24. Chapter 24
Chapter twenty-four
I mmediately upon hearing Adira’s news, Niko had raked his fingers through his hair and sworn violently. Then, without so much as a muttered explanation, he’d stormed out of the treehouse and disappeared down the stairs in a dark cloud of death.
I hadn’t bothered to chase after him as my own thoughts had still been reeling. As much as I’ve railed against it, Niko and his ghastly power are a shield I’ve been too reliant on. And now the safety net has been pulled from under me, leaving me flailing in the wind. I no longer have the luxury of disbelief, of taking my time to master the magic the island has granted me in order to find my way back home.
It’s now a matter of survival.
“A skill you’re thankfully quite adept at,” Adira says mildly, offering me a cup of tea.
I take it, staring down at the curls of steam rolling off the surface. “I wouldn’t really consider it a skill,” I mutter, scraping my nails softly across the patterned china.
It isn’t a skill to live an echo of a life; to exist in dark shadows and dank holes; to never allow yourself to feel fully enough to leave an imprint in your soul—to leave an imprint anywhere. A ghost only detectable by the trail of wreckage left in its wake.
Adira sits down across from me, watching me intently. I shift beneath her pervasive gaze.
“I got the impression you don’t approve of the way I’ve lived.”
She doesn’t look away, only tilts her head. “I said you lamented the loss of hope like you didn’t have the chance to stop it. It was not meant as a judgement on your past, but on your refusal to see the potential you contain for the now . There are a thousand different paths, Willa. It’d be foolish to give them all up before you’ve even begun.”
I take a gulp of the scalding tea, if only to spare myself from having to respond. It never occurred to me that Adira hadn’t been referring to the past at all—but rather, my insistence on miring myself in it. Because though I’m reticent to trust others, I’ve also refused to trust myself.
“I won’t let the Strayed have me,” I say resolutely. “And not because I want to save the island or my world, but because I want to save myself. And that’s going to have to be enough.”
Adira only dips her head in acknowledgement. “The things you’ve done, the things you will do…they are all to protect yourself. Deciding you are worthy of that protection is a wonderful place to start.” She finishes off her tea in one overlarge gulp and sets the cup hastily on the table.
“Come. Let’s see what lies inside that heart of yours.”
Adira leads me through the back of her sprawling treehouse and out onto the maze of swaying wooden walkways that connect the infrastructure of the Grove. The tree-city overflows with noise in the way of a forest—a loud but soothing sonance whose rhythm settles against my mind like a warm, buzzing blanket.
Bridges creak as women call out to one another, the Grove Dwellers of the upper levels far more joyous than the Silva Lucai Niko and I had passed on our way into the city. The scent of freshly baked bread wafts through the air, mingling pleasantly with the smell of damp leaves, and I breathe it in happily. Despite the fevered way they drive my imagination, I’ve always loved the woods.
The wooden planks creak beneath our feet as we walk, the thickly woven ropes of the sidewalls scratching softly against each other in the breeze. I feel the swing of the bridge in my head, much like I’d felt the height of the Nyawa stairs: an unmoored sensation that isn’t entirely unpleasant.
Adira leads me through the city, descending a few levels to where the leaves are thickest, and thousands of houses are tucked in every crook of the trees. Women of all kinds tend to their chores—some sweeping their porches, some mending rope bridges. We pass an armory where five sharpen spears and oil blades, sweat dripping down their bare arms.
“Adira,” I begin, the beginnings of a question forming on the edge of my thoughts as I take in the heart of the city. “Are there…do men live in the Grove?”
The princess’s silky hair swings in time with her soft step, brushing the top of her waist. “They visit from time to time of course, but no…men do not live in the confines of our home. We have no need of them.”
At that moment, a multitude of children barrel out in a raucous pile from the archway of the nearest treehouse. My heart leaps into my throat at the sight of them, until I realize these aren’t at all like the Strayed. Their laughter rings through the thick leaves of the canopy as they chase each other over bridges, careening around a large trunk and out of sight. Their echoing giggles are beautiful, nothing like the empty, scraping sound of the empty souls on the beach.
