Chapter 27
Chapter twenty-seven
The next morning, I wander through the tree-city with no particular destination in mind. My shadow follows, and though it behaves as a usual shadow would, its presence is heavy. It pulls at me with every step, dragging me backward as if my feet are mired in mud.
I wonder if it has always been this exhausting to bear, or if I am only more aware of it now. I saw it through Niko’s eyes and somehow, it was worse than my own.
I came back to save the only beautiful thing in the world from ruin.
Niko came back to the place of his suffering—baptized himself once again in unending pain—all to save the island from me. I wasn’t worth living with his pain, but Letum is. And it hurts far worse than his death ever had.
The sun has barely peeked above the horizon, its rays not yet hot enough to rouse most of the Grove awake.
Despite the upheaval in my head, I try to enjoy the quiet.
The soft buzz of the will-o-wisps, the gentle rustle of leaves in the breeze, the distant rush of the waterfalls at the city’s edge.
I brush the petals of flowers with the tips of my fingers, my heart expanding at the way they reach for me.
The blooms do not know of the darkness in me; they are simply drawn to the island’s magic, no matter what lives alongside it.
It should be a relief—proof of my right to rule Letum—but it only cinches the anxiety in my chest tighter, like at any moment, the flowers, the people, everyone, will discover I’m a fraud.
“I don’t think fraud is in a flower’s vocabulary,” Adira quips from behind me.
I let a breath leak through my teeth, turning toward the Princess of the Wilds.
She is as ethereal as ever beneath the natural magic of the Grove.
Draped in elegant fabrics colored the same jeweled tones as the leaves, her tawny skin glows in contrast to the painted designs mimicking the flow of the forest. Her silken hair hangs down her back in a shining black curtain, and her feet are bare but for the delicate silver bracelets draped around her ankles.
“How would you know?” I grouse petulantly. “Do you speak flower?” Adira opens her mouth to reply, but I hold up a hand before she can. “You know what…don’t answer that. It’s too early for Neverland nonsense.”
Adira shrugs, as if to say, suit yourself, and reaches a finger in the air toward a cluster of will-o-wisps. One by the one, they float down toward their princess, their delightful little hum vibrating louder as they land along her hands and trail up her arm.
“You arrived quite late last night.”
It takes me a protracted moment to realize Adira is speaking to me, and not the little faeries.
I shift uncomfortably beneath her odd gaze, resisting the urge to yank the collar of my cloak up around my throat when those gray eyes brush over my freshly healed skin.
There is no remaining physical evidence of what Niko did, but as her attention lingers, it feels as though she sees the slash somehow.
Shame burns my cheeks, even as I try to shrug it away.
“Yeah,” I reply, keeping my attention on the will-o-wisps, as if it’ll somehow save me from Adira’s prying magic. “Thanks for keeping the Silva Lucai from attacking me on sight.”
Adira’s laugh is a melodic tinkle, and the little orbs of light shiver in pleasure. “The Grove has always held space beneath its boughs for those seeking respite.”
A lump lodges in my throat, and without warning, tears sting my eyes.
Perhaps I was doing as she suggests and seeking a moment to breathe.
But in the light of the morning, it feels more like stumbling backward into the terrified girl I’ve been for two centuries.
The one that runs away instead of facing anything that could hurt her.
“Your mind feels so heavy, Willa. What burdens you so?” Adira asks.
I don’t look at her, choosing instead to study the skim of my fingers along the wooden railing.
My doubts pile up, one on top of the other, until I can hardly remember what my magic felt like before them.
How had it felt to dip my fingers into the shimmering pool of possibility before it was stained with doubt and shame?
“Adira, you hated Niko for two centuries because of what he did to this island. Even though he was a friend to you.”
She tilts her head curiously. “Yes.”
“Why then—well…why don’t you hate me?” The question rushes from my mouth, like it’s been pulled out against my will. But I don’t take it back.
Adira’s brows furrow together. “You are quite prickly, Willa, but I see no reason to hate you.”
I chew the inside of my cheek. “I ruined everything that night on the Indomnitus…and I just think maybe…maybe I deserve your hate as much as he did.”
Adira studies me for a long moment. “I think we view the events of that night far differently.”
Indignant heat crawls through me. “How many ways are there to look at it? I killed everyone’s dreams just as surely as Niko did.
It’s only a matter of time before Letum turns into another version of the mainland.
Hopeless and desolate. The wild will die alongside the island, and all of it will be my fault.
” I shake my head, swearing beneath my breath.
“You told me Niko and I deserved each other. You were right. We’re both monsters. ”
“I’m rarely wrong.” Adira smiles dreamily. “Who better to protect you from a monster than another monster?”
She said the same to me on our first carriage ride together, when the Strayed had been burning the harbor. It unsettles me just as much now as it had then.
“Is that not what you did, Willa? You protected those children from being drained by the Everlasting. You may not have done it the perfect way, but your actions were to save them, not to damn them.”
She reaches for my hand, and for once, I let her take it without flinching away.
“Niko damned the island for his own selfishness. That is what I could not forgive, no matter how I love him. But you, Willa…all the scars you’ve earned, all the trauma you’ve endured…it turned you so far away from your true heart. And despite it all, you’ve found your way back to it.”
