Chapter 56
Chapter fifty-six
There have been so many moments in my life where I’ve wished for time to speed up or freeze, but now—as I watch Niko’s body slump lifelessly forward against Pan’s—I wish there is no time at all. For if time does not exist, it cannot steal him from me.
But there is no magic in the universe powerful enough to grant that dream. And here, on the mainland, there is none to call upon anyway.
I am entirely unarmed but for the feral rage crashing through me. It careens through my veins until it burns at the surface of my skin; it clears my thoughts of everything except one: ruin.
With a cry of fury, I launch myself at Dawson.
I am no longer the Queen of Dreams. No longer Willa at all, only a channel of anger—a weapon forged by every injustice done to me.
By every hurt inflicted on others by those in power.
By every dream destroyed, and every bit of innocence stolen by those who feast on the blood of others.
In his shock, Dawson loses his grip on the sword.
I leap onto his back, clinging to his waist with my thighs and wedging a forearm against his throat.
He gasps, desperate for air, clawing at my skin as he tries to buck me off.
He careens backward, unbalanced in his attempt to shake me.
Together, we smash into my old armoire. It splinters on impact, shards of wood exploding around us, but I feel none of the pain—only the light of my anger.
Dawson’s nails break my skin, a last desperate wheeze filtering from his lips as we crash to the ground. And though he goes limp on top of me, the weight of his body nearly crushing my lungs, my rage is not sated.
I roll out from beneath him and draw his own blade from the scabbard at his hip.
It is not a foreign shadow that drives me this time. It is only my own dark heart that brings the sword down through his throat; my savage love that drinks in Dawson’s last breath with relish as I stab him again and again. His face, his throat, his chest—I mutilate it all.
Only when I am coated in blood and gore—when my arms ache too furiously to hold the weapon any longer—do I let the blade clatter to the floor, and crawl to where Niko has collapsed atop Pan.
Trust me.
His silent plea echoes like a gunshot in the stillness of my childhood bedroom.
Bile surges up my throat as I leverage my weight to pull the blade from his back.
My heart thrums in my chest, tick, tick, tick, and for a few long minutes, its beat is all I can hear.
My own heart, my own breaths—both so tauntingly loud against the quiet of Niko’s, as I work to flip him over.
There are no ribbons to aid me this time, nothing but my own stubborn will and the draining remnants of my rage.
Grief threatens to swallow me whole, looming above my head like a violent wave.
But I refuse to give into it just yet—refuse to leave him in an artless land with the corpse of his brother.
Niko’s head lolls and his body finally gives way, rolling sideways to reveal the Aeternalis.
For a fractured moment, shock freezes me in place as I take in the stillness of Pan’s lungs. His vacant gaze. The gaping wound in his unbeating heart.
The Everlasting is dead, and it is not like the many times before.
This time, the wound does not close. The gold of his magic does not linger, gone out like a wick snuffed. And here, in the desolation of my childhood, Peter Pan does not look like a god, or a king, or a myth. He looks alone. A lost boy.
My gaze drifts to where Dawson lies mangled a few feet away. He has been the Aeternalis faithful servant for centuries, the only person left alive to love him, even if it was a toxic love. It was his hand that delivered the fatal blow, carefully maneuvered by his own brother.
We both know how Nikolas delights in his schemes, Dawson had said in the Crocodile. It seems Niko’s final one was the cleverest of all.
A wheezing breath sends my heart lurching up into my ribs.
I whirl to find Niko’s lashes fluttering, his mouth open in a soft groan.
I fall to my knees, covering his body with mine.
Tears pour from me like a wound reopened, as I listen to the beat of his heart and the steady sound of his breathing—sounds I hadn’t been able to hear over my grief.
“You didn’t leave me,” I sob. “You came back.”
“Of course I did, Darling,” Niko whispers against my hair. “I have no wish to face your wrath again. Or star forbid, be tossed through another ward.” His strong arms wrap around me. “What if it was an ice world this time? You know how I despise the cold.”
I laugh. Kneeling in blood, surrounded by wreckage, I laugh loudly.
It is light and airy, blooming in my chest like its own form of morphellia.
Because all the pain, all the heartbreak, all the trauma—it all led to the most beautiful moment.
A moment when possibility spreads before us with no shadows to hinder its light.
Sparkling. Infinite.
“How, Niko? How did you know you would come back to me?”
He brushes tendrils of hair from my face, cupping my chin tenderly. And despite the gore splattered over his skin, he is the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen. A beauty that rends straight through my resolve, sending more tears trickling down my cheeks.
“Because I have faith in your heart, Willa. The true sort of faith only a zealot could possess.” He smiles broadly, without restraint.
“Your immortality is magic of the heart, like any other. And as your heart is now mine, bound by fate and magic and love…I had faith that all it possesses is mine as well. In every world. In every lifetime.”
As if in demonstration, Niko presses a hand to the wound at his chest with a deep groan. The one at his abdomen has already begun to heal, a mangled mess of puss and scabs.
“You were not kidding about feeling all the pain of healing,” he says, his weak laugh stealing his breath. “Star above, take me home to convalesce, woman. I know how much you appreciate me on my death bed.”
“You’re too old to be such a baby, Corpsey,” I tsk, already feeling for the second star’s magic. The infinite pool that not only called me to greater things—but called me to the greatest adventure I could ever dream of: home.
The star expands in my chest, the light of hope and possibility and love filling every dark space. And this time when I fall, I don’t fall alone.