“The children of Caelum,” Adira explains, following my curious gaze. “The ones that have been born in the city during the decay of Letum. Their parents give them to us for safekeeping under the dark of night to keep the Strayed from knowing of their existence. To protect their natural magic.”
We walk for another quarter hour in amiable silence. Unable to resist, I pluck a few beautiful flower blooms, with the intention of bringing some sort of color back to the Lunaedon. Finally, we cross the last walkway and come to a wide rock ledge carved into one of the surrounding mountains. A training arena, judging by the number of Silva Lucai exercising here. Some work with the same lethal spears Adira carries on her back, while others practice with bows or swords.
They all halt at our presence, dipping their heads in respect to their princess. She greets each of them with a warm smile before motioning to me. As one, the women bow to Adira and leave the training ledge to us. I’m not sure whether Adira means to shield me from them or the other way around. Perhaps she doesn’t trust what my magic will do.
Two frustrating hours later, it’s become clear her caution was optimistic.
The only thing I’ve managed to conjure is sweat and anxiety. No matter how calm Adira is, nor how many times she tells me to feel inside myself for the magic—to listen for its consonance, whatever the hell that means—I come up empty.
The more time passes, the more frustrated I become with Adira’s tranquil approach. Though she had been the one to stress the urgent nature of mastering my power, she appears in no hurry now to give me any sort of helpful guidance.
“I don’t feel anything!” I snap, shoving up to my feet in frustration. I’ve never possessed patience for things such as meditation; never been able to leash my mind into the sort of submission needed for resolute focus. If that’s what’s required to be powerful in Letum, I’ll fail miserably before I’ve ever begun. Thoughts race through my head, a continuous stream of noise and color. Sometimes, a particularly sharp one will spike through me like a jagged blade and adrenaline will sear through my veins.
A survival mechanism, perhaps. Every time I’m too relaxed, my mind sets me back on guard. A body on edge is far harder to catch unaware, but the consistent readiness leaves little energy for anything but the most pertinent parts of survival.
“Yes, you do,” Adira replies serenely without opening her eyes. She sits cross-legged across from me, her hair tumbling around her face in a dark curtain, the paint on her skin glowing in the starlight. “You just haven’t recognized it yet.”
I groan in irritation, pressing my fingers roughly into my eyes until colors bloom. She’s said the same thing so many times, the words have begun to completely lose their meaning. “How am I supposed to recognize something I’ve never felt before?”
“You have felt it. Many times.”
Frustration and worry fray my temper. “Just because you’ve been in my mind, doesn’t mean you know anything about me.”
My words are like the lash of a whip, harsh and sharp, and I turn away from Adira before I can see how they land. She might know my mind within the confines of Letum—a few thoughts here and there, a heated tangle of confusion and wonder—but she doesn’t possess the context of them. Like reading the last page of a book without knowing how the story began.
Adira doesn’t know the numb hollow I’ve existed in for so long, unable to feel anything at all aside from the burn of survival. And how, since arriving in Letum, there’s been so many feelings, I’ve been drowning in them. And it feels impossible to explain—how spending so long muddled in shades of gray makes the overload of color Letum possesses actually hurt.
My feet ache as I pace, the chilled surface of the rock sinking into the silk slippers. For a petulant moment, I consider chucking them off the side. Losing the slippers forever would be its own sort of magic.
“Imagine the shoes different,” the princess replies to my thoughts. “And they will be.”
When I turn back to her, she doesn’t seem at all affronted by my outburst. Or at all concerned by my absolute failure to produce even the slightest hint of something magical. Her eyes are still closed, her pretty face relaxed and untroubled.
“You’ve done it before.”
I shake my head. “I’ve only brought the nightmares to life, Adira. Never anything good.”
The words tumble from me before I can trap them. They spill into the open like acid, bringing hot tears to my eyes and tightness to my lungs. The truth of my fear—that in claiming my power, I’ll only make everything worse.
