Chapter 5 #2
“Yes,” I admit, swishing the tea leaves around the bottom of my mug.
“She wants me to ask you to read the Aeternalis’ mind.
” I watch Adira’s hand stiffen, resisting the urge to envelop it in my own.
To feel her soft palm against my calloused one and remember how it was to have someone I could comfort with my body and not my magic. “That isn’t why I’ve come, though.”
A line appears between Adira’s brows. “Why then?”
I lift my gaze from the tea to hers, and am nearly lost in it. “To ask you not to.”
Her mouth pops open, but no words come. And despite the gravity of our situation, I allow myself a moment to enjoy her surprise.
Addy has been alive longer than most people can even fathom—she is rarely surprised, and far more rarely is she surprised by me, whose mind she knows better than anyone’s.
“Why?”
I run my tongue over my lip, debating whether to tell her the true reason: because I care about her more than I care about anything else.
More than my loyalty, more than my character, and a hell of a lot more than the island.
But that would mean crossing the line in the sand that’s turned more into a canyon with every passing year.
The line Adira drew without remorse and without explanation.
I settle on a base version of the truth. “Because there are some minds you cannot recover from, and I imagine his is like the Crocodile…if you dive into it, there is a chance you will not come back out the same. If you make it out at all.”
Her eyes narrow, and I shift beneath her assessing gaze. She’s never needed her magic to read my thoughts.
“The Aeternalis has Niko’s pistol. Willa wants to see inside his mind for the safety of the kingdom, but I think she also wants confirmation of whether or not Niko is really gone. And I think that confirmation might be too much for her right now.”
Willa’s emotions on the balcony had been a wash of icy blues and morose grays, the abiding cold of grief lodged behind her ribs tangling with the guilt churning in her stomach.
Emotions familiar to me having been trapped in a dying world for so long.
It was what I sensed beneath them that unnerved me.
Like so many of us, the way Willa sees herself is skewed. When I told her I saw her for who she truly is, it wasn’t because I was trying to make her feel better—it’d simply been the truth. I see everyone for who they are beneath the masks they wear, because emotions can’t lie.
But what simmered beneath her grief hadn’t been an emotion—it was a void of them.
A flicker, a shadow. Something ancient and heavy I’ve felt only once before:
In the shadow that trails behind the Aeternalis himself.
“I have stayed by her side just as Niko wished. And I will continue to do everything my queen asks of me, but not at the expense of herself. The guilt of this, Addy…it will crush her.”
“You think…you think she’s right? That Niko is dead?” Adira says in a horrified whisper, anguish coloring the air around her. “Oh Sam…”
She makes to reach for me, but at my flinch, thinks better of it. It is not that I don’t want her touch—it’s that I don’t want it like this. Out of duty or pity. I want her willing as she once was; pliant and warm and eager.
“I don’t know yet whether he’s dead. I only have what Willa told me and what I know of my friend.”
Adira presses her lips together, her gaze raking over the room before finally landing back on me in question.
Knowing what she asks, I nod. An odd feeling of excitement drifts through my chest as Addy inches toward my side of the couch.
Settling herself so that her knee barely grazes mine, she lifts her hands, her fingers cradling either side of my face.
It’s been so long since she willingly waded into the depths of me, and a twisted part of me has been desperate for it.
As much as everyone fears Adira’s power, there is something addicting about being exactly as I am.
With nowhere to hide my darkest thoughts, the most intimate parts of myself displayed beneath the spotlight of her attention.
As her magic threads into my mind, heat tightens at the base of my spine, and I shift against the sudden tension in my trousers.
If she notices, she thankfully ignores it. Only closes her eyes and brushes against my thoughts once more, wading into everything Willa told me about what happened on the beach. I shift again, balling my hands into fists atop my thighs, if only to keep myself from urging her further. Deeper.
With the Princess of the Wilds, I’ve learned none of it is ever deep enough.
As quickly as she entered, Adira untangles her magic from my mind, slipping from my thoughts as my face slips from her hands. An acute desolation follows, but I force myself not to dwell on it as Addy opens her eyes.
“There is much the Aeternalis isn’t saying,” she says with a shiver.
“He has always woven his words with cunning. He speaks of her calling him here, but he doesn’t say why he stayed on the mainland all this time or why he’s just now revealing himself.
” Her eyes glint. “I’d be willing to bet it was because he was too weak to open the wards. ”
I mull over her words. “If he was too weak to open the wards, there’s no way he bested Niko.”
Addy’s mouth tightens. “Perhaps not,” she admits. “Niko is both resourceful and vicious. And though the mainland has never been congruent to magic, death thrives anywhere.”
She takes another sip of her tea, and I watch the way her throat bobs with far too much interest. I know it, and can’t help it, as it’s been years since I’ve been alone with Adira. And even longer since her details were close enough to drink in like this.
“Peter is no longer the anchor. That will have affected his power as well, because even as the Creator, he won’t be able to draw on the island’s magic. Only his own.”
“And he won’t ever be that powerful again,” I growl, thoughts of the Aeternalis’ impish face cleaving through the peace of my magic like iron spikes, “as Willa cannot be killed. She’ll be the anchor for eternity, just as Niko meant her to.”
Adira doesn’t appear assuaged. “Willa knows better than any of us…there are things far worse than death.”
She’s right, but I take comfort in it anyway. For if there is one thing I know about Willa, it’s that she’s a survivor. There isn’t a bone in her body made to bend to someone else’s will. So long as she’s alive, she’ll fight for what’s hers.
Despair floods the space between us, a heady shade of yellow.
It is the salt of tears on my tongue and weighted iron against my skin.
I don’t know whether it’s my magic or me that reaches first—I only know it is instinctive to take it from Adira.
My jaw tightens as her despair filters through me, sinking beneath my ribs.
I shiver involuntarily, as she gazes up at me with wide eyes. “It was all feeling so healed, Sam. The wild, the island…everything was beginning to feel so good. And now it’s…” Her words trail off like she can’t bring herself to finish the sentence.
Her despair still slithering between my ribs, I clench my teeth and focus on her face, forcing a breath into my lungs. “The fight is never over, Addy. Not in nature, and not for us. It’s only over when we no longer dream of something better.”
A small smile appears at the corner of her mouth and I feel like I’ve won something. Adira is ancient; she has no use for smiles she doesn’t mean.
It disappears a moment later, and I wish I’d tasted it. Memorialized it, somehow, as rare things should be.
“The Everlasting will come for Willa. He has always hated being alone, but neither can he stand anyone who threatens his power.” For a moment, Addy looks far away from here. “It is the chasm of his own soul he has always sought to fill with the magic of others.”
I grimace, running my fingers absently over one of the many scars decorating my body, courtesy of the Everlasting’s punishments.
“I will help Willa in any way I can, and so will Tiernan.” I hesitate, wondering how much to say; how much of my heart I can reveal before Adira pushes it away. “But who will protect you?”
Her eyes snap to mine, and I swear, a flash of lightning sparks behind her irises.
“Pan will come for you, too, Addy. You know he’s never liked the fealty the wilds of the island have to you.”
“Because even as our Creator, he has never been able to understand it,” she says softly. “He’s never understood that to keep something with you, you must let it go. Allow it to be wild and free.”
For a moment, I want to vehemently disagree. To take her beneath me and prove to her that all I’ve ever wanted was to be captured eternally in her thrall.
I want to shake her, and tell her that she may be the wild, but I am not. I have always made a home in hearts I should not. I don’t want to be let go. I never have.
But before I can say anything, the treehouse shudders. Pictures rattle in their frames and the Nyawa groans beneath us.
And the second star explodes in the sky.