25. Chapter 25
Chapter twenty-five
M y death writhes furiously around my wrists, flaying through my skin and to the bone beneath like shards of glass. After all these years, I somehow still expect to glance down and see physical evidence of my pain—for muscle and sinew and blood to spill out from me—but I keep my eyes trained on the door of the Pixie’s Hollow as I enter the small tavern.
Chrys looks up from her place behind the bar, her cotton-candy hair winking in the soft light. “Your Majesty,” she greets with a saucy wink.
I don’t respond, even as she pushes a tumbler of rum toward me. I down the measure in one large gulp, setting it back on the worn wooden counter with a ringing clink. The spirit burns on the way down, but it does nothing to soothe the pain raking through me, or the anxiety prickling at my chest.
“Is Marina here?”
Chrys’ small wings flutter nervously as she watches me slump onto the only empty stool. The two occupants on either side, a male pixie with pale blue hair and a farmer, both leap up, giving my ribbons a wide berth.
Crossing her arms over her chest, Chrys leans back on her heels, eyes narrowing as she studies me warily. “She’s upstairs,” she replies, a protective edge to her squeaky voice. “We were going to go to a concert in the city after my shift. Is something wrong?”
I don’t know where to begin to answer, so I only tap the side of the glass. Chrys obliges, pouring another measure of rum without taking her eyes from mine. I tip it back, wiping my mouth carelessly with the back of my hand before rising to my feet. “Don’t go anywhere, little pixie. I’ll need to talk to you as well.”
Turning to head upstairs, Chrys rushes around the bar to block my way. She throws her small hands on her hips and plants her feet, like she’s readying herself for whatever I’m going to request of her. And more importantly, of Marina. Chrys’ cares about Marina, a bone-deep compulsion that probably doesn’t entirely make sense to her given the lapses in her memory—lapses caused by Marina’s magic and its indelible cost.
“You’re acting weird, Niko. What’s going on?”
I brush past, careful not to touch her. “Just stay here. I need to talk to Marina first.”
I ascend the stairs in three large strides, Sam’s deep laugh filtering down from the floor above. When I reach the landing, it’s to find my friends curled into two armchairs beside the fire. Marina’s hands move in an animated fashion, as Sam tips his head back with another booming laugh.
Gripping the newel post, I sway in place, hesitation and guilt fusing into an iron lump in my stomach. But before I can turn and run, Sam notices my presence.
“What are you doing here so soon? Did you piss off Adira that quickly?”
It might be a new record, Marina signs with a grin.
Sam’s power brushes against me, tendrils that feel like the soothing touch of a mother’s hand or the warmth of a soft blanket. I don’t know whether it’s selfishness or exhaustion, but I don’t wave it off like I did this morning, though I know what it costs him to use it—absorbing my hurt as his own.
I only know I felt so whole this morning, and now, every one of my nerves burn like they’ve been singed with acid. It’s almost inconceivable how quickly the relief had crumbled, leaving me gaping open and raw, little more than a festering wound. I curse myself inwardly once more for ever allowing the pain to slip from my grasp.
Sam’s calm runs over my skin like a cool wave, and for a brief moment, I stand still and allow myself to breathe in the small comfort. My acceptance only further alarms him, his eyes flaring and his lips pushing into a frown.
“What’s wrong?”
“Why does everyone keep asking me that?” I huff obstinately, throwing myself down in the chair beside Marina’s.
Because this morning you looked human and now you look like…well, that , Marina replies, motioning vaguely to where my shirt's come untucked and my fingers spasm at my sides. Did Willa master her magic and kick your ass or something?
“You could at least pretend not to enjoy the idea quite so much,” I mumble, before nodding to Sam. “I could use a drink, Samuel, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble.”
Sam doesn’t move. “Did you forget to order one on your way up here?”
“Sam.” The name sounds as more of a plea than an order.
His brows furrow as his eyes dart between Marina and me, but as his magic washes over me again, he must read something in my pain that has him rising to his feet. “I…uh—just remembered I promised Tiernan I’d help him with…with something. I’m going to head back to the Lunaedon.” He tips his head to Marina with a wink. “I expect a full report of your night with Chrys first thing in the morning.”
I shoot him a grateful look, as he turns and disappears down the stairs. The relief of his power recedes with him, and a tight breath shoots from my lungs as my death lashes around my wrists.
