17. Chapter 17
Chapter seventeen
N iko sleeps for hours.
Thankfully, he doesn’t seize again, but his slumber isn’t a peaceful one. Sweat beads along his brow, and I spend far more time than I care to admit watching his spasming fingers and debating whether or not to reach out and hold them. Debating whether it would bring him comfort or pain. In the end, fear keeps my own hands tucked in my lap.
Though I try not to examine what exactly it is that I fear.
Him.
But it isn’t him. Not really. If it was, if I was truly afraid of what Niko will do to me when he wakes, I’d already be gone. And yet something has kept me glued to his side, measuring the rhythms of his breath, the pallor of his skin, even as the tide slowly rises, effectively cutting us off from the outside world.
Time passes oddly in the belly of the cave. The twinkling lights never change, the only indication minutes pass at all being the slow rise of the water. It laps gently against the keel of the ship, the sound so rhythmic, it reminds me of the second hand on a clock. Exhaustion spills through me as I listen to the soft tick, and after a while, I lean my head back against the curved rock wall and close my eyes.
I don’t know how long I’ve been asleep when I’m awoken by the slithering of Niko’s ribbons. My eyes flare open, my hand going instinctively to my sword, but the ribbons pay me no mind. They writhe in excitement, swirling through the air eagerly as their king slowly pushes himself up to a sitting position. His hair is mussed, his silk shirt pulled taut with sleep and sweat across the muscles of his chest. As he rubs viciously at his eyes and forehead like the action will soothe away the memories of the past few hours, I take a moment to enjoy his disarray.
From the moment we met, everything about Niko has been neatly cut, like the sharp, clean edge of a blade. His messiness now is oddly enamoring—a rare secret.
When he finally pulls his hands away from his face, he turns to stare at the ghostship. The tide is higher than when I fell asleep, the waters now mostly covering the keel, lapping up toward the hull. A dark shadow of emotion flickers over the king’s face as he drinks in the majestic lines of the vessel, his expression somehow both volatile and intimate at once.
It’s the latter that has me clearing my throat to remind him of my presence. Whatever Niko’s feelings about this cave and that ship, they aren’t meant for me.
He tears his gaze away, almost unwillingly. And when he sets it on me, it’s devoid of the vulnerability he’d contained last night. Devoid of anything soft. His mouth twists wryly, and that unrestrained intensity flares in the endless black pits, the one that speaks of cruelty and pain. Of obsession and wild abandon.
The air pulls tight between us. His eyes narrow as he watches my throat bob in a slow swallow with predatory focus.
But he doesn’t make a move toward me. Only remarks in a flat tone, “You didn’t slit my throat in my sleep.”
I immediately bristle, and a vague part of me wonders at how adept he is at sifting through any goodness I possess to pull out the blackest parts. Not that they’re hard to find, but Niko doesn’t seem to have any interest in the fact that I saved his ass, or that I’ve spent half the night worrying over whatever magical disease ails him.
I didn’t expect him to fall on his knees in gratitude, but an acknowledgement would be nice.
“I don’t have the proper weapons for demon slaying,” I reply lightly. “And with my luck, you’d probably sprout another two heads if I tried to remove yours.”
A hint of a smile tugs at Niko’s mouth as he regards me, but when his eyes drift back to the ship, all traces of humor disappear. Abruptly, he thrusts his feet beneath him, standing so fast that his legs, weakened by his episodes, nearly buckle. His body wobbles precariously close to the edge of the sloped wall, and instinctively, I leap to my own feet and duck beneath his arm.
My body presses into the side of his far larger one, and my hand goes to the small of his back, steadying him before we both topple into the cave basin.
It’s the wrong thing to do.
Niko’s nostrils flare white in fury, and he jerks away from me with an angry hiss on his lips. “Don’t touch me,” he spits, his words landing like a blow to the chest. A blow that immediately ignites everything I’ve shoved down over the past hours. The fear, the worry. All of it explodes, his cruelty a spark to the tinder of my heart.
