Chapter 6
Chapter six
Wendy Darling looks as if she’s seen a ghost, and indeed, I feel as if I’ve seen my own.
My mistakes linger along the planes of her face, long buried regrets simmering in her chestnut brown eyes.
All my years trapped in Letum, I imagined it would hurt to see Wendy again, but there is no pain.
As I glare down at her, I only feel the same fervent determination that’s driven me for the past year.
When I was injured and bleeding, when I was angry and vengeful. When I thought the loneliness would open a wound in my chest as deep as the one I’d given the Aeternalis, a wound from which I’d never recover.
Through it all, I persevered. And now, I’m close enough to grasp everything I’ve worked for.
“No cheery hello or offer of tea?” I push the door open wider with an arrogant grin. “Where are those fine English manners you used to cling to so desperately?”
Wendy stares up at me, her mouth agape in shock, every bit of color drained from her cheeks.
“I wonder…which world have you been hiding in that’s stripped you of them?” I hum, slinking past into the dingy brownstone without touching her. Even stripped of magic, my old habits persist. “It certainly wasn’t this one, as you’d be long dead.”
Wendy doesn’t move, her small frame frozen in the threshold as she watches me look around her home with interest. Every available surface has been overloaded with books and manuscripts and maps, the suffocating space made to feel even more so by the various scientific instruments stuffed onto shelves and lined along the windowsills.
Something near rage sparks in my chest as I run my fingers over the titles stacked three deep on the nearest bookshelf, noting the stark difference between her home in this world and Willa’s. One speaks to comfort, and one to the barest edge of survival.
“I see the plague has done little to hinder your personal collection.” I keep my voice light though my chest feels heavy.
Wendy has always had a penchant for cloaking herself in knowledge, using it as both a buffer and an instrument of connection.
The familiarity of it all makes me head swim.
It feels as if I’ve lived four life times since the last time I saw her, and yet, somehow things like this—her books and her tendencies—remain mired in time.
When I glance over my shoulder, it’s to find Wendy still in the doorway, blinking frantically, like if she does it hard enough, she might succeed in blinking away my existence entirely.
“Though from what I’ve gathered,” I continue, “you only arrived a few months ago…in which case, your collection is truly impressive.”
I pluck up a pointed gold instrument and spin it thoughtlessly atop my palm. “You always were so clever. I should have known you’d find a world where time moved so slowly, you’d be able to wait out your enemies. Even the eternal ones.”
My accompanying wink sends a vibration of rage through her body, but she still doesn’t speak, her lips mashed together like she’s trapped acid behind them.
“Doesn’t appear as though you missed much though, does it, Wen?” Her eyes widen at the ease with which the nickname rolls off my tongue. “A few hundred years of misery, give or take.”
Wendy doesn’t reply. Instead, she slams the door shut and stomps toward me, plucking the trinket from my hand to place carefully back on the shelf. When she spins back to me, her cheeks have gone pink with fury.
“How did you find me?” she demands.
“I did tell you I would,” I remind her, my voice dangerously low. “And when have you ever known me to break a promise?”
We stare at each other, the air suddenly thick with the past swirling between us. Those tense moments in the Crocodile when her eyes widened in pretty surprise, because she thought I was going to finally kiss her. Instead, I betrayed her by forcing her through a ward.
The irony isn’t lost on me that two hundred years later, the same thing was done to me. It seems that no matter how I scheme, the universe has its own ways of taking what it’s owed.
Wendy runs her tongue over her teeth, like she’s measuring her words before she finally grits out, “How did you even know I was alive?”
“Disappointed?” I arch a brow in challenge, snatching up another trinket and dancing away before she can grab it back.
“I assumed all the ridiculous smoke and mirrors concealing your continued survival were for Peter. I’m not sure whether to be flattered or deeply offended you find me just as threatening. ”
Her eyes dart nervously toward the window, drawing my grin sharper. “Or perhaps, you find me more threatening?” I hum, pleased. “I suppose you wouldn’t be wrong as he’s a merely petulant child and I…I am the King of Death that ended his eternal reign.”
Wendy swallows nervously, glance bouncing from the window to the door.
“If you’re waiting on your hired muscle to burst into the living room and shoot me in the head, I’m afraid you’ll be waiting an awfully long time. I’m nothing if not thorough—” I give her a salacious wink. “—as I’m sure you recall.”
