Chapter 41
Chapter forty-one
Imay be the only person in Letum who is wholly thankful for the accidental death of dreams. Without my magic, I am set adrift with nothing to anchor me to the person I knew myself to be.
I have spent so long mired in the feelings of others, my own are inadequate in the full space of my heart, even my grief too minimal to inhabit the void.
So, I sleep away the days, lost in the space of oblivion where dreams once existed.
“Wake up, you handsome bastard.” Niko’s smooth voice slices through the bliss of unconsciousness.
I grunt, unwilling to even peek an eye open. “Your mocking is unappreciated while I’m trying to sleep. Leave me alone.”
He does not leave me alone, but instead, yanks every blanket off the bed.
I hiss as cool air rushes over my scab-covered body. “Hey!” I shout mutinously, opening my eyes solely to glare at the asshole king standing at the foot of my bed holding a comforter. “I am injured!”
There is no pity in Niko’s expression. He only cocks his head, giving me a hard stare. “Are you referring to your body, or your pride?”
“Oh, why don’t you just go fuck yourself,” I mutter, my wounds screaming as I reach for a blanket to cover myself back up.
Niko dances out of my reach with the comforter, and for a moment, I’m overcome by the distinct urge to stab him. Or maybe pound my fist into his face until he doesn’t look so smug.
“Give them back before my skin breaks open all over again.”
He sets me with a flat look. “No,” he says perfunctorily, before moving to the window and thrusting the shutters open.
“You’re lucky I can’t reach my sword,” I pout, throwing my hands over my eyes as the sunshine pierces straight through my retinas. “Or I’d run you through right now.”
“You could certainly try.” Niko spins toward me with a flourish. “But as I’m the one who taught you everything you know about swordplay, I’m certain I can still best you. No matter that you’re now twice my size and built like a boulder.”
I bristle as his eyes run over me in frank assessment, bracing for his coming disgust. But he only twists his mouth in distinct annoyance. “I’ve never taken you for a hypocritical coward. I don’t think I like it.”
“I don’t care what you like,” I reply obstinately, glaring at him from between my fingers. “Are you the only one allowed to convalesce in bed, then?”
Niko sighs, his eyes rolling to the ceiling like he’s gathering patience we both know he doesn’t possess.
“Sammie, we’re not going to pretend like you aren’t twice the man I am. You don’t get to sink to my level, because you’ve always been far above it. So, you’re going to sit the fuck up, and we’re going to face reality as it is, not as we want it to be.”
My heart softens a bit at his words. Niko is a lot of things, but he has always seen me for who I am.
Even before I’d come to Somnya, I spent my life mired in the emotions of others.
Perhaps a trait that began as a way to protect myself in a cruel world, or perhaps I was simply born with a heart determined to bleed for others.
When my magic first bloomed as a Strayed, it felt impossible to delineate where others stopped and I began; impossible to keep every one of their whims from sinking beneath my skin and coloring my own wants.
It felt like everything I was had once been a part of someone else, like nothing belonged only to me.
A small seven-year-old with wild black hair and a magic everyone else feared was the only person to see to the true heart of me.
Niko has always been the anchor back to myself when the tides of others threatened to consume me whole.
There is no hiding from death. A person can spend their life pretending to be whatever they want, but when the end comes, it sees them for who they are.
Beneath the riches, beneath the platitudes.
I feel his attention now, lethal and still, and I both hate him and love him for it. He raises a brow in silent challenge.
With a small measure of misery, and a larger measure of shame, I nod my assent.
Niko is at my side in an instant, arranging and fluffing the pillows to his satisfaction before slipping his gloved hands behind my back to help me up.
Agony radiates through me, pain without an acute source as it encompasses the whole of my body—every inch of my skin, my eyes, my muscles, and the raw space where my magic used to be.
My breath stalls in my chest, and I’m forced to grit my teeth to keep my groan trapped in my throat. But for the first time since I discovered the loss of my magic, I sit up.
When he’s certain I’m propped up securely, Niko settles into the chair beside the bed.
The same seat I’d told Adira to leave, even though it killed me to do it.
I know the request hurt her—that she would have remained faithfully by my side night and day—but it is easier to exist in isolation.
Easier to ignore the gaping hole where her feelings have always resided, curled beside mine.
I already admitted too much in my pained stupor, and upset the delicate balance between us. I couldn’t explain that I don’t recognize the shape of my heart without hers.
Sucking in a breath, I adjust myself on the bed. Niko hands me a steaming mug of what smells like Marina’s pain-relieving tea.
“Drink,” he commands to my irritation.
Not once in our three hundred years together has Niko ever done what he was told, even when it was to his benefit. That he now expects obedience from me is laughable, but I take a sip despite my annoyance, because it isn’t worth the energy of an argument.
“Happy now, sir?”
“Of course not,” he replies, taking an annoyingly prim sip from his own mug.
I tense in anticipation of the moment his hard gaze softens to unbearable pity; the moment when I transform from his friend into another burden of the kingdom to care for. Niko carries the responsibility of enough. I never wanted him to carry me, too.
But he only heaves an irritated sigh and says, “What is there to be happy about? Even mutilated to high hell, you still manage to look prettier than me, and I can’t say I appreciate it.”
A laugh balloons out of me, and despite the way it stings my wounds, it heals a piece of my heart. “I don’t know how Willa abides your ego.”
“I think my prowess in bed certainly helps the cause.”
I shake my head lightly, choosing to ignore that particular statement. “How is she faring? Recovering from Nyawa sap is a nasty business.” I shoot him a cheeky smile. “You’d know.”
Niko takes another sip, fitting me with a flat look. “Don’t change the subject, Samuel.”
“And what subject were we on, exactly?”
“One of my favorites. You.”