“Oh, I’m sorry!” I shout back indignantly, chucking the canteen square at his chest. He snatches it deftly out of the air as I go on, “Next time, I’ll just leave you to rot on the beach instead of killing myself dragging your gigantic ass all the way here.”
Niko pales, but his anger doesn’t abate as he watches me. It only seems to fester, feeding into the crimson heat of my own.
“I apologize Oh Holiness of Rot, Your Putrid Majesty ! How dare a peasant think to lay her unworthy hands on you to save your life—"
“There would have been nothing to save if you hadn’t endangered all of us by leaving the palace,” he grits out.
I level him with a dead stare, at once trapping all my anger, my fear, my worry beneath a steel wall, the way I always do. Down, down, down where it can’t be touched. Where it can’t touch me. Familiar icy numbness washes over my skin.
“You’re the King of Death. Who wouldn’t try to escape from you?”
His flinch is miniscule. A long blink, a flicker of his jaw that’s hardly noticeable. But I’m practiced enough at hurting others, at pushing them away, that I see it—see how deeply I’ve wounded him. And though a part of me is ashamed, another part croons in victory.
Because even the mighty Carrion King can be hurt. And there’s power in being the one to have done it.
Niko swallows, digging his teeth into his lower lip as he watches me furiously. But to my surprise, he doesn’t strike back. He’s seen enough of me that he could strike and strike true. He’s been too observant since the moment we met, and I realize suddenly, this is why I fear him. Not his cruel mouth or his hot temper or his ribbons of decay. It’s that it only took a few moments of knowing me for him to peel away all my carefully constructed layers, down to the most vulnerable parts of myself.
The parts I don’t want to acknowledge.
It makes him far more of a threat than his unnatural magic does.
“Were you hurt?”
I blink. The question is ragged, like it’s been pulled from his throat unwillingly, but his eyes blaze as they continue to run over me, cataloguing the details of my skin, the subtle movements of my limbs.
He’s taking inventory, I realize. I don’t shrink back from his gaze though all my instincts urge me to. To melt away into nothing; to disappear before he discovers anything more.
Niko takes my silence as confusion, and clarifies, “Before I arrived. Did they hurt you?”
“I—”
“Did that piece of shit Dawson lay a finger on you?” Each word is the lethal lash of a whip in the cool air. The violence of it should chill me to the bone, but instead, something in me warms.
“No…No, I’m just…” I search for the right word. Terrified. Furious. Confused. “Shaken up.”
It’s a lousy way to describe everything that’s happened, and judging by his sharp gaze, Niko knows it.
“I didn’t—” He cuts himself off, releasing a heavy breath and pushing his fingers through his already wild hair. “I thought I was too late, Willa. That I’d arrive only to find you carved apart.”
His eyes rove over me manically, like he still doesn’t quite believe I’m not in pieces.
Something foreign and warm shoots through me; has me speaking before I even consider the words. “I’m okay, really.”
The king looks like he wants to argue, but after a moment, he nods.
“We’ll have to wait until the tide recedes. Then I’ll be able to send for a carriage.” He winces, his legs still shaky beneath him, as he examines the level of the water against the rock. “We’ll be here for a while.”
I suck in a shuddering breath, attempting to ignore the way his words have unsettled me. The way the intensity of his concern, the breadth of his panic, still flutters beneath my ribs. I thought I was too late, Willa.
I push the sentiment away ruthlessly. Bury the sound of my name wrapped in that drawling accent and force myself to focus on what I can control: knowledge. I refuse to remain in the dark any longer.
“If Letum is—was—Neverland, does that mean the Strayed—are they the Lost Boys?”
Niko grinds his teeth as he stares at me but doesn’t seem inclined to answer. I push on, all the thoughts I’ve suppressed in the past few hours bubbling to the surface. “Why were there so many of them? And what—what happened to make them that way?”
The siren’s screams echo through my mind, her desperate horror as they terrorized and tortured her. I can still feel the pull of their greedy hands on my skin, the resonance of awful words spoken in young voices. Nausea churns my stomach, and shivers race up my arms as I remember the way Dawson stood over me. Like he owned me.
