Chapter 10 #2
A second later, the light winks out. I blink rapidly, coaxing the world back into view. The storm rages on all sides of us, but the boat is still in the water. I follow Wendy’s reverent gaze to the space directly above our vessel.
A pinprick of energy. A tiny wrinkle in the atmosphere. The source of the storm.
The ward.
My heart jolts in my chest. It’s been so long since I’ve witnessed the magic of the wards—the infinite possibility contained in the most miniscule of space—it leaves me just as breathless as it did three hundred years ago.
Wendy closes her eyes again, and the ward pulses in response. She coaxes it wider, and it takes everything in me to keep from crying out in relief.
So close. Everything that’s mine, everything I lost—it’s all so close.
Something catches my eye beyond the rage of the storm. Something moving through it, directly toward us.
A cold heaviness settles in my veins, and though I can’t determine the exact source, I’ve been alive long enough to trust it. “Keep working,” I whisper to Wendy, drawing my sword slowly from the scabbard at my waist. “We have company.”
Wendy’s eyes fly to mine, wide and panic-laced, as four boats—no, ships—slice through the tempest.
“Niko!” Wendy cries. The ward snaps shut with the loss of her focus, the possibility of the worlds beyond winking out like the snuffed wick of a candle. She leaps toward me, her sweaty fingers balling distastefully in the fabric of my shirt.
I brush her off with an irritable sigh, ignoring her look of hurt.
The ships draw closer, and the death in my heart—the death I was born with—burgeons.
The wards between worlds have been closed for over two hundred years, and the stories have been dead for nearly as long.
There aren’t many people alive who would know where to find one, and even less who would come to this particular ward.
Unless they’d been watching me for months, biding their time.
The largest vessel slices through the water, a lone figure poised at the helm.
My brother.
My heartbeat ratchets higher in my chest, a deep, dark rhythm fueled by hatred as black as my blood.
I haven’t seen Dawson since that horrible first day on the mainland when I’d been mad with grief and weak without my magic.
I learned later he’d been in the Crocodile, waiting for the moment Willa found me dead.
I’d known the folly in allowing my brother to learn of my affection; I hadn’t understood the danger in him realizing hers. He’d used it to manipulate her into going against the universe to bring me back, and in turn, had brought back the person most important to him: the Aeternalis.
They’d slipped through a ward to the mainland before anyone was the wiser.
Most would think it’s a miracle I survived their ambush, especially after Dawson shot me in the shoulder.
But since I was a child, there has always been a ruthlessness inside of me: a twisted shadow fed by the death in my heart, by the sins in my blood.
It has driven me to survive, simply because dying would mean allowing someone else to win.
And death always wins. There is no outrunning it, no outsmarting it. It is infallible.
So even outnumbered and weak and powerless, I’d managed to run a sword through my brother’s belly. And the Everlasting, who was weakened by death and the lack of magic on the mainland, hadn’t been able to stop the bullet I lodged inside his heart through the gaping wound in his chest.
I hadn’t lingered long enough to find out if the blow was lethal, and now I know why it wasn’t.
I turned and ran before I bled out, leaving behind both my revolver and my vengeance in order to survive.
By the time I was healed enough to begin my hunt, both the Aeternalis and my brother had seemingly vanished off the planet.
“Open that ward now,” I growl at Wendy, before stalking to the bow.
“Who is it?” she hisses from behind me, rocking on the balls of her of feet in a nervous rhythm.
Her arms are wrapped around her chest, like if she squeezes herself hard enough, she’ll be able to keep her panic trapped inside.
“Is it him?” Her voice is high and slightly hysterical, and it grates unpleasantly in my ears. “Is it Peter?”
“I swear to the star above Wen, I will slit your throat open again and toss your body overboard to feed the sharks if you do not open that ward right now.”
Wendy gapes at me, her mouth bobbing open and closed a few times.
With a firm hand on her shoulder, I shove her back down into the seat with a lethal stare.
She swallows roughly, her eyes darting to the approaching vessels, before she finally squeezes them shut.
The ward begins to pull open again, and I breathe in the scent of possibility, letting it settle at the base of my spine, as I readjust my grip on the hilt of my sword.
Our boat lists precariously, seawater slopping over the sides and spilling over the deck as we’re surrounded.
Each ship is manned by at least fifty men, all armed with guns.
My brother stands grinning at the bow of the largest vessel, the whites of his teeth eerily reflecting the sparks of magic around us.
Wendy screeches at the sight of him and tumbles from her seat. The ward winks shut again, and I consider slitting her throat once more merely to sate my rapidly rising frustration.
Dawson’s blue gaze flickers in amusement, as Wendy scrambles gracelessly over the slippery deck to cling to my ankles.
“This is pathetic, Nikolas…even for you.” He laughs, the sound a scraping clash, like metal against metal. “Always crawling back to those who never wanted you in the first place.”
Despite his year on the mainland, Dawson’s made no effort to assimilate to mainland culture.
While the men around him are dressed head to toe in various forms of tactical gear, my brother wears nothing but a soiled pair of trousers and the homemade weapons belts he wore in Letum.
His black hair is wild around his head, his bare feet calloused and dirty.
My lip curls in disgust. Both for him, and the woman currently attempting to claw her way up my leg.
“Brother,” I grit out with a tight nod of greeting. “I must say…you possess a true talent for turning up at the worst moments imaginable.”