In Letum. At home. It’s all I’ve ever done. I’ve never made a place better by being there, never made someone better for knowing me.
It’s always the opposite.
I’ve condemned Niko for ruining everything he touches, but it was never the act of it I loathed—it was the mirror. Because if forced to look at it for too long, I’d see myself in the ruination.
And though I’ve managed to shove down those feelings for so many years, here, where everything is so vibrant, they bring an unignorable lump to my throat.
Adira stands, and though the top of her head only reaches my shoulder, she rises to her tiptoes to place both of her hands softly on each side of my face. Her eyes swirl like a storm over the sea, and the urge to pull away, to hide from her magic, races through me. I keep still, even as her gaze bores into mine, as tendrils of something both soft and wild caress my thoughts, like the rush of a spring wind sweeping through my brain.
I gasp at the sensation; at the realization she isn’t just reading the thoughts in my mind now—but every thought. Adira sees the past and the present and the future layered on top of one another.
“You wished to be invisible when the Strayed captured you on the beach, and so you became.”
I rear back in shock, brushing her hands away in a desperate attempt to keep her from seeing anything more, but Adira’s gaze doesn’t waver as it penetrates my thoughts. “You imagined you understood Marina, and now you can.”
As if in response to her words, my skin heats and my thoughts begin to whirl in a blurred haze. Like a tether inside me has snapped, leaving me floating somewhere above the ground.
“That wasn’t— I didn’t do those things, it was the…”
The what? The island?
“The island is made of dreams, Willa, and you know better than most that dreams contain no innate mercy,” Adira replies airily. “It has seen victim after victim fall to the Strayed, children and adults alike. It never bothered to save them, and it certainly wouldn’t now.”
I know she’s right, even as I fight against it. Against what it means.
Adira lowers her chin, her gaze pulling like a latch beneath my ribs. “You’ve been giving your power away since the moment you arrived instead of owning it. Embracing it.”
“What are you talking about?” I half-yell in exasperation.
“You did not fall here.” Adira’s voice is like the whip of a branch. “Your arrival was not a machination of the island, nor some happy accident.”
“Well, I didn’t jump off the building willingly!”
Adira cocks her head, her eyes narrowing. “Something may have called you toward Letum when the fabric between dreams and waking was thinnest. But the reason you’re here isn’t because you tumbled off a building. You’re here because during the fall, you wished to be here.”
My objections die in my throat.
“You imagined you were…and so you were.”
I stare at her, replaying those terrifying moments. Everything had happened so fast, the dizzying blur of buildings, the rush of wind against my ears. I’d been so terrified of the pain that awaited, of being broken on the concrete, I’d imagined myself somewhere else.
“The star…” I whisper in awe.
Could I have possibly imagined myself between worlds? And if I did, why did it only work now? I spent years desperately wishing to be anywhere other than where I was. If magic has slumbered inside me my whole life, why have I been running? Cowering in the shadows, rather than standing in my own strength?
Adira smiles gently. “The second star holds the wards between worlds. You imagined yourself traveling through them once. There’s nothing to keep you from doing so again. You only have to find the space inside yourself where your power resides. The space that dreams so fiercely, it creates life from the void. When you find your power, the magic will be yours to wield as you please.”
I shift on my feet, tug absently on the end of my braid. Small attempts to ground myself back into the moment. To grasp something more tangible than the wild marvel of Adira’s words.
“Where, exactly, is that space located in my body? Is there like a pool of it or something? A system you feed energy into that converts it into magic?”
At Adira’s laughter, I release a frustrated breath between my teeth. “I need something, Adira. Some sort of direction. Or at least a place to start.”
The princess appears almost pitying as she watches me pace in front of her. “In some worlds, magic is as scientific as that. A substantive energy to be studied and learned. But Letum is a place of dreams, and there’s no sense to the magic of dreams. They are made up of our most base desires, shaped by the fears and longings we dare not name in waking. It affects each resident of the island differently, as each heart is unique. Your triumphs and scars are only your own, Willa. So, while your magic is similar in nature to the Aeternalis’ because of the blood you share, your power will be yours and yours alone.”