Niko takes a smooth step forward, plucking my cloak from where it’s fallen to the cave floor and wrapping it around my shoulders. The damp fabric does little to warm me, but it soothes the edges of my nerves regardless. He motions for me to sit, and I do as he asks in a daze. The adrenaline of the past few days has abruptly drained away, leaving me floundering beneath a wave of shock.
For a moment, I feel like laughing. Like giggling so wildly my stomach hurts at the absurdity of my entire situation.
The king sits across from me, folding his long legs in a decidedly unroyal manner. It’s far more casual than I’m used to from him, far too human. I glance away, even though I can feel the press of his gaze. Watching as I work to swallow down the rush of emotion, sifting through them until I find the most corporeal of them all to grab onto. Anger.
“What the hell happened to you out there?” I demand. “Are you sick or something? Dying? Rotting from the inside out?”
Niko laughs dryly. “Your concern moves me.”
I glare at him. “If they come back and find us here, I can’t fight them all off alone."
“They will not.” His gaze darkens as it skates around the cave. “You’ve found the one place on the island aside from the Lunaedon that the Strayed dare not enter.”
I barely register his words. Hardly absorb that, somehow, his ribbons of death led me to safety; that I can allow myself to breathe, if only for a moment, without fearing for our lives. Because now that I’ve begun to speak, the questions, the trauma—the horror— all pour out of me like a broken dam.
“God, they were just children. Children are so special in my world, so rare! How—how could something so wonderful and innocent be twisted into such a thing? They weren’t torturing that siren because they wanted something…they were doing it because it was fun to them.” Acid sizzles in my throat. “It was so horrific, so—so…” I trail off as my hysteria rises, and the world narrows around me.
“How did they know who I am? How do you all know who I am?!”
I surge to my feet, shoving my hands into the pockets of the dress and pacing frenetically in an attempt to calm the rising panic. Anxiety squeezes my ribs, tighter and tighter, until every breath is sharp and painful. My voice rises an octave, sounding foreign to my own ears.
“Why is it always night here? And how the hell can there be tides if you don’t even have a moon?!”
The king merely raises an eyebrow at my outburst. “Why Willa, I hardly know where to begin addressing your curiosity. Perhaps by presenting you with a chart on the changing of the tides?”
I whip to him with narrowed eyes. “How about you start with the truth , Niko?”
The king goes perfectly still, and I realize uncomfortably it’s the first time he’s heard me use his given name. I must have said it a thousand times while dragging him here, usually accompanied by a colorful curse, but never while he was awake. I wonder if he’ll correct me—or go so far as to impale me with his ribbons for the disrespect of addressing him by anything other than his royal title.
But he only stares up at me with an unreadable look, before clearing his throat and adjusting his shirt primly.
“I told you the truth,” he challenges, his stare hardening, “and you ran. Not a very reassuring recommendation for me to tell you more of it.”
A lump of shame and fury lodges in my throat. Niko’s death sidles from where they’re piled on the floor, to wrap around his wrists and torso like chains. He grimaces, but he doesn’t let go of my gaze even as I squirm beneath his.
“That’s what you do, is it not, Darling? Run away as soon as anything is demanded of you? Leave everyone else to fend for themselves?” He tsks . “You left Marina to take the brunt of your escape, and I’d be willing to bet you didn’t allow yourself more than a moment to think about it.”
Horror and guilt mingle so furiously in my stomach, I’m certain I’ll be sick. “You didn’t—you didn’t hurt her, did you? It wasn’t her fault! I forced her help me!”
The king ignores the question entirely, instead tilting his head in frank assessment. “Did you even realize you were capable of anything other than cowardice until tonight?”
My breathing hitches. “What?”
“ Tonight , Willa,” Niko repeats in frustration, the sound of my name in his mouth both a challenge and a temptation. It curls low in my stomach like a lick of flame, calling things to the surface of my skin I’d rather keep in the dark.
