Chapter 45
Chapter forty-five
We both tumble through the portal in a tangle of limbs, and it’s all I can do to curl my body around Willa to take the brunt of the impact as we slam to the ground.
My bones rattle and the air shoots from my lungs, pain from the fall and the extended use of my magic racing up my nerves like razor blades.
But I have no time to brace against it, because Willa is already on her feet to dive back to the Hollows. Head swimming, I launch myself at her ankles, her scream of fury echoing in the air around us as I pin her beneath me.
She writhes wildly, clawing at my chest and kicking at my shins.
“Let go of me, you festering asshole!” Her scream is untethered—panicked—but I don’t let go. I only hold tighter as she fights against me; as she pounds her small fists against my chest, gnashes at my skin with her teeth.
“Chrys is down there!” Her screams turn to ragged sobs, her grief fracturing through me like pieces of glass as I realize the truth of it. Chrysanthemum, Marina’s greatest love, did not make it back to the Lunaedon with the rest of the pixies.
“You have to let me go, Niko! Please. Please.”
Her pleads undo me more than her violence, as Willa does not beg.
“The morphellia…all the seeds will be gone and the island will never—”
Her words dissolve into more sobs, even as her body rages in my arms. I lie still above her to bear the brunt of it.
The despair thick between us is far more painful than any of her blows.
I don’t know whether it’s hers or mine—only that it is viscous and dark, an agony worse than the burning of my nerves.
“LET ME GO!” she screams again, slashing her nails over my cheek as the shadow bursts from her tear ducts.
My death rises between us, absorbing the darkness before it can harm any of the pixies around us. Before it can harm her.
“Goddammit, Willa,” I breathe softly through my teeth. “You’ll have to kill me before I let you go back!”
I don’t know if it’s my words that shock her, or that I shout them.
But Willa stills in my arms, her expression agonized as she searches my face to find I’m gravely serious.
Her lower lip trembles, and her fingers fist into the fabric of my shirt, like she doesn’t know whether to push me away or pull me closer.
“Niko…”
She says my name like a ragged prayer. Her pain slices through my heart as if it were my own, but I don’t relent. I grip her tighter, branding her with the fear that hasn’t relented since the moment I realized Peter’s true plan. The fear of losing her.
“You know well my selfishness. I swear to the star above, I’ll take both of us straight to hell before I stand by and watch you sacrifice everything you are to this kingdom. Before I let them turn you into their martyr.”
Her mouth twists in a snarl, and I bind a ribbon around her wrist if only to keep her from clawing my face again. “Are you the only one who’s allowed to do that, then?” Her voice is a low challenge. “The only one who’s allowed to love things hard enough to give up everything you have?”
“Yes.” The word is a furious hiss, and Willa’s eyes widen as it lands.
“No!” she yells with a wild shake of her head. “No! This is my kingdom, Niko, and I’m the one who has to—”
“What did I promise you on the roof all those months ago, Willa?” I shout back, before sucking in a breath and quieting my words.
“I promised to be your villain. Well, this is what it looks like…it’s messy and its painful and its fucking hard.
But I will never be sorry for stopping you from ruining yourself for them. ”
Willa’s expression crumples, her fury fracturing into a thousand small pieces of sorrow.
“You told me I’m worth more than the pieces of myself I tithe…
” I swallow the heated lump in my throat.
“So are you, Darling. There is another way.” I swipe the pad of my thumb softly beneath her eyes, brushing away her tears.
“You are the Queen of Dreams. There is always another way because you can make it so.”
My words seem to finally sink beneath her panic, her body going pliant in my arms as the fight drains from her.
“Infinite possibility. That is what lives beneath your skin, Willa. A million different existences and times and possibilities, limited only by your own mind. There is another way. You just haven’t thought of it yet.”
When I’m certain she won’t dart through the window back to the Hollow City, I push back onto my heels.
As she allows me to help her up, I feel the stares of the kingdom heavy on us both.