Wendy darts forward, swiping the small contraption from my fingers with a furious chuff. She clutches it to her chest, her glare both heated and wary.
“Would you guess every one of your men sang for me at the end? True loyalty is so hard to come by in every world, isn’t it?” I let out a dry laugh. “I’d know.”
Wendy stiffens. “How dare you?” she seethes. “How dare you speak to me of loyalty when your betrayal condemned me to two hundred years alone in strange worlds? When it was your betrayal that condemned thousands of innocents in this world to their deaths?”
Her nostrils flare. “And now you show up on my doorstep without so much as an apology, expecting to just…what? Pick up where we left off?”
I turn my gaze to her, and though it is no longer an abiding onyx, it’s enough to make her step back. “I have no interest in ‘picking up where we left off’ and even less interest in apologizing to you, of all people.”
Wendy’s mouth gapes open, stricken, and I realize that after all this time, she still understands nothing of me.
“I loved you Niko and you not only betrayed me, you betrayed everything we stood for—”
“You did not,” I hiss so violently, her words die in her throat.
“You loved the idea of the carefree captain who was willing to help you with your plans. A boy who never truly existed and, certainly, isn’t me.
That you believe you deserve an apology shows you never even knew me, Wendy, let alone loved me.
Do not speak of things like hearts and souls like you know anything about them. ”
“And I suppose you do?” she scoffs. “You’re the most selfish person I’ve ever met.”
I take two steps toward her. She’s taller than Willa, but unlike her ancestor who’d rather bathe in acid than back down, Wendy cedes a wary step.
“Love is selfish. That is what you have always failed to understand. You thought it would be nurtured by laying down, while I have always known love only thrives by standing up…by paying for it with blood and bone. I damned the world for you, because I would rather it burn than allow someone I cared for to be hurt. And to this very day, my only regret is that I did it for you…someone who will never be able to appreciate what that means.”
“Niko—”
I shake my head, mouth twisted in disgust. “I’m not here to rehash the past with you, Wendy. The only reason I’m thankful you were resourceful enough to keep yourself alive all this time is because I have need of your Darling magic.”
Wendy’s eyes shine as she searches my face.
Her mouth is parted in shock, and it’s apparent that even now, she believed the ruthlessness she’d glimpsed in me that last night in Somnya was merely a lapse in judgement.
It makes me want to take her by the throat and shake her, for how could a woman who prides herself on education choose to remain so willfully ignorant of the true nature of those around her?
Mine. Peter’s.
Wendy has always preferred to adhere to the rosy version she’s crafted in her head. It is why she held on to the hope the Aeternalis would change for so long, despite the way he tortured her.
When I’d told Willa Wendy was selfless to a lethal degree, I hadn’t meant it as a compliment.
“I’m assuming you’ve apprised yourself of what happened after I sent you away.”
Wendy gazes up at me sullenly. “I know you killed the Aeternalis, and sent two worlds spiraling into horror.”
“Apparently I didn’t do a thorough enough job, as he’s now alive and well.” I pause with a smirk, thinking of the revolting wound in his chest I’d given him that even Willa’s magic hadn’t been able to heal. “Perhaps not well…but alive, just the same.”
Wendy rocks back on her heels like I’ve hit her. “What? H-how? That…that can’t be possible.”
I don’t bother to reply. Instead, I duck into the small kitchen to my right to rummage through the cupboards.
“Do you have any whiskey?” I call over my shoulder. When she doesn’t respond, I look over at her expectantly. “Has the ugliness between us rendered you useless as a hostess? Because a conversation about undead relatives is an occasion that certainly requires spirits.”
Shellshocked, Wendy motions to the cupboard above the refrigerator where I find a few bottles of liquor. I grab two glasses and pour a generous measure in each. Handing one to her, I down my own in one large swallow before pouring myself another.
Wendy does the same, before finally gathering her wits enough to ask, “How is he alive, Niko? I know the stories…how gruesomely you injured him. No one should be able to survive that.”
I smack my lips, the memory of the Aeternalis bleeding at my feet just as satisfying now as it was two centuries ago. “It’s a long and messy tale, and truly…the ‘how’ hardly matters. What does matter is that I get back to Letum to set things right.”