“I did run. I saw what they were doing to that siren, and I tried to escape before they—"
“ Not then,” Niko snaps, surging to his feet. He’s so tall—slender, but well-built, like every piece of softness has been carved from him, leaving only the most essential parts behind. The most powerful.
He takes two charged steps toward me, his ribbons pulsating around him. “ After. When I was lying on the beach. You could have left me there. And maybe Sam would have found me in time, or maybe the Strayed would have found me first. There’s no way to truly know, but the fact is, you could have run tonight. And you didn’t.”
I stare at him. Everything had been such a blur of violence and death and terror. But the truth is, he’s right. I never considered leaving Niko alone and hurt. Not even for a moment. Why?
Niko takes another step toward me. “You saved Letum tonight by saving me. Even if you didn’t know what you were doing. So, if you want the truth from me, Willa, earn it.” The words come out wanton and dark, and shivers rise on my skin.
His face is ardent as he draws closer, his lips parted like he’s considering devouring me at any moment. I shiver again as the thought threads through me like fire, snaking through my veins, pooling at my core. I press my thighs together as his voice washes over me once more.
“Show me that vicious creature I see behind your eyes. The one that doesn’t run—the one that fights. ”
Every bit of warmth leaves me as I stand before him stripped bare. The Willa he speaks of, the one who tried to do the right thing—who cared so deeply she would burn with it—has been gone for so many years. I’ve hidden her away beneath layers of hatred and fear, suffocated her in the dark, all to keep her from being hurt ever again.
Newfound fear settles over my skin like a viscous film. How has this man, honed by cruelty and drenched with death, seen so quickly to the heart of me?
“I can’t,” I admit softly, though I’m not sure exactly what I’m admitting. I can’t stop running. I can’t stop surviving. I can’t care about saving anyone else.
Because long ago, I’d fought as hard as I could—to end the plague for Celie, for the world—and it had shattered me entirely. If I allow myself to be shredded apart again, there won’t be anything left.
Niko growls in frustration, rubbing his face furiously with his gloved hands as his ribbons spiral wildly from him. They spear for me like they’d relish wrapping around my throat, but the king reels them back in with slow precision. His breathing grows heavy once more, beads of sweat breaking out over his forehead. Like each movement is a struggle.
I brace myself, worried he might pass out again. He turns his back to me, gritting his teeth as he attempts to gather himself. His fingers spasm, and I know the moment he feels the weight of my attention, because with an agitated breath, he clenches them into tight fists at his side.
A part of me knows I should look away—that witnessing Niko’s vulnerability will only make him more dangerous. But I can’t draw my gaze away from the movement in his hands, how the shine of the leather ripples with every tremor.
After I’d escaped the Amelioration camps, my own hands spasmed in a similar manner for well over a year. Something as innocuous as the sound of a boot on concrete sent the memories of what I’d endured rushing to the surface of my skin. The phantom pain felt as real as it had every time they’d taken me apart searching for a cure, and no amount of breathing could convince my body I was now safe.
I assumed Niko was tortured sometime in his past, leaving him with a permanent reminder. But as I watch his death curl around his throat—watch his muscles pull taut and his teeth grind—I finally understand. Niko’s pain isn’t in the past at all.
“They—they hurt you…don’t they?” I clear my throat as Niko’s eyes snap to mine, his expression lethal. “Your ribbons...your magic. It hurts you.”
The anger he holds; the way he snaps like the edges of his nerves have suddenly frayed. And when he seized on the beach—it was because he’d used the power to save me, and the pain had finally become too much.
He’d known what it would cost him—the agony it would bring—and he’d done it anyway. For me.
“Normally, I have Sam with me after such a…a show of it,” he replies tersely, following the lines of my thoughts with barely concealed rage. Sam, whose power calms those around him, who can smooth the jagged edges of pain. It is why the king keeps him so close; why Sam regards Niko as someone to be taken care of, rather than someone to fear.
“You used so much of it today. Why didn’t you tell me?”
He glares at me hatefully. “Forgive me if I don’t enjoy parading my vulnerabilities to complete strangers. Particularly ones who’ve tried to murder myself and my staff on numerous occasions.”
