. The sign is sharp; a rebuke.
In spite of myself, I let out a rough laugh. “We’re all just fine, aren’t we?”
Marina cedes a small smile, but she doesn’t laugh.
As I take her in—the golden hair, the delicately shaped features, the no nonsense air—I realize my initial anger toward her has given way to something softer in the months since we’ve seen each other. Something less sharp, and perhaps, a bit closer to understanding.
If only I knew how to say that. Knew how to tell her I understand why she did what she did, and plead for her to understand my actions the same way.
But before I can say anything else, she asks, Have you felt a shadow like that before today?
Her question settles like ice in my stomach as I realize she saw more than just me collapsing. And if Marina saw the shadow—the pit of rage that somehow escaped beyond my chest—it means none of it was a dream.
Panic flutters against my ribs. I’ve scraped and clawed and sacrificed to dig out a bit of power for myself, and now, it’s all I’ve been left with. The idea that something could be wrong with it—that my magic is something that can be taken from me—is unbearable.
“It’s nothing,” I assure her with a dismissive wave of my hand. “I just got a little angry when I saw what the Strayed had done to her.” Marina follows my gaze to the dead pixie. “It made me a little sloppy, I guess.”
Marina doesn’t appear convinced.
“It won’t happen again,” I assure her, wondering if it’s the truth.
Her hands begin to move, but I don’t see her words, as at that moment, something in the air pulls taut.
I gasp aloud as my heart pulls just as tight, stealing the air from my lungs as the island’s magic begins roiling through me like a storm on the horizon. It presses against my skin, hammers against my skull, awake.
Marina starts toward me, her brow knitted in concern, but I wave her off with a frantic shake of my head.
“I—I have to go. Can you…” I motion vaguely to the dead pixie.
Marina nods, but I’m already tearing through the tunnel, back toward the bustling center of the Hollows.
In my months as the anchor, I’ve felt the island’s heart beating alongside my own. Its pain and its hungers, its beauty and its power. I feel the lifeblood of almost every resident, the space they hold in the island’s magic. But this—this is different.
I race up the never-ending stairs toward the surface. My legs scream in exertion, but I hardly feel it.
Because there’s only one person powerful enough to resound through the island’s magic like an earthquake. The only person whose presence is so profoundly woven into my magic, my blood, my dreams, that I could summon him without ever meaning to.
Niko.
The Carrion King is home.
I’m ready to scratch out of both the carriage and my own skin by the time I reach the lagoon.
The wheels have yet to roll to a full stop when I burst through the door, taking off through the thick trees toward the beach.
Feet bare, hair a mess, I race toward the pulsing presence at the edge of the lagoon—powerful, magnetic, terrifying.
My heart hammers against my ribs, my skin heated and tight. My emotions are too intense to untangle any individual one. Fear, shame, excitement, longing, all threaded around one thought:
He’s home.
But when I emerge from the forest, toes sinking into the warm black sand, I’m left only with hollow disappointment and a tight spool of dread. For it isn’t Niko who stands on the beach.
The stranger’s back is turned, his posture relaxed as he gazes out at the waters of the lagoon to the sirens lazing on the cragged rocks beyond.
He is tall and thin, clothed only in a simple pair of white linen pants that billow softly at his ankles in the breeze, and a leather scabbard slung low around his hips.
His feet and chest are both bare, his messy golden hair glowing in the midday sun.
An aura of something similar radiates from his tanned skin, a vibrant light appearing to emanate from within his muscular form.
I blink, wondering how hard I hit my head when I fell. People don’t glow.
As if sensing my presence, the man suddenly turns to me, a mischievous smile tugging at the corner of his full mouth. His face is somehow both youthful and ancient, the combination untenable. And yet there is something magnetic about it, something simultaneously repulsive and intriguing.
He tilts his head, his grass-green eyes oddly bright. His features are faintly elven—the slight angle at the corner of his eyes and the softly pointed tips of his ears—and when he speaks, his voice is like the edge of a laugh.
“I’ve been waiting for you.”
The words themselves aren’t ominous, and neither is his tone.
But horror envelops me just the same as my gaze drops to his bare chest. To where the skin is flayed, peeled back from the bone to reveal blood and organs and the golden glow of magic behind the steady pump of his heart.
Though the wound does not bleed, neither is it healed.
It is ragged and deep, an angry slash that is all too familiar.
And when I take in the sand behind him and find no shadow, a slimy awareness crawls up my spine as I understand who the man—boy—truly is.
The Aeternalis’ watches me greedily, and I steel my spine as he croons, “For thousands of years, Willa Darling, I’ve waited for you.”