Chapter 8
Chapter eight
The world begins to spin. Or maybe it is me that spins, as the room around me narrows and blood rushes past my ears, drowning out everything but Wendy’s words: she can be killed.
I grind my jaw, staring down at Wendy in cold assessment.
“If you’re trying to delay my return to Letum by telling me ridiculous fairytales, I assure you…
” I dig the tip of my blade a little further into her throat, drawing a pinprick of blood.
“…the only thing you’ll succeed in doing is pissing me off. ”
“I’m not! I’m not!” she yelps, her eyes widening in fear. I drink it in shamelessly, as there is freedom in the unmasking; relief in no longer pretending to be the man Wendy once believed me to be.
“I—I had a theory when I was with Peter…” Her words trail off as her gaze drops back to the blade at her throat.
“Are you going to enlighten me as to what it was?” I ask sardonically. “Or shall we both sit here until you bleed out drop by drop?”
Wendy sucks in a sharp breath. “Everything has a cost in the land of dreams.”
Despite the impatience scratching at the back of my neck, I force myself still as she continues, “So, it would stand to reason that the Aeternalis’ immortality had—has—one, as well.”
Seeming to suddenly forget the danger looming at her throat, Wendy’s eyes spark with fervor. She’s always been excited by the pursuit of an answer. “He wanted so badly to be loved…to never be alone…I believe he inadvertently created his own weakness.”
Wendy flinches at my loud hiss of frustration.
“I don’t know what gives you the impression I have the time or forbearance for storytelling, but I suggest you get to the point.”
She blinks. “Love, Niko. The Darlings can die, but only at the hand of the person who loves them most.”
The air flees my lungs in a violent exhale.
“It was only a theory before you sent me away, but it’s proven correct.” She watches me fearfully. “By you.”
Despite myself, I flinch. “Did the centuries alone drive you fucking mad?” I demand, icy anger clawing up my throat. “I did not love Pan. I hated him with everything I have. I still do.”
There is pity in Wendy’s eyes as she gazes up at me, her face going so soft, I have the wild urge to carve my knife through it.
“Such hatred isn’t borne of nothing. Often times it’s the other side of the same coin. Children are desperate for love and approval, and the Everlasting was the only family you’ve known. You were able to kill him because you were one of the few who truly loved him.”
“I was able to kill him because I have death in my heart and in my hands, and death takes what it wants,” I growl, jaw tightening.
“Death is true. Death is loyal. Even if you hated him, you couldn’t help but love him because it is who you are.”
My fingers go white on the hilt of the blade, as I try to reel my rage up tight before it blinds me to my true goal. I don’t like speaking of the past; it belongs buried in the depths of my memory, like a sunken ship.
Wendy swallows, her throat bobbing against the tip of the knife. “Others tried throughout the centuries, Nik,” she reminds me gently. “Have you never considered why you were the only one who succeeded?”
I stare at her, a sudden dark thought filtering through my mind.
“You’re a Darling.” It isn’t a question so much as a snarled demand, and Wendy stiffens against it. I cock my head, running my gaze from her head to her toes as the past and the present realign themselves in a new light. “What a delightful little liar you are, Wen.”
She lets out a shaky breath, but her gaze sparks with defiance.
I let out a dangerous laugh. “All these years, I thought you were such a self-sacrificing little hero. That you were too good for the likes of death. But really, you were just biding your time, weren’t you?”
Wendy’s lashes flutter, a flash of fear lighting her eyes, one I know all too well: the fear of being seen as you truly are.
“You were falling in love with the Aeternalis, so that you would hold his life in your hands. So that you would control the power of Somnya.”
Her silence is answer enough. I step back from her with a curse, shaking my head in disgust and raking my fingers through my hair in a futile attempt to ground myself.
Though Wendy and I never moved beyond friendship, she’d been well aware of my feelings for her and done everything in her power to nurture and encourage them.
After we save the world from him, Nik. Then we’ll be free to be together.
Newfound rage spikes through my chest as another grim thought ensnares me. “That’s why you’re afraid of me.” I shake my head. “That’s the reason you were so terrified the night I forced you through the wards. You knew I loved you…and you knew the power that held.”