Are you going to tell me what in the second star is going on? Her signs are clipped and pointed, but when I meet Marina’s gaze, her eyes are full of worry. You’re acting weirder than usual. And that’s truly saying something.
“I need you.”
The words are simple enough, but she rears back like I’ve hit her square in the chest. And suddenly, I hate myself so furiously I think I’ll be sick with it. Hate that I must ask for her help when I know what it will cost. Hate that I can’t even be sorry for it, if it means saving the kingdom—saving Willa .
The thought races through me so suddenly, my breath freezes in my chest. Worrying about Willa is unacceptable. She is only a tool, a way to rescue my island. I cannot start seeing her as human, as someone to want—or worse, someone to need.
Marina unfurls from the chair, planting both her small feet on the floor and bracing her hands on her knees like she’s readying herself for an attack. Because that’s exactly what it is.
Her power of invisibility is useful, but in the centuries she’s been with me, I’ve never asked her to use it, as its cost has always seemed too great: each time she fades into nothing, she becomes unseen to the person she cares about most.
Chrys. The female Marina has loved for years, in the spaces of time her power has allowed it. Each time Marina uses her magic, she’s forced to watch as Chrys forgets her entirely.
And not only am I asking her to give up Chrys, to endure the years of heartache as she watches her love move on with others— I’m asking her to go back to the Hollows. The caves beneath the island that were once home to all pixies, but now, are an abyss of depravity. The lair of the Strayed.
Marina makes one simple sign. Okay.
There is no question. No arguing. Just an acceptant loyalty I’ve never deserved.
Two and a half centuries ago, I found Marina broken and bleeding on a beach at the far side of the mountains. I’d only just returned to Somnya, the years away carving manhood into my features and a righteous fervor into my heart. It was still possible, then, to die by something other than my hand, and by the amount of crimson blood curdled on the sand around her, it was a miracle she hadn’t yet succumbed.
I’d gone for my sword immediately, not as an act of mercy, but of vengeance. In my childhood, Marina had been a remote and terrifying figure of authority in the chaotic hierarchy of the Strayed. A powerful pixie in her own right, wielding her clever magic, she’d been the Aeternalis’ spymaster and hand of justice. I’d never believed in fate, but staring down at the female who’d been the cause of so much of my torment over the years—carrying out Pan’s every punishment without ever questioning the morality—certainly felt like the star above had gifted me a chance at regaining a small amount of equilibrium.
A chance to spill blood that had spilled mine. To break someone who had broken me.
I stared down at her, sobbing in the sand. Pale gold hair matted with her own gore; wings, once revered for their beauty, now severed and ruined beside her; the smooth skin of her back split open and seeping—and I hesitated .
I’d taken an innumerable number of lives by that point. It should have been easy to gorge myself on hers. But instead, my hand loosened on my weapon, and I kneeled beside her, the foolish tenderness that would eventually damn the entire kingdom bleeding from the softness in my soul I’d never been able to tame, even when the Aeternalis had demanded it.
Back then, I still believed I could save everyone while retaining a heart. I hadn’t been so filled with death and rot, that I could no longer feel anything beyond the pain of it. And when Marina gazed at her severed wings and sobbed, the sound so mournful, her ruined body trembled with it—I’d felt her sorrow in my bones.
I didn’t kill her. I carried her back to the Indomnitus, and slowly nursed her back to health. She’s been unfailingly loyal ever since.
It’s why she won’t refuse me now. Since I saved her, she’s lived her life in penance that will never be fully paid. There is never enough kindness, never enough good acts to make up for the atrocities she was privy to. She doesn’t talk about those years she lived with the Aeternalis, but I know she loved him. And she’ll never forgive herself for it.
Asking her to go back to the place of so much of her trauma, even shrouded in invisibility, is unforgivable. It’s why I needed Sam to leave—I can’t bear his look of disapproval.
What’s happening, Niko? she signs gently.
“My brother knows.” I thrust my fingers through my hair, the seams of my gloves snagging uncomfortably in the strands. “Dawson saw me collapse at the lagoon. He knows I can’t stop them. That I’ll destroy myself before I ever get close to killing them all.”
Her eyes widen, the blue of them as vibrant as the midnight flowers along the beach. And Willa?