Willa must sense it, too, as her eyes dart to the multitudes gathered on the palace ground.
Fearfully, like she expects the pixies to lunge at her and demand she return to save their lost kin.
My death flares around me in anticipation. I’ll cut down anyone who so much as suggests my queen should have given more. She has shredded herself apart, bled and cried and fought.
She’s given enough.
But when I scan the faces of the refugees, I find no anger. No demand. Only gratitude.
The pixies watch her with something near reverence, their hallowed gazes following her as she climbs to her feet and brushes herself off. I wonder if Willa can see it, or if she is still too blinded by her own self-loathing—haunted by a past that demands she empty herself in order to be worthy.
In this, her and I are the same. There was nothing I could give that would ever be enough to fix my mistakes; nothing to repair the wounds gouged by my own sword.
I was blinded by guilt and strangled by shame, unable to see beyond it.
Until Willa’s vibrant colors of life sheared through the gray monotony.
Indeed, she looks past the pixies, focused only on the small window.
“It’s gone,” she whispers. “Everything is gone.”
When I’d first hurtled through her portal, I’d been stunned by the state of the Hollow City. In only a few moments, its temples and homes and murals had all become a forgotten relic, reclaimed by the sea.
For so long, I thought that was exactly what I wanted—complete destruction of the stone that held so many of my worst memories.
But I find no justice in the ruination. I see what Willa sees: the loss of possibility. The promise of the future stolen from so many, both in the lives lost and the extinction of the morphellia vines.
The air folds in on itself until the window winks out. And the Hollows is no more than a memory.
Willa’s eyes shutter, disappearing behind the armor she adorns herself in. Then she turns and strides up the grass toward the Lunaedon.
The crowd parts, their whispers of worship trailing behind her. Even the winter wind speaks of her bravery, her sacrifice.
She is their queen. Their star. Their savior.
Once, that would have terrified me, but now I know that just as Willa is meant for me, she is also meant for this kingdom.
My joints ache fiercely as I follow her up the steps, and by the time I step into the cool entryway, my fingers have begun to tremor at my sides.
I clutch them into fists with a curse, releasing my death from my grip with a breath of relief.
There is no need to keep it so close in the confines of my home anymore—no need to contain it when its wants are so entangled with my own.
The moment I cross the threshold, she whirls on me. But I am ready for her, as I always am.
“What happened with the Aeternalis?” she demands.
“Nothing,” I answer honestly, shoving my spasming hands into my pockets. “I wasn’t even halfway to the beach when I realized there was no way I was letting you out of my sight, even if it meant he burned down the Lunaedon. I turned around to come find you almost immediately.”
“Because you didn’t trust me? Didn’t trust I’d be strong enough to save everyone on my own?” Something soft lies beneath the anger prickling at her surface. A vulnerability.
“Because my place is beside you, and leaving it felt wrong. I spent so much of our time together last year ignoring what I felt, and it led me so far astray. I have vowed to trust it now. Wholly.”
She bites her lip, and begins to pace like the repetitive movement will serve to calm her racing thoughts. “What are we going to do, Niko? We can’t kill Peter and if I use any more magic, I’m going to be lost forever to the whims of the shadow. How are we ever going to win?”
My answering smile is not hopeful, nor good-humored. It is the grin of death, of endings, and Willa shivers in response. “Who do you think is the most imaginative?”
Her brow crinkles uncertainly.
“Heroes who must adhere to every rule? Who exist between the hard cut lines of morality...or us? You have the heart of a villain, Willa, same as mine. If we don’t like the rules of the game, we must change them.”
I close the space between us. “Do not let that shadow scare you away from wielding your darkness as you were meant to. Yours is not empty, but as full as the space carved between the stars. Without it, we would not see their shine.”
I kiss the sob from her lips, and soothe the fear still prickling over my own skin with her touch. And I thank the star above for the fear, for it is borne of a love I never thought I’d deserve.