Wendy watches me sullenly, her jaw tightening. “You were always so kind to me. It was just smart planning. If I had someone who loved me most, someone who would never hurt me…the Aeternalis would never be able to hold power over me. Not even when I stole his island out from under him.”
Her words are sterile, nearly emotionless, and I laugh again, the sharp sound edged in madness.
“You thought I was safe?” I repeat in faint disbelief.
Wendy grimaces. “I was clearly mistaken.”
“I’d say,” I reply sardonically. I run my hand roughly over my mouth, another stroke of heady realization spiking through me, this one far more unwelcome.
“That’s the reason you hid yourself in this world, isn’t it?
You were never afraid of Pan finding you.
You were afraid of me…because you believe I still love you ardently enough to be your weakness. ”
Wendy opens her mouth to answer, but before she can say a word, I charge toward her and slice my blade across the milky white skin of her throat.
Her lips bob open soundlessly, her eyes flaring wide in terror and betrayal.
Like after all this time—after every horrible thing I’ve done—she hadn’t truly believed I would hurt her.
I trace the jagged wound with a clinical gaze, watching her blood soak the white sofa. It pours over her collarbones and pools in her lap. It spreads through the fabric of her shirt, and drips onto her tan sneakers. So much. So red.
With a snarl of annoyance, I turn and pour myself another measure of whiskey.
I drink down both the alcohol and the gurgled sounds of Wendy’s struggle.
A vicious part of me once craved her pain, like her agony would relieve some of my own—but that was before, when I thought I knew what it meant to regret.
I’d had no idea.
I take another sip of liquor, the burn in my throat paling to the one in my veins.
A few moments later, Wendy spits from behind me, “What the fuck, Niko?!”
I spin to face her with an arrogant grin, enjoying the bedraggled state of her far too much. Blood soaks her clothes and the sofa, pooling in a congealed mess on the floor. Her blonde hair hangs in matted ropes at her shoulders, her cheeks sticky with tears.
But her throat is as whole as ever. Interesting.
“What is wrong with you?!” she seethes, her hand gripped around her neck like she’s prepared to hold it together if it bursts back open. Her lower lip trembles. “Why—why would you do that?”
“I didn’t appreciate your implication,” I answer with a casual shrug.
Draining the dregs of my drink, I set it down on an end table with a clink, before turning to her with a sneer.
“Now there can be no mistake, Wendy, despite the romantic delusions you’ve apparently amused yourself with for the past two centuries. ”
I lean over her menacingly, my face a mask of pure death. “I do not love you.”
She trembles, a single tear rolling slowly down her cheek.
“I am not a man of forgiveness, nor one of benevolence. Whatever affection I had evaporated the moment you begged me to let you stay with him. And though my apathy apparently means I cannot kill you, I promise…my creativity for your agony will be endless until you open the wards to my kingdom.” I smile cruelly.
“And as you’ve well learned…I do not break my promises. ”
“We can’t go back there!” Wendy’s cry is desperate, another large tear spilling down her cheek.
“If the Everlasting lives, it’s already too late.
He knows…he’s always known the Darling weakness.
It is why he ruled the way he did…whipping from hatred to love, from violence to care.
Peter knows if he falls in love with Willa, he’ll be able to kill her and take back his island. ”
If I still possessed my death, it would have exploded from me at her words, shattering every trinket in this starforsaken room. As it is, the only death I possess is contained within my heart, but it is enough to leave me momentarily breathless at the cold fury that pumps through my veins.
When I reply, my voice is lethal. “The Aeternalis could try for a thousand years, Wendy…He will never come close to loving Willa as I do. No one will.”
An unassailable truth. A shameful confession. A powerful invocation.
Wendy’s lower lip wobbles, and another tear spills down her cheeks. My mouth twists in disgust at the sight of it, my stomach churning.
“I am the King of Carrion, Lord of Death…and I am the only one who will ever be powerful enough to grant hers. Do you understand me?”
Though my gaze is no longer a fathomless onyx, Wendy cowers beneath it just the same.
“I am Willa Darling’s only weakness.”
“Can we not just throw ourselves off a building?” I ask mildly an hour later. Wendy and I stand on the docks of a decrepit harbor a few miles south of the city. “That worked well enough for Willa, and though I don’t relish the fall, we are on a time crunch.”
