Chapter 50
Chapter fifty
Ihave felt fear so many times in my life.
Others’. My own.
I know the sticky, congealed feel of it on my skin, the acrid taste on my tongue.
I know the way it pulls time taut, either miring a body in place or propelling it forward.
We think of fear as a dark thing, a black thing, but it is an electric green.
Unnatural and sickly, a color that burns your eyes as it flashes, disorienting and blinding.
I don’t need my magic to recognize fear; I only need to watch as the Strayed rise up, their decaying bodies careening into one another, climbing over shoulders and heads in a chaotic attempt to scale the Nyawa. They stab swords into the thick bark, the silver sap pouring like blood from the wounds.
The scream that sounds from high in the branches, pierces through me like an electric shock to the heart, for I would recognize it anywhere.
It is Addy who screams like she’s the one being stabbed, her agony harrowing and raw.
She is connected to every part of the wild, and as such, she feels each of the Nyawa’s wounds as if they are her own.
I burst into movement, skirting around the edge of the chasm. The Strayed hack more frantically, some scaling the trunk while others race up the stairs. They are met with the spears of the Silva Lucai, but they are not slowed.
The Eternal Children were terrible when they were alive, moving through pain like they could not feel it. But now—now it is like nothing I’ve ever seen. I slice my sword straight through a neck, sending the head rolling beneath the undergrowth, and still the body claws toward the Nyawa.
The Strayed move in an undead mass of decaying flesh and clawing fingers.
They scurry up the bark of nearby trees; they race between bridges, their eerie cackles echoing through the night.
My heart pounds roughshod against my chest as I hack my way through them—cleaving my sword through sinew and bone alike, gore splashing over my face and dripping into my eyes.
And for the first time since Dreaming’s Eve, I am grateful for the loss of my magic, because there is nothing to stop my violence.
I do not feel their pain; I do not care for their hurt—I only feel my own rage careening through me like slices of hot metal.
It is the purest emotion I’ve ever felt, driving me onward toward the one thing that matters—Adira.
For the first time in my life, I am entirely my own. The arc of my sword and the beat of my heart, only mine.
I drive my blade through chests, scrambling ever upward through the mass of bodies.
The stench turns my stomach, and I swallow down bile as I whirl.
I kick bodies off the steps, sending the flailing to the ground below.
It is a dance of death I take no time to revel in.
I only race faster up the stairs, my breath sawing in my lungs.
When I finally reach the porch, it’s to find Adira curled up beneath the threshold of her treehouse.
Her keening cries reverberate between my ribs just as surely as they do through the boughs of the canopy.
She clutches at her skull, her eyes fluttering open and shut wildly, her body twisting with unseen agony.
“Addy,” I cry, her name in my mouth settling the edges of my rage. I fall at her side, gathering her up to my chest, searching her for any signs of injury.
It only takes me a moment to understand it isn’t her body that pains her, but her mind. “Sam…” she weeps, her nails digging into her own skin. “You have to help them…you have to…” She shudders violently, another moan echoing from her parted lips. “Leave me, Sam. Help them.”
I shake my head. “The worst mistake of my life was acknowledging everyone else’s heart over my own, Addy. I won’t repeat it. I am yours, for better or worse, and so I will stay with you until the very end.”
Her eyes flicker open, the gray swirling like a squall at sea. Savage and unpredictable.
“It hurts so badly, Sam…the Nyawa, the wild…all of it burns.”
I drag her gaze to mine, watching the storm abate at my touch. “You are Princess of the Wilds. You are as ancient as the roots of the trees and as new as the rebirth of each spring. An abomination of life is nothing to the power you hold in your veins.”
Her body stills, like my words have silenced the noise in her mind.
“You are brutal. You are cruel. You eat the weak, Adira. They do not eat you.”
I’ve held onto those words for two hundred years; held them so close, they’d leeched like poison into my heart.
But in this moment, I only feel the rightness of them.
For so long, I was ashamed of my softness, thinking it was a vulnerability to those around me.
But I was never meant to be wild like Adira or powerful like Niko or brilliant like Willa.
I was meant to be the polarity, the calm to their storm. There is a strength that lies in keeping hope when others cannot; in shouldering their burdens and protecting their hearts.
Adira blinks. And then she nods, allowing me to help her up.
I keep her hand in mine as we step to the edge of the balcony.
Chaos rains from the sky, rises from the ground.
Trees crack beneath the onslaught of the Strayed, crashing down with deafening roars.
Eternal Children and Silva Lucai alike are crushed beneath them, dragged into the waiting maw of the abyss.
And beyond the Grove, Letum burns.
The lights of Caelum have disappeared beneath thick, black smoke that pours from both the forests and the sea itself. Like everything is made of flame.
I do not allow any of it to sink beneath my skin. I have eyes only for Adira as I step behind her, curling my body around hers like a shield. “I will be your calm,” I whisper against her throat. “I will be your home when you feel the sprawl of the wild is too much. I will not let you drown.”
“I love you, Sam,” she whispers as the world rages around us.
Then she tucks her body against mine, and closes her eyes.
I need no magic to feel the instant change in the air—like the wildlife of the island has attuned to the call of their princess.
The leaves on the trees still; the beasts of the forest go quiet; the will-o-wisps lie in wait, as Addy dives into the consciousness of them all.
I can only watch in awe as she spreads herself between all of them, as she filters through their thoughts and floods their consciousness, until all of their heartbeats become hers.
Lightning sparks across the sky, and in a blink, the wild of Letum roars to life.
Vines spear down from the canopy, plucking the Strayed from the ground and tossing them back into the pit from which they came.
Trees creak and bend, their roots roiling upward like giant whips in an effort to shake the Eternal Children loose.
Will-o-wisps fly down from their perches, glowing furiously enough to singe the eyes of any who look upon them.
Beasts from every world burst from the forest, tearing into the enemy with their fangs, shredding their decaying forms with their claws.
The wounds of the Nyawa no longer bleed. From the scars now pours the most miraculous thing of all: the souls of a thousand others who died on this land. Come back to protect it.
I hold tight to Adira as the power of the wild flows through her—as her consciousness is inundated by a thousand others. I keep her steady against the current, an anchor to find her way back to.
And I know that even if we fail—if the island sinks into the sea and we are nothing but a memory—the dream of it will never die. It is in our hearts, in our adventures. In our love and in our sacrifices. And it will live on long after we are gone.
There is magic in all things, just as there is in power. And I take heart in giving Adira—in giving my kingdom—all of mine.