I drop my gaze to where my fingers dig far too hard into the delicate teacup. “What is there to talk about? I’m sure Addy already told you about my magic. It’s gone, and that’s that.”
“Well…” He draws out the word in an infuriating manner, and I consider throwing the teacup at his head before suddenly remembering myself. I’m not the one who has ridiculous fits of rage; he is.
“We could start with the fact that you sent Adira away when you should be enjoying her catering to your every whim. Truly, Sam…you’re going about nearly dying all wrong.”
Heat pricks up my throat as I stare at him.
“For star’s sake, Niko, I don’t want to fucking talk about it.
Any of it.” The voice that speaks sounds nothing like my own: it is a snap of teeth, the frayed edge of a nerve.
But maybe that’s who I’ve always been beneath my magic.
Maybe I am horrible and impatient and angry without its soft caress there to temper my worst inclinations.
Niko doesn’t even blink. He only smiles cruelly. “Too bad for you, I’m going to respect your ‘want to talk about it’ just as much as you usually respect mine. Which is to say…not at all.”
I can’t even argue because he’s right. Niko has a habit of drowning in his pain, unable to see the surface. Sometimes, pulling him in the right direction against his will is the only way to save him. And while a part of me is thankful he’s here to do the same, another part fights against it.
Because though Niko does not possess Adira’s magic of reading minds, he may as well for how deftly he ferrets things out. I’ve long thought it is his pain that makes him so sensitive to the world around him—so alert to every small change in his world and the people in it.
And I don’t want to be seen—I don’t want him to catalogue changes I can’t even begin to decipher in myself.
Niko watches me, his obsidian stare heavy against the lacerations slashing over my body. Normally, I am comfortable in silence. However, this one makes me suddenly itchy, like if I scratch hard enough, I’ll be able to dislodge it.
His grin draws wider at my clear discomfort, and I roll my eyes with an irritated huff at the realization he’s using my own tactics against me. And worse, that they’re working.
“You’re a bastard,” I mutter.
“Yes,” he agrees, his death lazing about his head as he sets his empty cup on the nightstand. “You have always thought it was the pain of my power that makes me the way I am, but I was born a cruel bastard. In Letum, or on the mainland with no magic, I am the same man. Just as you are, Sam.”
Heat races to my cheeks, and my eyes snap to his. He has stripped me down to my deepest fear in a matter of minutes, and I can’t decide whether to throttle him or embrace him.
“We have traveled countless seas together. You have been by my side through the best and the worst times in my life.”
I shrug off his words, unwilling to let them wrap around me in comfort; unwilling to allow them a moment to settle the unease in my chest. It isn’t his responsibility.
“It was an honor,” I mumble into my hands.
“It was mine,” Niko hisses fiercely enough, it pulls my gaze back to his.
“My honor. Your presence, your friendship…is the entire reason I survived long enough to see the sun rise on this island. The only reason I made it far enough to feel Willa’s heart beating next to mine.
You are the reason I survived the terrible things, and the reason I believed in the good ones that might lay beyond them.
You, Sam. Not your magic. And I’m sure Adira feels the same way. ”
My throat grows thick, as I work to get the words out from somewhere deep in my chest. Is it so hard to name the feelings because I cannot taste them or see them? Or is it simply because they’re my own?
“You and Adira are larger than life, Niko…and I have never minded living in your shadow because I knew what I could give. But now…” I shake my head. “There’s nothing left. I don’t even feel like myself, or know who I am to stand beside either of you.”
“We know,” Niko replies in a low voice that brooks no room for argument.
I’ve heard it many times—as his friend, as his first mate, as his royal advisor—but this is the first time I’ve felt the command of it in my bones.
“You have reminded us who we are every time we forgot…please allow us to do the same. You have carried all of us for so long. It is our turn.”
A long moment stretches between us, and then, eyes stinging, I nod.
Niko claps his hands together. “And star above, please let Adira back into the room before she drives everyone on the island insane. It would be the utmost cruelty to subject us to any more of it.”
Another laugh bubbles from me. Two laughs in less than ten minutes, and with each one, I feel a little more like myself.
“I’ll think about it,” I cede, downing the rest of the tea even though it’s grown cold.
“And Sam…” Niko says, his voice far quieter than it was a moment before, his posture humbled in a way it rarely is. “Thank you.”
Thank you for staying with her. Thank you for saving her.
He doesn’t need to say more, for as Niko sees to the bones of me, I have always seen to the heart of him. And I realize now, it was never my magic that allowed me to do it.
“Are you going to tell me how she is now? Or are you still building anticipation like the pompous prat you are?”
Niko grins. “She’s here to see you, actually.”
My mouth parts in shock, and I motion hurriedly to the comforter still piled on the floor. “Star above, Niko, you could have warned me! It’s bad enough I’ve had you and Adira tromping in here without a moment’s notice. I don’t need the queen seeing me naked on top of everything else.”
Niko obliges with a light shrug, chucking the crumpled blanket back at me. “Who am I to deny my queen the sight of such beauty when she’s spent her life starved of it?”
I scoff at his ridiculousness, tucking the blanket up to my chin as he rises to fetch Willa.
I try to remind myself of Niko’s words—my heart has not changed with the loss of my magic—though the sentiment slips as soon the moment Willa appears in the doorway, her face blanched white at the sight of me.
If I had my magic, I could reach for her guilt. I could lighten her sorrow and her horror. I could wrap it around her like this comforter, warm and thick, and keep her from shattering beneath it all.
But as it is, I can only watch as she drinks in the marred state of my face. The leaking wounds, and discolored bruises spreading across skin like a grotesque painting.
Your heart. Your heart, I remind myself. I don’t need magic to comfort someone—I never have.
But Willa is already gone, a soft sob echoing in the air behind her.