Chapter 32
Chapter thirty-two
Willa sways wildly. I catch her before she collapses, gathering her to me as a desperate sob bubbles from her throat.
She writhes in my arms, her body twisting and contorting as if she’s in pain.
There’s so much blood, it is impossible to tell where it originates.
It coats her face and throat like a morbid mask; spreads over her abdomen in a wash of crimson, and splatters down her legs.
“Stop me, Niko!” she cries, burying her face against my bare chest. Her fingers claw at my shoulders, like if she digs her nails deep enough, she can keep me from slipping from her grasp like the wisps of a dream. “You have to stop me! I can’t—something is wrong.”
Her sobs wrack her body like violent tremors. Like the shadow that’s been trailing after her is now trapped behind her ribs, and fighting to get out. “Tie me up, Niko, please. I can’t—I can’t bear it!”
“Willa,” I breathe, still lost somewhere between waking and dreams. Still trying to regulate my breathing enough to fucking think straight, as the pain in her voice rends through my heart. Each beat is painful, like it’ll come straight through my chest and shatter at her feet.
She doesn’t seem to hear me at all, clenching her fingers into fists and beating them against my chest. “Tie me up with your death,” she cries, her voice cracking. “Slit my throat! Do something!”
I grip her wrists, trying to soothe her as she thrashes in my arms; as blood smears between us, still sticky and warm.
She moans in pain. “Don’t let me—don’t let me…”
“Willa,” I say again, because none of this feels real and her name on my tongue always has. I give up trying to tame her and pinch her chin between my fingers, dragging her panicked gaze to mine. “I have you.”
“Niko, I—”
“I have you,” I repeat, the words layered with our past and our present. “I’m what’s true, Darling. Whatever has happened, I have you and I’ll never let anything hurt you.”
Though her body stills, the way she gazes up at me unsettles me far more than the blood or panic or pain.
Because behind all of it, true fear shines in her eyes.
Blood rushes past my ears, ice cold and furious.
Willa is hardly ever afraid—not when standing toe to toe with a lord of death, not when facing an army of soulless murderers.
That she is afraid now has my death spearing out around us, intent on drinking the life of whoever has made her feel this way.
I blink wildly, trying to focus beyond its primal call, as Willa’s body goes slack in my arms.
“I’m—I’m not the one who needs protecting.” Her hands tremble as she raises her blood-crusted palms between us. “They need protecting. They need protecting from me.”
I interlace our fingers together, staining my own palms as thoroughly as hers. Determined to keep her together, for once, instead of tearing her apart.
My death twines around our wrists, a binding and a vow. “I am not their sanctuary, Willa. I am, and will always be, only yours.”
The words are not a soothing boon, but a ruthless promise. And they are enough. She lets out a strangled sound of relief. Her lashes flutter. And she crumples unconscious in my arms.
Heart beating roughshod against my sternum, I sweep her up and carry her into my bathing chamber. I try not to think of how frail she appears, nor how she feels pressed against me. It’s been so long since I’ve been free to touch her; the few stolen moments in the Lunaedon were not enough.
Nothing ever is when it comes to Willa.
Blood trails behind us, fresh enough to know that despite her claims, some of it is her own.
Her breathing is ragged and pained, but to my relief it still comes at regular intervals.
I set her gently in the small tub, trying to focus on its rhythm, as my own breaths spiral wildly out of control.
Panic constricts my ribs as surely as my death at the state of her.
Her beautiful hair is dark and matted; her skin painted in swathes of scarlet.
The original color of her dress is no longer discernible, the fabric sodden and torn.
My death slices through it, and I gingerly peel it away from her skin, searching for a source of injury beyond the shallow scrapes on her cheeks and arms.
I grit my teeth, willing my death to calm as I take in her ravaged body.
But it is no use, as at the sight of the wound marring her stomach, the ribbons pierce into the air like vengeful swords.
I hardly feel the pain of it—the burning nerves or the raw ache in my bones—because my death’s rage tangles with so furiously with my own, that for a moment, I see nothing but rot.
A few inches in length, Willa’s wound is familiar, having suffered a few myself over the centuries.