Adira laces her fingers between mine. “Yours is a heart willing to do whatever it takes to protect what belongs to it.”
I want to shy away from her words, even as they ring true.
The heart she speaks of beat in my chest for most of my childhood, as I worked tirelessly to save Celie and my father.
It bled for their pain and beat for their happiness.
After their deaths, I locked it away for two centuries, terrified of what it would mean to allow it space to beat again.
And then I’d met the King of Carrion who’d pried it from my chest and held it in his hands. It is the most beautiful, and most terrible, thing he’s done to me. My shadow lurches at the thought of Niko, its rage that we left him alive filtering through me like a noxious cloud.
Adira’s eyes snap to the movement, and for a horrifying moment, I fear she’s noticed its unnatural movement. But to my relief, a member of the Silva Lucai approaches from the nearest bridge, stealing the princess’ attention.
“My lady.”
“Good morning, Ebere.” Adira smiles in acknowledgement, beckoning the warrior forward. “How did the night fare?”
Ebere’s long legs carry her across the bridge in no time at all.
Like the rest of the Silva Lucai, she exudes an effortless power both in her beauty and her strength.
In the year I’ve spent getting to know the warriors of the Grove, I’ve found both peace and anguish in their company.
Watching them is like watching what could have been—would the plague have taken Celie so easily if she’d grown up in a world that didn’t try to make women smaller?
What would she have been if she’d been raised in the Grove where women, no matter what form they choose to take, are celebrated for their ideas instead of belittled?
“The night was well in our soul, my lady,” Ebere replies, leaning casually on her long spear as one would lean on a cane. “However, it is our soul that worries me come the morning sun.”
Her words send a jolt of dread through me. “Something’s wrong with the Nyawa?”
Ebere inclines her head, but I am already rounding on Adira.
“How long has this been happening?”
She levels me with a serene stare. “It is just a few diseased leaves, Willa. There’s no need to worry. I’m confident we will be able to nurse her back to health.”
Adira doesn’t answer the unspoken question swirling between us: is this my fault, too?
I’d tried to save the Grove just as I’d tried to save the children, and buried hundreds of Strayed at the roots of the sacred tree.
When death returned to Letum, I thought the threat of them somehow poisoning the Nyawa had abated.
But perhaps they still fester even in death.
Have I ruined the Grove the way I’ve ruined the island?
“Adira…”
She stops me with a quick shake of her head, and curls a placating hand over my shoulder. “You are the sovereign of the island, but I am the keeper of the wild. Do not bear burdens you have no claim to.”
I don’t have the words to explain how every burden feels like mine, all of them tangled up in the veins of my heart, in the darkness of my shadow.
“Ebere, please show Willa to one of the treehouses on the west side. I will attend to the Nyawa.”
Ebere bows her head. “Of course, my lady.”
“Stay as long as you need, Your Majesty,” Adira says to me. “Consider what you have given to the island, and what you still can. Do not ruminate on the things you believe you’ve taken away.”
A lump forms in my throat, but I force a nod.
“And Willa?”
“Those who have no doubts…who never question themselves and allow no one else to either…they are not meant for power. Your doubts make you human. They keep you tied to empathy. To humanity.” Adira’s gray gaze begins to churn. “But only so long as you do not allow yourself to drown in them.”
I nod, and turn to follow Ebere.
Over the next few days, I bury myself in the day to day movements of the Grove.
I train with the Silva Lucai until my muscles burn and my sword arm shakes with exertion.
In the evenings, I have tea with Adira on the porch of her treehouse, listening to her tales of Letum that span over a millennia.
She speaks of the land of dreams and death with a hypnotizing rhythm, and I cannot get enough of how things were when the island was new.
When it held the same possibility threaded through my magic—anything a person dreamt of could be theirs.
The thought sticks with me, as I wander through the maze of wooden bridges. Up to the highest level of the city, where it is easier to attribute the tightness in my chest to the thin air instead of my constant dread. Each breath stings my lungs, clearing away the muddied film I’ve been buried in.
For so long, the only dream I held was one of death. But mine is a magic of creation. I cannot keep clinging to the promise of an end when I have been given the gift of a beginning.
My shadow is quiet as I gaze out at the island—the emerald leaves of the Grove, the silhouette of the Lunaedon far in the distance, the violet sea. All of it so full of life, sparkling with the ethereal glamor I’d been drawn to the moment I emerged from the lagoon.
Despite the enormity of my mistake, the dreamlike quality of Letum hasn’t dimmed.
Every day the island takes more from you.
Niko had meant the words as a curse, but as I look out at my island, they feel more like a blessing. Because despite the heartbreak, this kingdom has given me so much—power, agency, peace.
I want to give back.
What if I could somehow gift the kingdom what I never meant to steal? Dreams come in so many forms. Maybe I have tried the wrong ones.
The idea lights in my brain like a will-o-wisp, its glow lingering long after I’ve retired to bed. And when I wake the morning of Dreaming’s Eve, the wood of the treehouse warm beneath my feet, I know exactly what I’m going to do.