Chapter 12 #2
My death spears from me suddenly, and a guttural groan sounds from deep in my chest as I’m wracked with sharp agony. My bones are brittle, my skin too tight, and black edges my vision as I peer down the beach to where my magic thrashes angrily in the air.
A boy walks alone on the sand—a child I’ve chased over the woven bridges of the Grove many times.
I grit my teeth, trying to draw my ribbons away from her.
Their pull is insistent, their thirst for her innocent life reverberating through my heart with an urgency it takes me far too long to understand.
The girl’s gait is oddly measured—unnaturally smooth for that of any child. As she moves steadily closer, I take in her closed eyes and the tears dried on her full cheeks. Her lower lip trembles in terror, and her hands claw the air in front of her like she fights an invisible force.
For a moment, my own pain ices over with pure rage. Because I know intimately how it feels to be trapped in a dream you cannot wake from; know the terror of your body acting without your consent.
The Aeternalis once controlled me the same way. Called to me in my dreams and commanded my movements, just as the girl is being commanded.
Right down to the rapier in her hand.
Fuck.
I curse my useless body as another wave of agony threads beneath my skin, like licks of flame searing through my veins.
It is the sensation I feel any time I’m about to seize—when the pain is too much and my body shuts down—and though I try desperately to hold on to consciousness, it looms over me like an inescapable shadow.
I reach for my death, but it’s been too long since I bore their burden.
My hold is feeble and unpracticed, and the magic slips from my grasp like wisps of silk.
My ribbons flail, weakened by my exhaustion and pain.
It’s all I can do to drape them over my body, and hope the girl stumbles into one before she manages to slit my throat.
My thoughts scatter as pain shreds through my bones.
The air around me grows lighter—or perhaps I’ve become lighter—as I can no longer feel the grit of the sand beneath me or the pressure of the atmosphere.
I’m floating above the world, and I wonder vaguely if I’m dead.
Weightless, dark, infinite, just like last time.
But then, there’d been a light to crawl toward. Now, there is nothing.
Nothing but pain, and there is no pain in death. It is as grounding as ever, even as I float above the sand toward the trees. Away from the beach; away from the girl and her blade.
The agony finally proves to be too much. The black edging my vision swells, and the last thing I see before my body betrays me, is the sky of my kingdom. The sky of home.
I come to with a ragged groan, digging my fingers into my eyes in an attempt to relieve the pain resounding through my skull. Colors bloom beneath my lids in rhythm to the deep throb rattling through my brain.
Tick, tick, tick.
Slick panic grips my chest as the heart of the island beats endlessly in my ear—a sound that’s haunted me since I was a child deep in the Hollows, and has threaded into the nightmares of adulthood nearly every night since.
When I open my eyes, it’s to find the Letum sky has disappeared, replaced by endless black rock. Suffocating, and horribly familiar.
A grunt escapes me as I wrench away from the ceiling in horror. Head swimming, I scramble backward only to find more stone. My back collides with another wall, the touch of it icier than my death, beckoning a thousand horrible memories to the surface.
After all these centuries, I am trapped once again in the misery of the Hollows. Buried beneath the weight of earth and suffering.
The oxygen stalls in my lungs, and for a terrible moment, I’m sure I’ll never breathe again.
I can’t be here. I can’t be here.
I’ll be crushed by the torment embedded in the stone of the tunnels; by the loneliness that burrowed into my bones as a child and never left. I’ll die alone, trapped for eternity with the ghosts of my own pain.
I jerk as something brushes my gloved fingers. It takes a few blinks to dissipate the specters of the past, and focus on the face swimming before me.
Marina.
She hadn’t left me at all. And somehow, the clever pixie figured out a way to move me off the beach before I’d had my throat slit by a ten-year-old.
I suck in a shaky breath, meeting her gaze in the soft light of a lantern she’s lit between us.
Sudden shame presses down against my shoulders, mingling with my pain until the bitterness of both stains my tongue.
I’m sorry, she signs, her gestures soft. But I didn’t have enough dust to bring you anywhere else. Her eyes skate over the jagged walls. Nowhere safe, at least.
