Chapter 7
Chapter seven
I’ve just curled up in Niko’s bed, my body aching and my throat dry from sobbing, when light flares through the Lunaedon windows. Violent and hot, it sears my eyes and disorients my senses—so bright it almost hurts.
Throwing an arm over my eyes, I lurch out of bed. Silk sheets tangle around my ankles, sending me tumbling face first to the floor as I scramble toward the windows. My magic yanks at my heart, a painful tug that feels like it will crack my very chest.
And then the light recedes as quickly as it came, dousing the room in darkness once more.
The dark is nearly as disorienting as the light.
I climb to my feet, heart beating wildly somewhere near my throat.
My eyes water, blinking rapidly until Letum filters back into view.
The waters of the lagoon are calm, reflecting the deep indigos and violets of the swirling sky above.
The city lights of Caelum wink quietly against the night, quiet and settled—all of it the antithesis of what’s begun to howl inside me.
I grip my chest, digging my fingers into my sternum in an attempt to soothe the shadows now slithering between my ribs. They lay dormant in my grief, but now…now they are awake. They are fury and vengeance, fire and blood.
And though everything appears to be at peace in the kingdom, it feels like it’s at war. The tether between my heart and Letum’s is pulled so taut, for a wild moment, I’m certain it will snap and send the shadows sprawling out through the wound.
The second star shines as steadily as it always has, and I wonder if I’ve imagined the whole thing. Just like in the Hollows, perhaps it is simply the result of overusing my magic before it has come to maturation. The feeling in my chest, the light—it had all felt like it had when Pan arrived.
Was that the wards opening again? Or was it something far worse?
I’ve been anchored to the island for almost a year, but there is still so much I don’t know.
Suddenly, I hate Niko with a fierceness that sends more shadows thrashing behind my sternum.
He was supposed to be here. He was supposed to help me learn how to anchor the island, how to be a good leader.
But he’s not. And as much as I hate him for it, it pales to how much I hate myself.
Turning abruptly, I shove the shadows and the grief and the anger down into the pit of my stomach, where I burn it on a pyre kindled by survival. I’ve never had the luxury of wallowing, and I certainly don’t now.
My kingdom is under threat, which means I am under threat. I need to find out what caused the disruption and why.
I yank on a pair of boots and buckle my gladius around my waist. Then, I squeeze my eyes shut and paint the odd blue light of the Crocodile. I outline the rhythmic tick of the water, fill it in with odd shades of time, before pushing the shimmering magic outside of myself.
I tense, expecting the Aeternalis to ambush me on sight, but when I open my eyes, there is only the foreign stillness of the cave.
Moths flutter overhead, the blue-green lights speckled on the ceiling far above winking in the darkness.
Silence presses against my ears as I venture further inside, the ragged tenor of my breath and the stubborn beat of my heart suddenly far too loud.
Thump, thump, thump.
Endlessly beating on.
When I round the corner to where the cavern expands, its rhythm quickens, scattering wildly off beat. Because though there is no enemy—or anyone at all—what’s missing sends a lick of fear ricocheting through my veins.
The Indomnitus is gone.
Niko’s beautiful ship that’s guarded the heart of the island for centuries, is gone. Standing in its place is an exact replica of something I never wanted to see again.
My father’s barn.
The place where I found my sister Celie bleeding on the floor more than two centuries ago. The place that started it all—the pain, the loneliness, the running.
The shadows in my chest slither as I stare and stare at the paint chipping off the siding and the cracked window to the right of the doors.
Is this Pan’s magic? A way to remind me of our shared abandonment? Or is this the island, taunting me with everything I’ve lost?
I remember Niko’s words about the Indomnitus, the longing in his eyes when he spoke: The island resurrected the Indomnitus as a reminder of everything I lost.
Is that what it’s doing to me?
Anger spikes through me. I saved this island, and now, it dares to taunt me? Dares to betray our bond the moment its original creator returned?
The shadows in my chest blaze to life, edging through the shimmer of my magic and twisting it into something dark.