Wendy exhales sharply, the annoyance wafting from her palpable.
“My magic is not what it used to be, Niko, and I don’t think I’ll be able to guide us both to the star without the help of pixie dust.” She levels me with succinct stare.
“Unless you’d like to risk falling to your death, the wards at sea are far more pliant.
The fabric between worlds is always thinner on the horizon. ”
I hum, my eyes roving over the small speedboat rocking gently against the wood planks of the dock. “Perhaps it isn’t your magic that’s weak, but your imagination.”
She glares at me sidelong, and I know I’ve hit a nerve.
Though Wendy inherited the Darling ability to open the wards—along with apparent immortality—she possesses no magic beyond that.
She has never been powerful like Willa or Peter, the lines of her mind far too inflexible to nurture something as wild as magic.
“Get in,” she mutters, hands clenched at her sides like she’s keeping herself from decking me.
“This is yours?” I raise a doubtful brow. “I’ve never taken you for much of a sailor, Wen, nor an adventurer.”
Her lips flatten into a thin line. “Well, maybe neither of us knew each other as well as we thought.”
A smile tugs at my mouth, but it contains no humor as I cock my head. “Or perhaps I still know you perfectly well, and you needed to be ready to slip through a ward at a moment’s notice. If your hired guards failed, and I found you, was that your plan? Simply jump into another world?”
Her mouth pulls further into a frown.
“Which one, I wonder?” I muse, as she stomps away to untie the ropes. “Certainly not Letum. You’ve never had a mind for dreams. Only the concrete. The observable.”
“There’s nothing wrong with striving to understand the world around us,” she scolds, loosening the last knot and jumping into the boat.
“You’ve always been so pretentious about magic and dreams and the mysteries of the world, but you’ve never been humble enough to admit that everything was a mystery at some point in history.
Until science—observation and theory—decoded it. ”
I climb down after her, trying to ignore the soft lapping of the water. After all these years, the sound of it still feels like a cruel taunt—a reminder of the freedom stolen from me.
“And what is at the root of science but a wondering, dreaming mind?” I ask.
Wendy glares over her shoulder, but she doesn’t reply, either because I’ve rendered her speechless, or she doesn’t wish to get her throat slit again.
Instead, she starts the engine. It sputters to life, before settling into a soft hum as she maneuvers the craft away from the tiny dock and out onto the open sea.
The boat cuts through the dark water. A lump of emotion lodges itself in my throat as the shore disappears from view. It is only us and endless ocean; only the purr of the engine and the rhythm of the waves and the beat of our hearts.
Neither of us venture to break the silence, the past and present layered so thickly, it feels like an impassible steel wall.
The last time I’d been on a boat with Wendy, I was filled with the hope of possibility.
I’d imagined magnificent seas and glowing horizons and a life beyond the pain that followed me in Somnya.
After everything had gone to shit, I never allowed myself to dream of being on the sea again.
There was no future for me if there was going to be a future for the rest of the world, and I was in agony enough without dwelling on dreams that were never to be mine.
But here I am, centuries later, listening to the familiar cadence of waves.
And instead of riding them to the ends of the earth, I’m choosing to return to the land of my pain.
Again.
There is a stark difference between then and now—there is nothing light inside me at all. There is death and blood and a tangle of thorns, all things that cannot be stolen or extinguished. Things that are permanent.
“Nik, have you considered what you’ll do if it’s too late?” Wendy says softly, her voice startling me from my thoughts. “What if—what if Willa’s already dead and he’s the anchor? You can’t kill him again. Look at the destruction you caused.”
There is no reply that will soothe Wendy’s worry—not my plans for the Aeternalis, and certainly, not my plans for Willa Darling.
So, I don’t reply. I only gaze up at the sky expanding over us, to the star I’ve prayed to my entire life—when I was a lonely child, unable to reach out and be touched.
When I was a teenager, raised in blood and violence.
When I was a man returning home, and when I was a king on my knees for the woman who set my dead heart aflame.
“It’s nearly sunrise, Wen,” I tell her softly. “Keep the course. Straight on ‘til morning.”