Chapter 52
Chapter fifty-two
The island has awakened.
I feel it in the beat of my heart, in the pulse of my blood, in the tenor of my magic. I feel it in the tightening of Niko’s body; in the way his mouth parts with a groan of pain the water steals.
As ready as I’d been to accept the island’s power all those months ago, I hadn’t been ready to accept myself. I thought the power would fill the empty spaces; change the ones I deemed unworthy. I thought safety would smooth my jagged edges and make me more palatable.
It took being broken open—being heartbroken and desperate and faithless—to learn I cannot embrace my power without taking ownership of all those parts. For just as dreams do not exist in only happiness, neither can Letum.
Existence is contrasts. Good and evil, dark and light, beauty and pain.
The King of Carrion loved me well enough to allow me to face those things in myself. And now, I offer them up to the island, including that which is most precious to me: him.
The wound on my palm bleeds freely, unhealed, as it was put there by Niko’s hand.
Our blood swirls around us like a macabre painting, as the magic of the island threads through me.
This time, I don’t hide any of myself from it.
I open, just as I did for the star, and through me, shines infinite possibility.
Nightmares and dreams. Endless worlds and endless adventures. Life and death.
And the most powerful of all: love. Love of the beautiful king before me. Love of our home with its wild beauty and infinite adventure. Love of the friends who have built me up when I was nothing more than wreckage, aiming my broken pieces at anyone who tried to get close.
I open, and the island takes.
For love is selfish, and selfless. It gives just as it steals, its beauty existing in both.
It is agony as magic laces between us, like needles and thread piercing our hearts to weave us together for eternity. But I am no longer afraid of the pain.
I am Willa Darling, Queen of Dreams and Consort of Death. I am broken. I am loving. I am angry. I am loyal. I am rash. I am strong. I am vulnerable.
I am the woman who vowed never to be anyone’s hope again; and I am the woman who will save hope for all the desperate. For all the broken.
I never needed to be anything else. A sense of peace settles over me as I allow the island into everything I have.
I am yours, I tell it. We are yours.