I nod, icy rage spilling through my veins as my ribbons spear violently around me. “He knows who she is. And that if he comes with full force, there’s nothing I can do to keep him from taking her.”
There’s no need to explain the rest. What it will cost not only Letum, but the mainland as well, if Dawson gets his hands on Willa.
Marina knows it all. The agony written in the lines of my body, the sharply edged indecision and self-hatred.
What do you need me to do?
“Sneak into the Hollows and determine how far along their plans are. If they’re organizing an attack, I need to know when and where. And I need to somehow have Willa’s magic ready in time.”
Marina tilts her head, and dread threads through me before she even signs her next question. Dread that has nothing to do with Letum.
Does she know the cost?
There’s no judgment on Marina’s face; no condemnation for the truths I’ve told or the ones I’ve withheld. She knows the worst of my failings. The ones that not only damned the entire kingdom but buried whatever heart and soul I had left after my years with the Strayed beneath layers of decay.
“No,” I finally answer.
Are you going to tell her?
The old Niko would have. The boy who wanted love so desperately, he’d wrap his heart around the nearest thing and squeeze until he was sure it couldn’t wriggle from his grasp. But I’ve learned the hard way—if you squeeze anything too hard, it disintegrates to dust, leaving you with nothing.
The only thing solid enough to endure my hold is the kingdom. My love for Letum is what I cling to when the pain becomes too much, and though I may be the anchor for the magic of the kingdom, my people are mine—the pillar I hold onto against the tidal waves of agony.
The truth of Willa’s power is that it isn’t like the others. It stems from creation, from a primal void that no longer exists, and because of it, the island will be inevitably drawn to it. To admit to her that the more she masters and wields her magic, the tighter the island’s hold on her will become until it’s an eternal chain binding her to it, would be a betrayal to my kingdom. And I’d rather die than repeat the same mistakes I made with Wendy.
Damning my people for a woman who I never even allowed to know the truth of me.
I let a breath leak through my teeth. “No. I won’t be telling her until it’s too late for her to do anything to stop it.”
Marina’s face doesn’t change at my admission. She doesn’t appear irate at my manipulation of an innocent woman, but neither is she accepting of it. She only leans back in her chair, examining me until I shift uncomfortably beneath her assessment.
Is that so she can’t leave the island? Or so she can’t leave you?
The question washes through me like ice water. Marina has an uncanny way of seeing beneath the armor of my skin to the depths beneath, and I’ve always appreciated her penchant for honesty, a rarity as king. Why then, does her question now make me so angry, I feel like shattering every fucking window in the Pixie?
“Would you ever forgive him for stealing your wings, Rina? Would you forgive him tearing you out of the freedom of the sky, and trapping you in the muddy hells of the earth?”
Marina doesn’t answer, but I don’t need her to. I know the phantom pain of something stolen all too well; how it feels to lose the part of yourself that runs wild.
“I will be the one who trapped Willa, who stole her freedom and ruined her future. She won’t be able to leave the island but make no mistake…she will leave me .”
My ribbons skate over my skin, and pain lashes through me so viciously that, for a moment, I lose focus of the room. “Willa is a dangerously wounded creature. She won’t just leave me for the betrayal. She’ll kill me for it if she can,” I grit out, as Marina’s face drifts back into view.
Marina’s eyes flare. You don’t know that. That she’d be capable of it or that she would even want to.
Her hands hesitate midair, and a deep sadness flickers over her face. There’s something in Willa that’s drawn to you. I’ve seen the way she is with your death. After so many years of pain, you deserve something good, Niko, even if it’s fleeting—
I turn away before I can absorb the rest of her words; before the truth of them sink beneath my skin and bury themselves in my dead heart like flickers of light. My hope for myself has been dead for a century, and I don’t want it reawakened—I’m stronger with the rot seeping from the decayed organ to my bloodstream. If everything in me is stained black, a few more terrible acts will hardly matter.
Marina reaches a hand toward me, her palm curling in the air over my shoulder without touching it. She means it as a comfort, but it feels like a mockery.
I heave a breath, steadying myself enough to meet her gaze once more; to face the tears shining in her eyes. “Worry not, dear Rina. Willa’s self-preservation and feral nature is exactly what I admire about her. Star knows, I’d be far more disappointed if she left me alive.”