Chapter 44 #2
My heart pulls painfully taut as my magic drains into the painting, until not a drop of color remains in the well.
The island’s rises in turn, filling my veins, imbuing each stroke of my brush with its power.
I know what it will cost; know that to allow it into myself is to give up something precious.
I feel it now—the way its potent energy eats away at everything it touches, ever reaching for a source to sustain it.
I am not enough for the island, but I am enough to save it.
With a cry of fury, I push the painting outside of myself. It is a rush like no other—a dizzying high, followed by a crashing emptiness. It resounds through my chest, echoes behind my ribs and carves itself into my heart.
An emptiness the shadow immediately fills, crawling into every crevice, its crow of victory echoing above the roar of the water.
It had been confined to my chest, and then it had been outside of me, but now—now it is everywhere.
I feel its urges in the movement of my fingers and in the breaths of my lungs.
I feel the buzz of it in my thoughts, and the demands of its hunger in the marrow of my bones.
I’ve allowed it too much space, and it will never give it back. The shadow is ingrained in every part of me, too tightly woven to ever be undone. I teeter on the edge of a blade—one wrong step, one errant gust of destiny—and I will lose the last piece of myself forever.
This is the beginning of the end. I know it in the way one senses a storm before it breaks over the horizon. But I cannot bring myself to regret the price I’ve paid. For when I open my eyes, an ornate window shimmers before me. Inlaid, beautiful—and open to the grounds of the Lunaedon.
Once quiet and barren, the palace now teems with life.
Pixies are sprawled over the neat grass, their wings flickering in the starlight.
Some crouch on all fours coughing up sea water, while others call out, searching for their loved ones in the growing crowd.
Tears of relief pour from cheeks, cries of gratitude drifting up toward the star as they fall to their knees.
Safe. They’re all safe.
“Star above, Willa,” Tiernan says, staring through the glass in wide-mouthed awe. “That was…magnificent.”
He doesn’t know what I’ve done to save so many—doesn’t realize the danger now lurking beside him.
The shadow wraps itself around my throat, squeezing until every breath is a painful gasp. Its desires thread through my limbs, moving my fingers toward Tiernan. Hunger spears through me, and it takes everything I have left to keep from lunging at him.
His suffering echoes in the stone, the darkness whispers through me. Let us drink every humiliation, every hurt. Let us bestow more in the tomb of his agony.
“You guys go ahead…” I manage faintly. “I’ll be right behind you.”
Tiernan nods, stowing his sword at his hip. He glances around the Hollows once more, before ducking through the window. A moment later, I see him on the Lunaedon grounds, bombarded by fawning pixies.
Marina makes no move to follow him, watching me with an impenetrable stare. I try to keep my breathing even—to keep the emptiness in my chest from showing in my eyes.
The little pixie hesitates, and what remains of my heart will always be grateful for her pause. For the unabashed way that she loves, with no regard to what the affection will earn her.
“Go find Chrys,” I tell her softly. “She needs you.”
Her gaze narrows. You’ll be right behind me?
I nod.
Marina looks as if she wants to argue, but after a pause, she climbs through the portal.
Black edges my vision, and I grip the windowsill to keep myself from collapsing beneath the heft of hunger. It tears through me, ravening and brutal, like it will find the last pieces of myself remaining and consume them entirely.
I hold them tight, protecting the small droplets of shimmering light and color inside a heart full of thorns.
The current of water now high enough to rush against my ankles is nothing to the current of darkness raging inside me.
A storm of nothingness ravages my chest like a gaping maw, searching for any source of satiation.
Thoughts slip from me like silk, disappearing into its chasm.
Only one remains: Niko.
I have to get to back to Niko.
He will hold me together when I cannot hold myself. His death will ease the burden of the shadow, so that I will be able to breathe long enough to remember who I am.
I am not a villain. I do not want what the shadow wants. Its darkness is not mine.
I etch the words into my heart until they sound alongside its beat. I gather up what remains of myself, and turn toward the Lunaedon. Toward Niko. Toward home.
Laughter echoes above the roar of the water, the eerie sound clashing against the rock before careening back in cacophonous layers. It is laughter I’ve heard before, trapped beneath it in the heart of the island. Laughter that wove around the prediction of Niko’s death, viscous and hollow.
Dawson steps into the dim light, his bare feet splashing in the rapidly rising tide.
He appears much the same as he had when we fought in the Crocodile: untidy black hair, suntanned skin, cerulean eyes.
But like so many of the other Strayed, Dawson’s servitude to Pan is now carved into his flesh.
Where his right hand used to be, is now only a mangled stump.
And affixed to it, is a gleaming silver hook.
Dawson waves it with a cheeky smile, the needle-sharp tip glinting. “A tribute to my little brother,” he says. “Do you like it?”
The shadow slides over my skin, at the same time it slithers beneath it.
It pries into my flesh, searching for a way to steal the pieces I hold.
I am acutely aware of my heart’s beat. Tick, tick, tick.
Time is running out. But if I leap through the window now, unable to use enough magic to close the portal, I risk leading Dawson straight to the pixies.
“I told Nikolas I’d be the one to watch you empty yourself of everything he loved. I do so enjoy being right.” He smiles wider, the gesture rotten and empty as ever. “Though what big brother doesn’t relish in besting their sibling?”
I sway on my feet, grasping for my rage—for something to anchor me against the ever-expanding hollow in my chest. My fingers twitch, reaching toward Dawson’s throat. And though I would like nothing more than to kill him, I cannot risk feeding anything more to the darkness.