A whimper sounds from Dawson’s boat, drawing my attention to a disheveled man sobbing at the helm.
He sports two rapidly blooming black eyes and his hands are shackled to the wheel, his fingers mangled and swollen with multiple breaks.
A nasty gash at his hairline bleeds freely, coating his terrified features in a grotesque scarlet mask.
“P-p-please—"
The word is hardly out of the captain’s mouth when my brother rolls his eyes and draws a pistol from one of his many belts.
With a dramatic sigh of irritation, he shoots the man in the head.
Wendy screams as the captain’s skull explodes, showering the deck in brain matter and bone fragments.
Dawson merely slides his gaze back to me with a casual shrug.
“I’ve always hated sailing,” he says, like this is a perfectly reasonable excuse to kill a man.
Swinging his body, he leaps lithely down from his deck to mine, landing in a feral crouch with the revolver leveled at my chest. “Now then, where were we? Ah, yes. Your terrible manners.” He cocks his head, his expression a familiar one—a predator toying with his food.
Adrenaline surges through my veins, having been on the receiving end of his sick machinations so many times.
“You’re always so concerned with being boring and proper, and that’s how you greet your kin? It’s been almost a year since you stabbed me, and you haven’t even bothered to ask how I’ve fared.”
Keeping my eyes trained on Dawson, I haul Wendy up by the scruff of her shirt. “Open. That. Ward.” I hiss in her ear, before shoving her behind me.
She stumbles, collapsing back to the floor with a sob.
I curse under my breath, despising that I’m here with her instead of Willa.
For all the times I’d hatefully called Willa a coward, there is no circumstance in which she’d just curl up on the floor to surrender in a puddle of her own tears as Wendy seems inclined to do.
“I don’t need to ask how you’ve managed, Dawson. If anyone could thrive in this shithole of a world, it would be a cockroach such as yourself.”
My brother grins, clutching a hand to his heart, the other still steady on the gun. “Aw, Nikolas…your compliments warm my heart.”
“Come now,” I tsk. “We both know you have no heart to warm.” I tilt my head curiously. “Though I can think of no other plausible explanation aside from sentiment that would explain your continued servitude.”
Dawson’s nostrils flare as I rake my gaze from his head to his toes in disdain. “I serve no one,” he snarls to my amusement. “The Aeternalis and I are equals.”
I laugh, the sound serving to incense him further. Since we were children, my brother has been quick to anger and easy to bait. I prod further, digging a knife into his insecurities to keep his attention on me and away from the ward.
“Surely you know better after all these centuries,” I remark with false pity.
“The Boy King doesn’t like to share. Why else would he leave you in this world with no magic?
He cares nothing for you if he’s left you to work with lowly mainlanders, while he gallivants around Letum…
taking everything you’ve wanted for the past two centuries, but never quite able to have. ”
The air tingles, raising the hair on the back of my neck. “So, tell me, Dawson…which of us truly crawls back to those who never wanted us?”
Dawson’s expression is lethal as he clicks off the safety of the gun. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten, little brother, but you are entirely mortal now. All it would take to end you is one tiny bullet through the head.”
I grin, my delighted laugh echoing between us. “Someone thinks highly of their aim. You only managed to hit my shoulder last time and we were standing closer than we are now. Practice only goes so far when one lacks coordination.”
I’ve nearly succeeded in turning Dawson’s attention entirely on me, when the atmosphere ripples.
The storm surrounding us rages with newfound fury, the renewed roar of the wind sending the vessels crashing into one another.
Wendy yelps at my feet, but to her credit, she does not let go of the ward this time.
It widens until the air of Letum—distinctly tinged sweet with dreams—begins to spill through the chasm. Dawson rips his gaze away from me to see the pathway home looming open above us both—a violent whorl of stars and worlds and times gaping like a hungry maw.
He snarls in fury, motioning to his men. Two hundred guns turn toward me.
“Give her to me, Nikolas,” Dawson says. “Give her to me and slink off to whatever world you please, so long as it isn’t mine.”
I drop to the ground as he fires off a shot in warning.
The upholstery behind where I just stood explodes in a shower of leather and cotton.
My ears ringing, I dig my fingers into Wendy’s arms as she squirms beneath me, her skin slick with fear.
Finally, I find purchase enough to haul her upward, placing her squarely between my brother and I.
Wendy sobs, clawing at my iron grip. The ward howls above us, the call of home—of death, of dreams.
“I still don’t know why you tried to escape your kin, Nikolas,” Dawson says with a hollow grin. “When you are so deliciously self-serving.”
Wendy sags in my arms, her sobs now hiccupping from her in pathetic little gulps. If I had any sense, I’d throw her at Dawson and escape through the ward. But unfortunately for me, Wendy is immortal.
Which means that though he cannot kill her, he will have endless time to break her to his will. It will only be a matter of time before Wendy is at his mercy, and he follows me to Letum.
Which leaves me with one choice.
Taking a deep breath, I adjust my grip on Wendy. And then I toss her into the ward.
Dawson roars as she disappears into the stars, her furious screech echoing behind her.
I leap after her as the ward begins to snap closed, and my brother’s hand latches around my ankle.
Without thought, I slice my sword downward, through sinew and bone.
His scream of pain is the last thing I hear before the rush of magic and time yanks me home.