Niko’s words are harsh and biting, but they no longer sting. Not now that I understand their source. Because who better to understand how pain can change a person than someone who’s been baptized in its depths? Who’s been awash in agony for so long that I was set adrift, that I lost sight of the shores of who I am? Whose very shape, down to the bones, has been carved away and reshaped by it?
I’ve run for so long from it. I’ve upended my life, sacrificed my happiness and others, just to never feel the sting of it again. While Niko endures it every moment of the day. For his kingdom. For his friends. For a woman he hardly knows.
“Do close your mouth,” he snaps. “While you can hardly be blamed for how attractive I am, staring like that makes you look like a codfish.”
I jam my mouth shut with a dirty look, even as Niko smiles and crosses his arms over his chest with a smugness that heats my blood. Unfortunately for him, I now understand the source of his rancor. He’s trying to rile me, to shift the focus away from what I now know about him. To keep me from learning anything else.
As if on cue, he takes a swaggering step toward me, his black gaze glinting wickedly in the blue light of the cave. Something tightens near my spine, viciously hot. But instead of running away, I plant my feet and raise my chin.
“You see it now, don’t you?”
Another step, and he’s in my space. Breathing my air. He means to unnerve me, to rebalance the scales of power. I won’t let him. Not now that I’ve clawed a bit of it for myself, however small, to hold over him.
“What?” I reply innocently.
His smile only grows darker. “What it is that binds us.”
I keep my face carefully blank, even as something inside me thrashes at his words. “Pain?”
Niko laughs, a sensuously dark sound that rolls through me. “Power.”
His lips wrap around the word like a caress, and another shiver skitters over my skin, this one having nothing to do with cold or shock.
The king leans forward, placing a hand on the rock above my head, caging me between his arms. But for some reason, being trapped doesn’t chafe like it usually does. And maybe it’s because of the warmth of his body next to mine, the smell of icy winter that lingers around us. Maybe it’s the proximity of his death ribbons that sends a surge of adrenaline careening through my veins. Or maybe, it’s that Niko has read me so thoroughly, he’s now offering me the one thing that will not only distract me from peeling back his armor—it will keep me in Letum.
Power.
I’ve spent my life running to keep myself safe, but what if I didn’t have to? What if I had the power to strike down anyone who tried to harm me? Who tried to take what’s precious to me and use it for themselves? When Adira said the island amplifies the power of your soul, I’d only thought of the terrible things in myself—the selfishness, the cowardice. I hadn’t considered the other parts; the parts Niko has demanded. The savage ones—the dark slices of my soul that will burn the world if it means protecting what’s mine.
As if reading my thoughts, Niko tips his head down in wicked approval. “Forgive me for so grievously misreading you.” I cock a brow at his admission, as he doesn’t seem the type to apologize. Ever. “Offering you the chance to save your world from the plague. It was a rare mistake on my part.”
His tongue darts over his bottom lip, wetting it as his eyes rove over every inch of my face. “I’d thought your heart one of a hero. Cowardly, but pure nonetheless.” He shakes his head as if the very thought is ridiculous.
And though it is, I stiffen indignantly as Niko’s gaze flickers to where the infernal organ pounds in my chest. Like he can see through my skin to the contracting muscle; see the scars carved there, the mutilated remains I’ve lived with for so long.
“You’re no hero, Darling. You have the heart of a villain. Dark. Ravenous.”
Like his words have pulled it to the surface of my skin, suddenly, I feel exactly as he says: fucking ravenous. Like I’ve been starving for eons, and only the king holds what is capable of satiating me.
He leans in to whisper in my ear. “If you help me, Willa, I can promise you power beyond your wildest dreams. Power that will feed every desperate hunger pain. Every dark craving.” His breath is hot, and for a wild moment, I’ve the urge to stretch my throat before him, just to feel more of it over my skin. “No one will ever be able to hurt you again.”
I bite my lip as desperate want threads through me. For something I haven’t ever dared to name. “I’m listening, Your Majesty.”