Of course, it wouldn’t be as simple as a math problem, something I’d be able to calculate. Everything in Letum is whimsical nonsense, that only makes sense on the vague outer edges of the wildest inclinations. The places where thoughts aren’t concrete but splashes of colors and feelings.
“So, there aren’t rules?” I ask, still stubbornly reaching for something logical. “The island just grants people unlimited power to use however they want? Seems…irresponsible.”
Adira’s sigh is tinged in sadness. “There is a cost to everything in life. You’ve seen the price Niko pays to be the most powerful in the kingdom. But just as our magics vary, the cost does as well.”
I study the princess, the blue and yellow spills of paint sparkling against the umber of her skin. “What’s yours?”
Adira’s mouth thins, and for a moment, I worry I’ve offended her with the question. Perhaps the cost of someone’s power is intimate, and the fact I learned Niko’s is more significant than I realized.
The princess watches me for a long moment, and then relaxes, like something in my mind has soothed her worry of sharing such a thing. “My power’s demand is not as physical as Niko’s, nor as obvious. But it’s there.”
At my confusion, she clarifies, “It’s a curse to know every thought and feeling of those around you. Sometimes people hide things as an act of kindness, an act I am never granted. And humans are so complex. A mind, a soul, a body…they are all only made to hold the weight of one person.”
Her eyes flicker downward, for only a brief moment, but I feel the small relief of her power’s absence. “When I read someone’s thoughts…when I gauge their mental state…it is almost always at the cost of my own.”
I stare at her for a long moment, before breathing out a muttered, “Fuck.”
Adira nods eagerly, like she’s delighted I’ve finally begun to grasp how twisted all of this is. “Fuck, indeed,” she agrees with a grin.
Motioning for me to sit beside her, she unpacks the small basket we carried from her treehouse. A light lunch of crusted bread, some figs, and a few wedges of hard cheese. I situate myself beside her, leaning back against the smooth cliff wall and taking a few bites of the bread. I immediately begin to feel steadier, like the edges of my thoughts no longer spiral out of my control.
The bread has a nutty flavor, and for a few moments, I munch beside Adira in companiable silence, enjoying the sweetness of the figs and salted tang of the cheese. The forest around us buzzes in a cacophonic melody—the leaves swishing softly in the breeze, the soft whistles of various birds echoing between branches.
A few will-o-wisps float down from the canopy, gathering around the princess. The little creatures flicker, emanating a soft hum as they tangle in her hair. The black strands glow like they’ve been woven through with twinkle lights, and the hum grows louder, like they’re purring with pleasure.
I reach out a finger to touch one, and it flitters upward before settling delicately again on Adira’s shoulder. “I didn’t realize these little things liked anyone,” I remark with a vague wave toward the will-o-wisps.
Adira swallows her bite of bread, and shrugs. “The will-o-wisps are a lot like the pixies. Their small bodies only have room for one emotion at a time, so they’re often overcome by them. When they’re happy, they’re happy with their entire beings.”
I frown slightly, not able to remember being happy with even half my being, let alone the entire thing.
“And as I’m their princess, they’re always happy to be near me.”
I take a sip of cool water, surveying the spread of her beautiful domain. “Princess of the Grove,” I muse, feeling both impressed and oddly jealous by the effortless way Adira wields her power. She neither hides from it, nor wields it ostentatiously. She just emanates it, graceful and calm.
“Princess of the Wilds,” Adira corrects, with a mischievous glance in my direction.
“Is that why you and Niko don’t get along? Some eternal power struggle over the kingdom?”
Adira’s answering laugh is highly amused. “There is no power struggle. Unlike Niko, I was born to Letum. I’ve ruled over the wood and its creatures since the beginning of its creation. I want nothing more, and nothing less.”