I nod, even as the hair rises on the back of my neck. I have not been beneath the earth of Letum since I left as a child—not even as king. The onyx stone haunts my dreams, the faint smell of blood and horror pungent in my nose even now that I know it to be imagined.
My thoughts snag on the rest of Marina’s words, and my gaze snaps to hers. “I’m sorry…but did you say dust?” She meets my eyes defiantly, even as I narrow mine. “Pixie dust?”
Marina’s stillness is answer enough. “Where the fuck did you manage to find pixie dust? Willa hasn’t even been anchor long enough for a bloom.”
Marina shrugs with a false casualty.
“Rina…”
Before…Her hands hesitate in midair, and a sharp breath whistles between her teeth.
Before you came to Letum as a child, the pixies were treating the morphellia carelessly.
It was meant to be used to transport children to the land of dreams, and reignite their hope when it faltered.
Instead, the pixies were using it as a common drug.
Snorting it, injecting it. It was despicable.
The Everlasting promised that if I helped him to overthrow them, he would care for the vines and nurture them like they were meant to be.
His magic was still so wonderful then, I’d agreed.
But over the centuries, he became more and more paranoid.
He would listen to no one but the twisted whisperings of his shadow, even as the state of the island worsened.
The vines began to wither and die, and I knew they would not come back with the way he’d desecrated our sacred earth.
Marina’s mouth presses into a thin line. So, I smuggled the last of it out of the Hollows. He discovered what I did, and severed my wings in revenge. I stole the ability to fly from him, so he ensured I would never fly either.
Her gaze falls to her hands as she says, Before he attacked me, I gave most of the dust to the pixies for safe-keeping. Even though they hated me, I knew they would protect it with their lives. But I was selfish then, and I couldn’t resist keeping some of it for myself.
Marina swallows, and my heart pulls taut at her despair, her self-hatred. She has never spoken to me of the moment she lost her wings, and lost in my own pain and self-hatred, I never asked.
It’s like a part of me knew I’d never feel the wind on my wings again. And I selfishly ensured that I would, no matter what.
I clear my throat. “Do you have any more?”
Marina smiles sadly, shaking her head.
“Rina—”
You saved me, Niko. When I gave you no reason to, you saved me.
I open my mouth to object, but when she slashes her hand fiercely through the air, I fall silent.
And not just on that beach. You saved me a thousand times when the shame and sadness made me want to die.
You were my friend when I didn’t deserve it.
And just as you gave up everything for Letum, it is no sacrifice for me to give up the sky for you.
I stare at Marina, and though she has been so many things—the right hand, the traitor, the fallen—I only see one: my friend.
There were so many things to miss exiled on the mainland, but my friends’ absence had been a physical ache with no abatement. Being with her again feels like coming home; like a jagged wound soothed.
She searches my face warily, as if bracing for my admonishment.
“I missed you,” I tell her simply.
Marina waves me off as if the sentiment is ridiculous, but I grin as the tips of her ears turn slightly pink.
My death, which had been curled in a haphazard pile beside me, threads over my legs and slithers up my waist. I inhale a few deep breaths, willing away the pain of the magic and the unease of waking underground.
When I finally dare a glance around the rest of the cave, I don’t find the emptiness I expect of the Hollows.
Plush blankets are laid out against the opposite wall like a makeshift bed, a haphazard pile of well-loved books stacked beside it.
The stone ledge above is lined with folded clothes and oiled weapons that sparkled in the light of the fire blazing in a rudimentary stone hearth.
A mouthwatering scent wafts from the copper pot hung above the flames, the smell both cozy and familiar.
“Rina,” I begin slowly, newfound wariness threading through me.
Don’t worry, she signs hurriedly, misunderstanding my sudden anxiety. No one will find us here. Even with Willa’s help, the pixies have only gone down a few levels so far, and we’re miles beneath that.
I don’t know whether it’s the familiar sign of Willa’s name, or the idea of being trapped so deep beneath the surface of the island that causes my stomach to flip. My death shudders and jerks, and I grit my teeth against the accompanying pain.
No one knows I’m here, she continues. I’m always cloaked when I go into Hollow City.
I narrow my eyes, sitting straighter even as another wave of unconscious sweeps at the edges of my vision. “What is going on, Rina? Are you—have you been living down here?”