Chapter 42
Chapter forty-two
Ithought I was done running, but the instinct is buried in my muscles, dormant until my body senses a threat. My body doesn’t understand— I am the threat.
I am the one who ruins everything I touch; the one who destroyed something as beautiful as Sam’s magic. Adira told me he’s struggled with the loss of his magic, but seeing it was something different. A light has gone out in Sam’s eyes. A light I extinguished.
And worse—the shadow awoke in the presence of what it stole. Ravenous for more, more, more.
It doesn’t matter whether the shadow belongs to me or to the island. It only matters that I keep it from hurting anyone else. So, I run.
I tear through the Grove, past the tinkling laughter of children and the curious stares of the Silva Lucai.
Past the Lunaedon carriage we traveled in, and into the shade of the forest beyond the tree-city.
Will-o-wisps scatter in alarm at the sight of me, too loud, too untethered for their calming presence.
Beasts of all sorts slink into the darkness, as if they know I am a greater threat than even their fangs.
I don’t have a direction in mind. I just run—run until my legs cramp up and my back aches. Until my feet are sore and sweat dampens my hair. I push myself further, faster, relishing in the discomfort. I deserve to feel it. All of it.
My breath saws in my lungs as I reach a small clearing, my legs giving out beneath me.
I tumble gracelessly to the ground, scraping my palms and knees on the sharp rock.
Flipping over onto my back, I stare up at the sun and scream, as blood runs freely from the new wounds.
Because even in this, my body will betray me.
After a few moments, it will heal and the pain will be gone.
And it is never enough to soothe the ragged edge of my regret.
I scream up at the sky until my throat goes hoarse; blind myself with the sun until every blink is painful; until I can no longer see anything but a blurred myriad of colors that no longer make sense.
I don’t know how much time passes before I realize where I am—Niko’s hidden spring.
Steam rises from the calm water, and I focus on the soft hissing sound of it instead of the ragged tenor of my breathing. A few will-o-wisps trickle down from the tree boughs above, and I resist the urge to scream again and scare them off.
They drift over my skin and tangle in my hair, their low hum easing the unbearable tightness in my chest. And after a few minutes, the pressure of the shadow’s hunger abates enough that I can breathe around it.
I sense Niko before I see him, as the moment he steps into the clearing, the will-o-wisps scatter, darting back into the haven of the leaves.
“How’d you find me?”
His movements are near silent as he sits beside me, but for the soft slither of his death over the rock. Curling his long legs beneath him, he shrugs with a low chuckle. “Didn’t have to. I’ve been following you since the Grove. I had no idea you were so inconveniently fast.”
“Stalking women in the woods, huh? You’re such a creep.”
The words are snide and sarcastic, even as my throat grows thick with gratitude. No matter how far I run, Niko will chase me, and there is comfort in that. There is no escaping death, no deciding you will not yield to it when it decides you belong to it—and I will always belong to him.
“What can I say? You’ve brought out my inner animal since the moment you straddled me in my own dining room with a blade to the throat.”
“I did not straddle you,” I huff, finally daring to look at him.
He is as smug and beautiful as ever, his skin somehow even paler in the sunlight than it is in the starlight. “Hmm,” he hums, “I’m pretty sure you did.” He raises a suggestive brow. “Enthusiastically, as I recall.”
In spite of myself, a laugh trickles from me. “Your memory is going in your old age, Corpsey. Some might even call you senile.”
Niko grins, but the humor in his gaze quickly gives way to that sharp obsession I’ve come to know so well. I should brace myself against it—against its fervent determination—but instead, I let it crash against me. And indeed, his next words pierce deep, like he’s sent an arrow between my ribs.
“You are hiding, Darling.”
“Yeah, I am,” I spit, anger and humiliation rising in my chest. I climb wearily to my feet. “I’m a coward. You never should have entrusted something so precious to me. Not your kingdom and not your heart. I can’t protect either of them.”
His eyes glint, devouring the rays of sun filtering through the canopy, as he, too, stands. Plants his feet. Readies himself, as he says, “Can’t is far different than won’t.”
Niko’s words are a spark to the tinder of everything jumbled inside me, and suddenly, I cannot breathe through the fire of it all. It burns at my lungs and my throat and my very blood.