I slow my chewing, her words snagging my curiosity. “Niko wasn’t born here?”
Her eyes are like pools of molten silver when she turns them to me. “Of course not. The Aeternalis stole him away from your world when he was a boy, just as he did so many others.”
I freeze in disbelief, a bite of bread stalled in my hand halfway to my mouth. “Are you saying—Niko used to be a Strayed?”
Adira hums lightly. “Sam and Tiernan as well.”
My eyes widen, the bread now entirely forgotten. “So, he knew the Aeternalis? He lived under his rule?”
When Niko had told me about the cruelty of the previous king, it had been straightforward and impersonal. But now, realizing the horrors he spoke of were intimate, the interaction is framed differently. Like maybe, he’d seen my greatest fears come to life and instead of allowing me to drown in them alone, had gifted me with his own worst memories.
I startle, as Adira suddenly begins humming so loudly, the will-o-wisps shoot from her hair, finding solace back in the leaves. She shoots me a conciliatory grin. “The noise helps me mind my own business.”
I laugh softly.
The princess gives a shuddering sigh, like mentioning the Aeternalis has chilled her to the bone. And maybe it’s my overactive imagination, but the air feels icier.
“The Aeternalis was a barbaric leader, brutal and selfish. But he was the only authority figure Niko ever knew, and children are so desperate in their need for attention. It’s how Pan garnered so much loyalty, in the beginning. Fear and love are a powerful combination. So yes, Niko not only knew the Aeternalis, but loved him deeply.”
“Is that why you hate Niko so much?”
Adira stares out at her forest-city, though she appears to be someone far from here even as she takes in the lush sprawl of her kingdom. She goes quiet for so long, I’m sure she won’t answer, when she finally says, “No.”
Agony swirls in the depths of her irises, there and just as quickly gone. “I am the Princess of the Wilds. It runs through my blood, through my brain. I hold every creature, every bloom, every root in my heart and soul. No matter how small.”
“I don’t understand. What does that have to do with Niko?”
Adira goes silent for another long moment, picking at the skin around her fingernails like she’s weighing her words. “Do you know why the kingdom is called Letum?”
I shake my head. “He told me it used to be called something else.”
“It was Somnya, the land of dreams.” Adira’s eyes darken furiously. “Now, we reside in Letum, land of death.”
“Niko said killing the Aeternalis untethered the island’s magic,” I say slowly, something close to dread unfurling in the pit of my stomach. “But he was horrible and ruining the magic between the worlds long before he was killed. Would keeping him alive really have been better?”
Adira mouth twists in a grimace. “There was another way…a peaceful transfer of power that would have required great sacrifice, but ultimately would have returned Somnya and the mainland to their former glory. But Niko’s heart got too tangled.”
I think I’ve stopped breathing, that my lungs might burst from the pressure of the trepidation winding between my ribs. A familiar anxiety, one I felt before my father had sold me—before my entire world crumbled from my na?vely placed trust.
“Don’t you see, Willa? Niko is the villain in every story you’ve ever heard. He is death, shadows, violence. Niko selfishly saved one person that was important to him, and in turn, damned the entire kingdom.”
Blood rushes loudly in my ears, a harrowing clash of the past and present. Adira’s jaw goes tight, and her small body tenses with the memory. “I feel the pain of his decision every day in the slow death of the wild, in the stasis of the island. It is agony for nature to remain so stagnant, to die a slow death. And though Niko has been a good friend to me in many ways, I can never forget what he’s done. Never forgive the pain he’s caused. Not when I feel it so acutely.”
“Are you saying…” I trail off, anger threading through me like blinding flashes of heat. Anger at myself for being stupid enough to believe that one moment of vulnerability meant the King of Carrion, of death itself, was being honest with me. Niko never wanted to empower me—he only wanted to fix his own mistakes.
“Niko is the one who killed the Aeternalis. He is responsible for the plague, for the devastation of so many here and on the mainland.” Adira finishes sadly. “Niko is the one who ruined us all.”