Chapter 22
Chapter twenty-two
I’ve just settled back on the couch, feet propped on the coffee table and a generous measure of whiskey in my hand, when the air pulls tight. A moment later, the Aeternalis appears in my captain’s quarters.
His chest and face are slicked with blood; the usual gold of his hair matted with the same. His eyes shine an inhuman green from beneath the mask of gore, and bloody footprints trail behind him as he stalks furiously toward me.
“Peter Darling, what a pleasure!” I exclaim in mock excitement that has that skeletal mask of his flickering in and out of sight.
I tip back the whiskey and then set it on the table with a flourish.
“Looking dapper as ever, never mind the blood…the gore…and the slight disfiguration.” I raise an arrogant brow, taking in my own handiwork with pleasure. “Hardly noticeable. Truly.”
His eyes narrow, and though hatred is etched sharply in the lines of his face, his tone is even. “Nikolas,” he says by way of greeting.
My death jerks toward him at the mere sound of his voice. It is the sound of broken bones and humiliation—the sound of my childhood—and it takes everything in me to keep the ribbons close.
“Forgive my surprise, but last I knew, you were coalescing on the mainland. Licking your wounds and burying yourself in the cunts of whores like a school boy who’s just discovered his cock.” He gives me an assessing look. “Or perhaps you revel in the rot more than you once realized?”
He goes to the desk to pour his own drink, leaving a gruesome trail of blood behind him. “Is that why you’ve come back to my kingdom?” he asks with a dark smirk over his shoulder. “You can only get it up when they’re decomposing beneath you?”
I take another sip, appreciating the burn of the liquor in my throat against the cold of death in my joints. “Your kingdom,” I repeat with a laugh. “As far as I can tell, Peter—” I relish the way he stiffens with each use of his given name. “—Letum doesn’t belong to either of us at the moment.”
Like a spark to kindling, the Aeternalis explodes. He spins, his teeth bared, his face skeletal and monstrous. His shadow, which until a moment ago had behaved as shadows normally do, looms large above him, dousing the light from the bay windows in its darkness.
“You dare sully the name of my island with the filth of your death,” he snarls. “You dare to defile the Creator of Somnya with your few years of pretending.”
An arrogant smile draws over my face. “Still a little touchy, I see,” I tsk, crossing my boots and leaning back into the couch. “Perhaps you haven’t caught yourself up on current events, but I wasn’t the one who renamed the island. The people did.”
His shadow pulses in time with the magic in his chest.
“Did you know they rejoiced in the streets upon your death, Peter?”
The Aeternalis goes perfectly still, like a lion poised to strike.
“I know your affinity for revels, of course, and the one they threw upon your demise, well…it was one to be remembered. They danced for five whole days and five whole nights, if you can believe it.” I finish my drink, setting it softly on the table.
“A week straight of worshipping the very ground I walked on. Sobbing in gratitude, begging to allow them to build me monuments and palaces.”
I meet his gaze fiercely. “All for the simple act of gutting you.”
Dropping my eyes to examine my fingernails in a bored manner, I add, “They needn’t have bothered of course. I was more than happy to kill you for free.”
My wink sends a furious shiver vibrating through him, and for a moment, I wonder if he’ll drop the false civility and attack me. Instead, he sinks into the chair opposite me, staining my furniture with his filth. As if noticing my annoyance, he smirks and wipes his bloodied hands across the velvet.
“How have they welcomed you, Peter? I’ve seen no parades, no acolytes worshipping at your feet, but then again…I’ve been busy. Perhaps I missed them.” I absently finger the hilt of the revolver tucked into my waistband. “I imagine it would be difficult.”
“What would be difficult?”
I meet his gaze once more. “To walk through your own creation and be entirely alone.”
The Aeternalis scoffs, tipping back the contents of his own tumbler. “I have no need of the love of the masses, Nikolas.”
“No, I suppose you wouldn’t,” I muse thoughtfully. “Only your own love. Isn’t that what kept you safe all those years?”
I don’t miss the tightening of Peter’s fist. An infinitesimal twitch of his fingers, hardly noticeable to most observers.
But I grew up in the darkness of this man’s shadow.
I learned to read his every emotion, down to the tiniest details, in order to protect myself.