I inch backward, a moan gathering in my throat. The shadow prods at my heart and claws through my lungs; it pounds against my skull like the clanging of metal, its wants reverberating through me in a painful melody oh upheaval.
Dawson lets out a wild peal of laughter. “Leaving so soon, Willa Darling? But you’ll miss all the fun.”
“Get fucked, Dawson,” I manage to bite out. Violent chills wrack my body, and it’s all I can do to take one more step.
He tsks. “If you go to him, he’ll chase that shadow away with his rot. But even he won’t be able to hold it for long.” His sing-song taunt rings over the roar of the water, his eyes sparking with eager malevolence. “Better to lose it now, don’t you think? Then we can have some real fun, kin.”
Nausea surges up my throat. Even if I make it through the window, and manage to close it in time, I have no guarantee Niko will be close enough to save me.
Not when he went to face off against the Aeternalis.
But one of the small pieces I hold at the center of my heart is the small light of hope—the one still burning even after years of keeping it buried beneath the rubble of trauma and rage.
I grasp it tightly as I turn toward the window. A scream rips through me, as the shadow’s claws shred through my skin and then tighten—digging into muscle and sinew and bone to keep me pinned in place. I thrash, fighting furiously, and Dawson laughs again.
“Tell me, Willa Darling…When you brought all those people back to life last year, your magic only touched that which you imagined, did it not?” He whistles in amusement, glancing around pointedly as dread sinks into my stomach. “All those trapped beneath the earth still died, did they not?”
I go entirely still, but for the flail of my heart in my chest.
“What will the pixies think when they learn their queen’s magic did not save what she’s never seen?” Dawson kicks at the rising water with his toe, watching the resulting splash. “What will they think of her leaving the most precious of them to be reclaimed by the sea?”
He smiles, his teeth near glowing in the dim light.
“No one ever likes to accept the cost. I doubt they’ll accept this one, though who can blame them? When you’ve bled for something for a thousand years, you don’t give it up so easily.”
I stare at Dawson, as the shadow gnaws at my ribs.
“The pixies have always had safeguards against the extinction of the vines. They assign the youngest of them as wardens—the best and brightest of their kind. Day and night, there are always twenty keepers of the seed.” Dawson claps with delight.
“After the Aeternalis stole their last bloom, they were forced to hide the seeds somewhere no one else would dare to go.”
My mouth is suddenly dry, my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth. “You’ll never find it, Dawson.”
He tilts his head in mocking pity. “Oh, I already have. Torturing pixies is one of my favorite past times.” Dawson releases a sickening sigh of pleasure. “I think it has something do with how high their screams are. Or maybe how they fight when they smell their wings burning.”
He shakes himself from the memory, setting his gaze back on me with depraved delight. “They hid the last of the morphellia in the deepest tunnels of the Hollows. The ones further down than even a Strayed would venture. Tunnels filled with beasts twisted by magic and darkness.”
Anxiety prickles through me, even as the shadow jerks, lurching toward Dawson. He is empty, but we will devour him anyway.
He laughs. “Do you want to know who was assigned as tonight’s keeper?”
I cannot answer beyond the roar of hunger. I can only stand and listen as Dawson says, “A little pink haired pixie. By the name of Chrysanthemum.”
No. No.
Dawson grins, watching the shadow expand above me—watching as I lose my grip.
“Will this be the moment you lose yourself, love?”
Though his voice is nearly a whisper, it rings like a horrored scream against my ears.
This was what the Aeternalis had been planning all along.
He needed Niko and I separated for this carefully curated moment—the moment I’d be forced to decide whether to give up the last pieces of my humanity.
Forced to use the last bit of the magic I contain to save the island, and give myself over to the hungering shadow for the rest of eternity.
It is what he’s always wanted. Me, empty enough to stay beside him for eternity.
And Niko—Niko would never allow it. He will watch the island, and everyone on it burn, to ash before he’ll give me up.
“Go ahead, Willa Darling,” Dawson says with ghastly relish. “Make a choice, as both are entirely selfish. Saving the island will ruin the man you claim to love more than yourself. And saving yourself…well you already know what that will mean.”
Rage slices through me, but the shadow devours it before it can light my chest. As much as I want to plunge my blade into his throat, I take heart in the knowledge the shadow will do it after my humanity is gone. If it thrives on hate and shame, Dawson will be the perfect feast.
He watches me in anticipation of my indecision. He wants my agony, my pleading.
But I have never been one to beg, and Dawson is wrong about one thing. Niko will not be ruined, for our love is eternal.
The touch of death, of imagination, of fate and destiny, of shadows and light…None of them are powerful enough to alter what exists between you and me.
I gather the words to me, holding them close to my heart.
They serve as one last anchor as I prepare to dip into the pool of my magic.
After this, it will no longer shimmer with infinite colors.
It will be gray, stained by a hunger that will never be satiated.
I can only hope that Niko kills me before it begins to feed on the innocent magic of the children I’ve worked so hard to save.
With trembling fingers, I make the first paint stroke. The Hollow City darkens, and for a moment, I think it has dimmed with along with my magic. But the darkness spreads, the roar of the water and the sound of Dawson’s delighted laughter fading into a silence I know all too well.
I lunge, shaking my head desperately. I have to do this. I have to do this.
But it is no use, as the ice of Niko’s death wraps around me and pulls me through the window.