Chapter 3 #2
The air turns solid in my lungs, and suddenly, I’m choking. On the noxious air—on my own regret and anguish. It isn’t true—it can’t be true.
The Aeternalis tsks irreverently. “Now then…You’re far too powerful to shed tears for a lowly traitor. I’ve been told your magic rivals my own, even at the height of my power. I can show you how to harness it.”
I stiffen at his words, my lips pulling back in a feral snarl that only makes him laugh again.
“You felt it when I arrived, didn’t you? How the island awakened at my presence? You may be the anchor, but I…I am the Creator, Willa. Somnya longs for me in a way it never will for you.”
In a single moment, he’s stripped me down to my truest fear: I am not enough. Not enough to save Celie; not enough to keep Niko; not enough to rule the island. Something slimy settles inside me at Pan’s words, like I’ve been waiting for the moment for someone else to realize what I already knew.
His grass-green eyes sparkle with pity. “You don’t have to be alone in your struggle. Together, we will create the most magical world where our every sinful depravity is worshipped instead of judged.”
He smiles softly. “They say you are the Queen of Dreams, and what is a dream but the most wicked of your desires? Together, we will bring each of them to life and it will not only be my kingdom that bends a knee to us, but every world beyond.”
“This isn’t your kingdom, Peter,” I whisper. “It’s mine.”
Mine, because despite everything, the island’s true king believed I was worthy of it once. Even if his belief ultimately condemned him to death.
I squeeze my eyes shut, blocking out the scrape of the Aeternalis’ gaze, the malevolent delight of his words.
All my anguish, my exhaustion, and my loneliness rise up like a wave, tangling with the shadows that twist around my heart. I press it all the lines of a painting, sloppy and desperate. Pan’s victorious face disappears as I push my magic outside of myself.
I hold my breath, and my tears, until I’m safe inside the dark comfort of the Lunaedon. And then, I sink to the floor and drown in them.
I can’t breathe.
No matter how I move—how I claw at my own skin—no air escapes from beneath the iron vise squeezing my ribs. It constricts until I’m gasping, digging my fingernails into my own chest in an attempt to alleviate the pressure, as I tear through Niko’s chambers.
His piano sits untouched at the center of the atrium, framed by the shining black boughs of the stone trees, soft sunlight reflecting on its gleaming surface.
The sight—empty and eternally waiting—sends the remainder of my oxygen crashing from my lungs.
I stumble past it, and burst out onto the balcony in search of modicum of relief.
But the crisp sea air isn’t enough.
Because Niko is gone. His infernal beauty, his delicious words, his obsessive love—all of it is gone.
Because of me.
My anguish rises, threatening to sweep me beneath its dark thrall. The writhing mass of shadows bursts forth from where they lay behind my magic, crashing over me in an icy wave until the only thing I can feel is their rage. My rage.
Hot, corrosive.
It eats at my bones and slides through my veins until I no longer feel human. I am only a dark thing, a void of fury that aches for destruction; that demands an answer for every injustice the universe has committed against me. It has taken everything, and now, I will take it back.
And because the shadows are safer than grief, I sink into them. Allow them to stain my vision, and sweep through the glowing pool of my magic.
I let them color the painting I begin in my mind, and wrap around me in a thick, viscous cloud.
Let it all go. Destroy everything before it can destroy you.
Lose yourself in me.
“Willa!”
Sam’s deep voice comes from somewhere far away—somewhere above, where I left any part of me that feels.
I crawl back toward it slowly, and when I blink my eyes, the looming facade of the Lunaedon filters back into view.
Everything burning inside me drains away as quickly as it had risen, leaving me empty and weak.
My legs wobble beneath me, and I tumble sideways into Sam’s waiting arms. His body is a sturdy mass, steady and warm. I clutch roughly at his shirt with a desperate whimper, the silk hot in my clammy fists.
“Hey now.” His deep voice rumbles over me, its sonance as soothing and calm as the tendrils of magic he sweeps over me. “What’s the matter?”
His magic slowly cools the fire still burning at the surface of my skin and the one raging in the depths of my magic. The heat and pressure of my grief recedes, and tears spring to my eyes as icy breath finally fills my lungs.
“It’s Niko,” I gulp, his name sending a fresh wave of panic surging in my stomach.
I haven’t spoken it aloud in almost a year, and yet it rolls along my parched tongue like cool water.