Imagination is considered children’s magic—hopeful and bright.
It’s easy to forget imagination can be something sinister.
Dreams of more, of power, drive empires and colonialization.
It lives in the boots on throats, and the pain in cells with no windows.
Right now, it is only the darkest of dreams that mingles with my anger, sparking it to new heights. An untenable thing whose hunger is relentless.
I refuse to think of Celie—refuse to think of everything that happened in the cool shade of the barn. Instead, I squeeze my eyes shut and paint. There are no details to guide me, only a soul-deep rage: take me where the Aeternalis is so that I can destroy him.
Killing him would be a release, one I’ve been desperate for.
All my pain, my grief, my regret, my insecurity; it’s been building beneath my skin with nowhere to go.
It would be euphoric to pour it into someone else—give my lungs room to expand; give myself space for something other than self-hatred.
Peter thinks we’re the same because of the shared experiences in our past, but he doesn’t understand me. He has always had so much, he doesn’t understand the lengths I will go to keep the little I have. He doesn’t understand that I don’t want more—I just want what’s mine.
I grip my sword tightly, and with a measured breath, push my magic outside of myself. I expect the Aeternalis, but when I open my eyes, I find myself instead in the harbor of Caelum in the midst of a writhing crowd.
Panic hangs in the air in thick clouds, permeated by wails that echo from every direction. Bodies jostle and push all around me, the mass of people straining like one giant organism toward something I can’t see.
Something beyond the docks.
Whispers thread between cries, their icy notes sending shivers racing over my skin as I make out one word clearly: the Indomnitus.
Horror threads through me, and I’m prepared to begin shouldering my way through the crowd when suddenly, the pressure loosens.
The sounds of fear turn to relieved whispers, as people begin to back up, giving me a wide berth.
All eyes turn toward when I walk through the crowd, the emotion shining in them sinking a stone of dread in the pit of my stomach: hope.
I can be the hero so long as I have you as my villain. But I’m alone, the weight of the kingdom now resting on my shoulders, even as I crumble beneath it.
“The queen—" Their whispers flood around me in a deluge of faith. “She’s come! She’s come to save them!”
The shadows in my chest lurch as Niko’s words resound through my head: They’ll turn you into their savior, their god. And you will never be able to escape it.
Trepidation presses against my sternum, as burdensome as their stares. I try to ignore the feel of them as I walk between them to the edge of the docks to find out for myself what has everyone in an uproar.
The violet sea thrashes, like the waves are determined to drown the sky itself. And riding atop their fury is the Indomnitus, in all her serpentine glory.
I know immediately it isn’t the ship that’s sent shockwaves ravaging through Caelum, but who captains it.
The Aeternalis.
Even from this distance, I know it is him—know by the haloed glow around his head and the way the entire island seems to lean toward his presence. The waves, the flowers, the stars, the children.
Oh god—the children.
I’d been so caught up in my own misery, I hadn’t noticed the way they writhe against their parents’ control, little bodies straining toward the ship.
I turn, watching as a nearby boy growls in frustration, his mouth foaming as he fights against his father’s hold.
Another small girl claws at her own eyes and skin, her screeches piercing through the whispers of the crowd.
Whirling back to the sea, I understand the small shapes bobbing atop the waves is not the driftwood I thought it to be—it is the children who managed to wrestle from their parents’ arms.
I understand with horror the small shapes bobbing on the waves is not driftwood at all, but the children who have already escaped.
“Please help them,” a mother pleads with me.
Her panic quickly becomes my own, as the children begin to chant. Their small voices twine through the air in a synchronous melody, harrowing and pervasive in the cool night air. The creator is home. The creator is home.
A little girl slips from her mother’s hands and hurtles herself into the sea. Her eyes never open, even as her pale body slips through the crashing waves, fighting toward the Indomnitus.
I glance around, understanding crashing over me like a block of ice. The children are all asleep.
The Aeternalis is calling them to him through their dreams.