So, I see it—the fury I’ve unleashed inside him by alluding to his one weakness.
His eyes are wild and dangerous as they rake over me, disgust and rage radiating from him.
My death responds in turn, pulling and pulling, even as I wrap it tighter around my wrists.
It opens wounds in my skin, slices through my lungs and steals my breath.
It wants what has been stolen; hungers for that which is rightfully ours.
“Funny, isn’t it?” Pan says lightly after a moment.
“What you and I find funny has always been vastly different, I assure you.”
His mouth twists, but his eyes are fervent as he continues, “Only the most pathetic of my Strayed could ever have possessed enough self-hatred to love their torturer…those too weak to do anything with my fatal flaw if they were ever stupid enough to discover it.”
The magic in his chest glows brighter.
“I admit, I had so much fun testing the boundaries of affection before a child lost their magic. And you, Nikolas…you were such an adventure. So easy to break…over and over. Your magic tricked everyone else into believing you were strong, but I could see what lay beneath it. That tender heart of yours that drove you to crawl back to my feet each time, hoping it would be different.”
Outside, the winter wind howls against the windows. The Indomnitus rocks beneath us, but I don’t dare take my eyes from the Aeternalis.
“It was my folly,” he admits, though there is no contrition in his voice.
Only cold vengeance. “It’s such a delicate line between fear and love.
It takes talent to understand how to break someone to fit beneath your boot rather than breaking them into pieces that will stab you in the back.
I misjudged the pitiable elasticity of your heart. ”
Once, his words would have shamed me. I spent centuries abhorring the heart in my chest and the places it led me, but no longer. Not now that I have found why it beats.
Elastic does not easily break. It stretches and thins. It fits itself around others, wrapping them tightly.
There is strength in that.
“Your fear of hearts…just like your fear of death…has kept you from ever understanding them, Peter.”
“A god fears nothing,” he snaps.
I laugh lightly, as a wave crashes against the keel and the Indomnitus lilts sharply to the side. I relish the Aeternalis’ discomfort, the way his body tightens against the sway of the ship instead of rocking with it.
He isn’t made for the sea as I am; it is mine, just as everything else on the island. The thought is a steady flame in the depths of my soul.
“You thought you were safe from me, because you assumed death is too terrible to love anything but an end. And in your ignorance, you forgot the purity of it.”
Peter’s eyes flash. “There is nothing pure about your magic. Nothing pure about decay and rot!”
“Ah…isn’t there, though?” I drawl with a serpentine smile. “Death is unavoidable.” I lick my lips, my ribbons spiraling into the air around me as each taunt hits the Aeternalis like a blow to the chest. “It comes for us all, Peter. Even the most Eternal Boy.”
The Aeternalis’ fear and rage shimmer in the air between us.
The world seems to freeze as fully as the breath in my lungs.
Then, at once, his shadow lunges, fingers outstretched like they long to wrap around my throat.
I let out a wild peal of laughter as magic explodes from his chest, his power billowing toward me.
The Aeternalis has the ability to create any reality he wishes, a magic more powerful than any other.
Except mine.
My ribbons rise between us, flailing and writhing until they are a wall of darkness; of silence.
The Aeternalis snarls in fury, and I laugh harder as his golden power slams into my death.
The resounding clash reverberates through the ship, rattling the glass of the windows and lanterns, as every bit of the Aeternalis’ magic dissipates into nothing.
Peter jumps to his feet, his eyes flared in fury.
He grinds his jaw tightly as he stares me down, and I revel in the indignation blazing over his face.
For a brief moment, he does not appear as an ethereal eternal being.
He appears as he truly is—an obstinate child unaccustomed to not getting his way.
The Aeternalis does not have the fortitude to claw, to scrape, as the universe has always gifted him everything he could ever want.
Now that it hasn’t, he doesn’t know how to bend it to his will, how to force it into submission.
And he never will, as it is a skill only learned by the downtrodden, both their curse and their strength.
“I did try to tell you,” I remind him with a grin. “Death is infallible. It is the end of even the most fantastical of dreams.”
Peter seethes before me, his shadow looming large against the opposite wall. His jaw works as he calculates whether or not he’s quick enough to slit my throat before my ribbons can touch him. Which begs the question: how much does he know of his own curse?