Did I ever truly appreciate the feel of speaking his name—savor it in the way rare, fleeting things should be savored?
“I think—I think he might be…” My throat closes, like allowing the sentiment free will make it true. I swallow it down before it becomes irreversible, and say instead, “Pan is alive.”
To Sam’s credit, he absorbs this news far better than I did—with a slow blink of his long lashes and the slight tightening of his mouth. He stares at me for a long moment, his warm brown eyes searching my face for the truth of what I just claimed.
Finally, he clears his throat and asks, “How?”
I dare to glance at him through a blur of tears. “Me.”
My muscles tighten as I brace for Sam’s disdain—a reckoning I’ve been waiting for since I banished his best friend and king to another world. But just like it hadn’t come then, it doesn’t come now. He only tilts his head, his tongue swiping over his bottom lip thoughtfully.
“Niko killed the Aeternalis in the heart of the island…that’s where his bones remained for centuries, so that none of the Strayed could steal them,” he murmurs, his eyes widening in realization as they meet mine.
“And your magic…it was connected to the heart when you brought everyone back last year. It…it must have brought him back as well.”
Sam curses beneath his breath. “Nothing is ever as it seems in Letum…” he says with a shake of his head. “Not even death, I guess.”
I swipe at my sopping nose miserably, not caring about the whys of the magic. Only the cost; the ruin I’ve brought my entire life that follows me even now that I’m powerful. I’d mistakenly thought power meant freedom, but I am just as trapped beneath my self-loathing as I’ve always been.
Letting go of Sam, I sink to the ground and hug my legs to my chest. To my surprise, he sits down beside me. Slinging an arm over my shoulder, he pulls me close. Reflexively, I burrow into his warmth, a relieved sigh that has nothing to do with his magic escaping my lips.
Sam’s presence is solid, while mine feels like wisps of smoke that will dissipate into nothing at any moment. I mirror my breathing to match the regular rhythm of his until I no longer feel like I’m suffocating.
“This isn’t your fault, Willa,” Sam says into the quiet. “I imagine it’d be nearly impossible to draw a stark line in such powerful magic. And you’re so new to the feel of any of it. You couldn’t have known.”
But the truth is, in those desperate moments when the silence of Niko’s heart was all I could hear—when the absence of him was all I could feel—I hadn’t even tried to corral the magic. I’d wanted to destroy the world if it meant I got back what was mine.
Niko loved me for my villainous heart, and he paid for it with his life.
My lower lip wobbles, and I hate that more tears gather along my lashes; hate that despite everything I’ve told myself the past few months, there remained a tender part of me that clung to the belief I’d see Niko’s arrogant smile again someday.
And not because I believed in fate or dreams or magic, but because I believed in him.
But perhaps it had always been more of a dream than a belief; a desperate delusion to hold onto when the world felt unsteady.
I bury my face between my knees, irrational anger prickling at the back of my neck. At Niko for dying; at Sam for his kindness; at the universe for its injustice and cruelty. “You don’t have to do that,” I mutter into the sleeve of my cloak.
Sam’s brows lift, before tightening in confusion. “Do what?”
“I don’t know…” I huff. “Be nice to me? Make me feel better? This is my fault. I deserve to feel like this.” As soon as the words are out of my mouth, a rush of emotion floods my chest. How do I explain to someone in which kindness is innate, that any sort of softness feels like a mockery?
I shrugged off Sam’s compassion in the months following Niko’s banishment.
I offered to send him through the wards; I tried to move out of the Lunaedon.
Each time, Sam had patiently refused. At the time, I’d been too cowardly to ask why, because in my most selfish moments, I cherish Sam’s friendship.
But now, when I’ve just admitted to condemning his king to death at the hands of his enemy, there is no more pretending I’m deserving of Sam.
The shadows in my chest start writhing furiously, sliding along my spine and wrapping around my lungs as I gather the courage to ask, “Why are you here, Sam?”
He glances at me in surprise.
“Why didn’t you go to the mainland with Niko?” I press. “Why stay here with me when all I’ve done is ruin everything?”
Sam releases a measured breath, stretching his long legs out in front of him like he’s grounding himself. “That’s a complicated answer.”
“Aren’t they all?” I mutter, to his snort of amusement.
“I suppose they are,” he cedes, his gaze drifting to the still waters of the lagoon in the distance. Dread curls in my stomach as I wonder whether the Aeternalis is still out there on the black sand, gazing up at this very castle.