She’s been stabbed with a Silva Lucai spear. Clean through, from her stomach to her spine.
I leak a slow breath through my teeth, and lean forward to examine the edges of her injury.
The smaller scratches have all clotted, and by all accounts, Willa’s immortality should have begun healing this one, too.
But it still bleeds as freely as if it just happened.
Not because her immortality has failed, but because of whose blade she’s been pierced with.
Adira’s. The Princess of the Wilds laces her spear with the sap of the Nyawa, sacred and lethal.
I brace myself as my death spirals from me, shattering the mirror above the vanity. I close my eyes and press my palm above Willa’s heart, not to reassure myself of its beat, but to keep from tearing through the island to desiccate one of my oldest friends from the inside out.
They need protecting…from me.
Willa’s panicked words drift back to me, dread settling in my stomach like a boulder. Whatever it was—whatever she’s done that Adira felt the need to injure her so gravely—it had something to do with the shadow that plagues her. Though it is not here now, and I cannot decide what that means.
Trapping a groan of pain behind gritted teeth, I draw my death back to me, winding it around my wrists.
I ground myself in it, forcing both our attention back to Willa.
I need to clean the sap from the wound, or she’ll lose every drop of blood in her body.
And though I know from stories of her time in those wretched camps that she’ll survive it, I also know her immortality will not spare her from the suffering.
I gather supplies, which are plentiful even after two hundred years of abandonment. A pirate’s life was always dangerous no matter the world, and Sam made a point to keep the Indomnitus well stocked.
Kneeling beside the tub, I begin the painstaking process of washing out the wound.
Willa’s weak whimper at the first touch of the alcohol nearly sends my death shattering through the rest of the cabin, but I keep it locked tight against my skin.
She writhes beneath my ministrations, her body bowing upward.
“I’m so sorry, Darling.” My words are a whispered chant that rain over us both. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. “I should have been with you. I should always have been with you.”
Her keening cry echoes through me, and in my desperation to comfort her, I begin to sing a soft song. A melody buried so deep in my memory, it exists somewhere alongside my mother’s laugh and my father’s stern smile.
To my relief, the sound of my voice Willa settles immediately. So I sing as I work, clearing enough of the wound to examine the edges.
They are blackened, much like the shade of my own blood, and curled as if the skin has been singed with fire.
“Fuck,” I mutter out loud.
The poison has already leeched into her skin, which means I’m going to have to cut it out.
My breath stalls in my lungs as the rest of my ribbons crawl over my chest, jerking toward Willa. My jaw locks as I try to hold them back, but my death is insistent in its pull.
I stare down at her, broken and bleeding, indecision warring behind my ribs.
She is in so much pain, the urge to keep any more of it from her is instinctual.
But my death knew Willa was our heart long before I did—knew that ending her life would be ending our own.
And my biggest mistake, the one I regret above all others, is that I shielded parts of myself when she asked me for everything.
So, this time, I give Willa what I’d been too scared to before: everything. I open myself up to my death and my love, and I hold nothing back.
The moment I let go, my death does not rampage through the island. Instead, it washes over Willa like a silk sheet. It caresses her cheek and slides over her broken body. And when it dives into the wound at her stomach, her mouth parts in a guttural noise. Not of pain, but of relief.
The relief of death. The end to the agony. The silence from the noise.
Everything Willa has always been denied.
Everything I’ve denied her because I was too lost in regret and self-loathing.
I was never able to see my magic as Willa saw it—not as something ruinous, but as something beautiful.
I’d only seen what it would take from her, never what it could give.
And in that hatred of myself, I made decisions that lost us both.
My death sidles back to me, and my breath escapes me for the second time in the span of a few moments, this time having nothing to do with pain.
The skin around Willa’s wound is no longer black nor necrotic. Still jagged, still painful—but the skin that had just been stained with poison, is now shiny with new growth.
I watch as her laceration begins to heal from behind a sheen of hot tears.
Death is an end to everything, but there are new beginnings in an end.
I have spent my long life shielding everyone from what lies inside my heart, but for the first time, I truly wonder what would happen if I embraced it as Willa has.
If, perhaps, I could grow something beautiful in the ruin.