Chapter 39
Chapter thirty-nine
Iwatch my words fall over Willa like an icy rain.
Watch as her skin goes pale and shivers race over her arms; watch as she paints the gladius lost somewhere in the wreckage of the Indomnitus back into her grasp. She stands, her eyes narrowing as she considers me before her: sopping wet and unarmed, body still spasming from the earlier exertion.
My heart beats somewhere near my throat, as her gaze snaps to where my ribbons linger between us. Like she’s calculating whether or not she’s fast enough to get to me before they lash her into submission.
I wind my death slowly back to me, forcing it into stillness. Her eyes flare at the small act of subservience, and her lips pout slightly as she determines whether or not it’s a trick.
But there is no ruse, only an immense peace as I bare myself to her justice. If Willa moves to cut me down right now, I won’t lift a finger to stop her. For once, my death and I are in agreement.
Willa does not react well to being vulnerable—she is all gnashing teeth and brilliant fury—and I have just stripped her of the little that remained of her protective armor. Seen down to her bones, and held a power over her she never consented to give.
It will not matter that I also never consented to it.
This final slight may be unforgivable. And if it is—if she chooses to rid herself of the last thing binding her power—I cannot fault her for it.
She’s been granted so little agency in her life—always being used by others, never in charge of her own fate—I’ll do whatever needed to grant her that control. Including dying at her hand.
So I wait, bowed before her.
“That’s why your magic doesn’t affect me?” she asks, her tone measured. Unreadable. “Because you can only kill me with your hands?”
I am well acquainted with the shape of Willa’s body when she feels cornered—a wild animal caged—and though she holds herself in a readied stance, something in her eyes still gives me hope.
“I think hands is a liberal term,” I muse, feeling half out of my mind as the words tumble from my mouth, “as I gutted the Aeternalis with a hook.”
She watches me, stone-faced, as I continue, “I think it just has to be personal. Not by magic, but by something physical. Something…” I search for the right word. “…intimate.”
Willa’s eyes flare. “So, Wendy was right and my mother…she—she was like me.” Her mouth parts. “Is she still alive?”
I shake my head slowly. “She traced your mother’s whereabouts to London. That is where she…” I clear my throat. “…where she met her end.”
Horror etches itself into Willa’s face as another terrible thought takes hold. “My father?”
“We have no way of knowing.”
Willa’s expression tears my heart from my chest, and it takes everything in me to keep still.
“You’re right,” she says, raising her chin. “We only know that she allowed someone close enough to love her, and paid the price for it.”
Most would sink to their knees beneath the weight of their grief, but Willa has never been like most. She merely straightens her spine, and levels her blade at my heart.
I let my eyes fall shut for a brief second, for if it is to be my last moment, my last touch—I am grateful it is by her hand. And when I open them again, I am ready for whatever is next.
“Love is the most powerful of magics,” I tell her. “It is able to exist in worlds like the mainland where no others can survive. And you’ve learned well…power is neither good nor bad. It is just as likely to be a poison as it is a salve. Just as likely to ruin something as it is to save it.”
The sand digs into my knees and my bones ache fiercely, but I hardly feel any of it. I only feel Willa—her pain, her sorrow. Her love.
She traps her bottom lip with her teeth, halting its tremble. “And this magic between us, Niko?” she asks in a low voice. “Has it ruined us or saved us?”
“Both.”
It is the purest truth. I have been saved by Willa and destroyed by her, and I’d never have it any other way. She ravaged the false walls I’d built in service of self-preservation, striking through the years of rot and darkness; the misery and atonement. She’d wrecked it all.
And in my ruination, I was saved. Because through the destruction, Willa saw to the depths of who I am, to the death of my heart and the sins of my veins, without balking. And so had I.
You are worth more than the pieces you can tithe.
Her hair clings to her body in sodden tendrils, her lashes still beaded together by our long swim. With the light of the star haloed behind her, she appears as an avenging angel, and I gaze up at her patiently, awaiting her justice.
“My love for you may be a weapon, Willa, but I swear on my rotted soul…it will only ever be a weapon for you, not against you. Whether we are together or apart, alive or dead, I will always hold you in the safety of my heart. No one will ever be able to strike you down or take your power, because no one will ever love you as I do. You’re safe with me. Eternally.”
Her breath catches in her throat, and a tear slides down her cheek.
I raise my chin, pressing my chest into the tip of her sword.
We’ve been here so many times, but this one feels different—one last precipice.
“I am your final threat. And if you need to remove it to finally feel as safe as you deserve—as loved as you deserve—” I meet her eyes with everything I hold in my heart. “Do it, Darling.”
Willa lets out a ragged sob and the sword falls from her fingers. She drops to her knees in front of me, eyes wild, face flushed. A breath of relief rushes from my lungs as she places a palm over my heart, exactly where her blade had just been.
“You’re an asshole,” she breathes, and I laugh out loud.
“An idiotic, heroic, pain in the ass, decaying, asshole.” Her words are watery, the color of her eyes shining brilliantly beneath the sheen of tears.
“Wendy called it a curse, because she saw love as the antithesis of power. But she was wrong, Niko…and so was I, because I was too scared to see the truth. Love is the power. It is the freedom.”
Her fingers dig into my chest. “I told you I didn’t want a hero, but what I really meant was I wanted you to be only mine.
And you have been…since the moment you gave me the choice to leave even though it would have doomed the kingdom.
You’ve seen me when I could not see myself, and fought for me when I didn’t have the strength. You’ve never wavered.”
Willa swallows nervously, like she’s afraid she’s said too much. But as with everything, it is not enough. I want to drown her words; I want to throw myself at her feet. In all my days, I never imagined anyone could see the truth of me and name it as something good.
“There is no one in all the worlds I would rather have holding my life. No one else I’d want to hold my death…than the king of it.”
It is like the magic of the universe breaks open above us. Or perhaps it’s merely inside my chest as I capture her in my arms, dragging her mouth to mine. She tastes of tears and sea salt; of open wounds and a trust as nebulous and delicate as starlight itself.
As I take her for mine, I realize perhaps it isn’t magic at all—it’s happiness. It is the hope of something better, a light I never thought I’d feel again.
“Take me home, Corpsey,” she whispers along my lips, her breath sweet and desperate.
“Whatever horizon we travel…you are always home with me, Darling.”