“I can’t!” I shout, my throat ragged with both exertion and emotion.
“You’ve seen what my magic does. What I do!
” Red spills over my vision, and though I know it isn’t anger at Niko, he bears the brunt of it as I launch myself at him, pounding my fists against the hard muscle of his chest. “Look what I did to, Sam! Sam, who has the purest heart of anyone I’ve ever known… the most beautiful magic…”
The words catch in my throat, lodged beneath a sob I’m terrified to allow out. Because if I let it free, I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to stop.
“And don’t tell me it wasn’t my darkness, Niko, because whether it is mine to claim or not, it was my hand that destroyed him.
I hurt innocent people and ruined the island’s most precious night.
I shouldn’t be allowed to touch anything beautiful again.
I should go back to a world of ugliness, because I don’t deserve any of this. I don’t…I don’t deserve you.”
Niko circles my wrists in his fingers, wrenching my arms down to my sides and pulling me tight against his chest.
“Is that what you’re after, Darling?” He searches my face. “Punishment?”
My face heats as a breath catches in my throat. Is that what I’m after? Is that what will finally pierce through the shroud of shame I’ve been entangled in?
“Yes.”
The admittance sends dark excitement and twisted anticipation curling low in my belly.
There’s a relief in speaking the wish aloud, an instant weight lifted; to finally admit that I have gone from avoiding pain to craving it.
All this time, Sam, Adira, and even Marina, have been trying to assuage the guilt—to make it less mine.
But Niko understands better than anyone that sometimes there is nothing to lessen it but to feel it fully.
Tell me again how I don’t deserve this pain.
His words to me so many months ago wreathe in the air between us like a bind. Niko knows the weight of guilt—how only in slicing yourself open will the pressure relent enough to take a breath.
He watches me for another long moment. I know the moment he decides, as he laces his fingers in my hair, firmly tilting my head to the angle of his liking. His obsidian gaze is endless, a chasm to fall into it.
“Who is the king of your pleasure, Willa?”
I nearly whimper, my thighs clenching at the savagery edging his smooth words—at the promise of relief at his hands.
“You are.”
He takes my lips beneath his in a brutal kiss, plundering my mouth with his tongue until my body goes pliant against him; until I can breathe nothing but the scent of his power, nothing but the taste of his delicious ruin.
“And who is the king of your pain?” The words are dangerous—decadent—and an electric thrill shoots through me.
“You are,” I whisper.
Niko’s smile is lethal. “Good girl. Now get on your knees and worship your king.”
My mouth waters as I kneel, the scrapes on my knees smarting anew against the warm stone.
One of his ribbons winds around my throat as I gaze up at him, lashes fluttering in anticipation.
The sun haloes the dark curls of his hair before its rays are swallowed by the onyx depths of his eyes, his tattoos, his death.
Niko appears every bit the avenging lord of death I know him to be, and as he slowly unzips his pants, heat lashes down my spine and pools at my core.
His hard length springs free, his dark laugh echoing over the water at the way I lick my lips. The ribbon at my throat tightens, my skin stinging with the touch of death. His scent swirls in my nose, all icy air and sandalwood, and a shiver of excitement threads through me.
“Now open that wicked mouth for me, Darling.”
I do as he asks, eager to take him. It’s been so long since I’ve tasted him; so long since I watched him unravel at my touch, his gorgeous disarray a secret belonging only to me.
Niko’s eyes glint with hunger as he swipes himself over my tongue, wetting the tip of his cock and smearing my lips.
And then, without warning, the ribbon at my throat pulls tight and he thrusts all the way to the back of my throat.
My eyes water and my knees burn, and as I struggle not to choke around his wide girth, something in my chest lightens.
“Fuck, Willa,” he moans, his voice a deep rumble. His death holds me in place, and warmth blooms through me. Because with Niko now holding my pain, my breath, my pleasure—everything feels lighter.
Breathing through my nose, I meet his gaze through the tears gathered on my lashes and relax my throat. He throws his head back with a wild groan as his cock sinks deeper. I hum in pleasure, working my lips around him as he pulls out of my mouth with a lewd pop.
“Star above, Willa…that fucking mouth.” His voice is wild, a breath in a storm. “It was made for my cock.”