26. Chapter 26
Chapter twenty-six
B y the time the carriage drops me at the steps of the Lunaedon, fury vibrates through me so vehemently, I’m certain if I glance down, I’ll see it spilling from my chest onto the shining floors in a burning wave. I’ve been angry for so long, I’ve grown numb to the heat, but this anger—the way it prickles through my veins—is different. Jagged. Intimate.
Niko’s half-lies are an iron dagger through my belly—a septic wound whose poison bleeds into everything else—and they shouldn’t be. I’d known he had his own machinations; known that he only shared the truths convenient to him. But I foolishly allowed a few kind gestures and pity of his pain to cloud my judgement.
Am I really so starved in the shadows for human connection, so pathetic, that I latched onto the first person to shine a light?
I charge into the entrance hall and up the thousands of stairs to Niko’s chambers, the bouquet of flowers gripped far too tightly in my fist. I plant my feet, prepared to hack my way through his blasted door, but to my surprise, it disappears at my touch.
The sitting room is empty and dark, spare one lantern burning low on the far wall. The door reforms behind me, and I stall in place as a soft melody trails through the stillness. My indignation sputters like the flame in the lanterns, as I stride past the paintings and the neat desk, to a nondescript door set to the right of the overstuffed bookshelves.
This one, too, disappears at my touch, revealing a small but gorgeous glass atrium. The circular room hangs over the cliffside, and with the way the inlaid glass panels curve overhead, stepping into the room feels like stepping into the sky. Black, stone trees mimic the curve of the glass, sheltering the room in weeping vines and sparkling onyx leaves. And at the center, Niko sits at a worn grand piano.
His dark eyes, scrubbed clean of his usual makeup, only briefly meet mine, his gaze barely landing before it flickers back to where his bare fingers dance over the ivory keys. The melody is both mournful and beautiful, weaving through the air and settling deep in my chest; the place where unshed tears wait in dark pools, and abandonment twists like thorned vines.
For a moment, frozen in the threshold, my anger is entirely forgotten. I listen to the music—to the sadness and lonely desperation I thought was only my own, made tangible. Shaped in isolation and molded into the universal. A way to not only understand a soul, but to tie it to yours by shared heartache.
Niko is beautiful as he plays. His eyes are closed, his body curved over the keys. His ribbons dance in the air around his head, undulating to the rhythm with a darkly hypnotic sensuality. Thick, raven curls tumble over his forehead as he sways in time with the music, and in the gentle starlight pouring in through the windows, the sharp angles of his jaw and cheekbones appear almost ethereal.
The harmony winds through the atrium, tethering us together in an intimate stasis. He plays, and I listen, and we both feel .
The song ends, and Niko drops his hands to his side, his expression sheathed in shadows as he stares down at the keys for a few long moments. When his black gaze finally lifts to mine, potent heat shoots straight through the center of me, scorching my chest, lighting up the spaces between my ribs. I don’t know whether it’s my anger returned, or something far more dangerous: desire.
I pick the most manageable of the two emotions, throwing my hands on my hips and glaring at him. “Why didn’t you tell me you were a Strayed? That you were the one who killed the Aeternalis and damned everyone?” My throat grows tight. “Why didn’t you tell me you caused the plague?”
The King of Carrion is always ready to spar with me—to meet me blow for blow, never ceding an inch. But tonight, Niko only swallows, the bob of his tattooed throat slow and measured as I charge forward. Sudden desperation threads alongside my fury—a longing to get him beneath me and peel back his skin until I know every piece of him. Every secret he hides, every dark desire.
It isn’t just my need to understand Letum or to learn my magic. Just as there is power in freedom, it also lies in knowledge, in shining light on the mysterious shadows and revealing their true nature. I want that power over Niko.
If I’m truly honest, it’s that same want that’s taken my rage and honed it into something so profound. It isn’t that he’s the villain the stories say he is, or even that he’s the cause of the plague. It’s that I’ve already begun to grant him the power of knowing me . I’ve given him small pieces of myself I’ve never allowed anyone else to touch. And I thought he’d done the same.
But he hadn’t—not really. He’d only given me morsels, and because I was starving, I mistook them as enough.
“You’re the reason my sister is dead. The reason I was tortured for years! Is that why you want me to find my magic? To fix your own horrible mistakes?”
I’m ready for the king to fight back. To stand up and meet my fury with his own, that wicked mouth always ready with a cutting response. But instead, Niko stays still, staring up at me with a fractured expression. Like the agony and sorrow trapped in his soul have become too much, shattering through his smooth facade. And he doesn’t have the energy to gather any of it back up.
“Leave it be, Willa,” he murmurs.
I scoff derisively. “If you expect me to let it go, you don’t know me as well as you claim to, Your Majesty .”
“Please.”
The word is broken, the usually soft syllables sharp like scattered pieces of glass. And when he lifts his gaze to mine, I feel the lethal edges of the pieces beneath my ribs. Something has happened since I saw Niko this morning; something that’s shredded him entirely.
“I’m the nightmare that’s doomed both our worlds, and tomorrow, I will endure whatever verbal lashing you deem fit to bestow.” His breath shudders, and his fingers twitch in his lap. “But I can’t now. Not tonight.”
“What happened?” I ask, my anger draining away even as I try to keep it in my hold. It’s easier to be angry with Niko than to feel the other things lurking beneath it. But as I take in the slump of his spine, the dejection and self-hatred pressing down onto his shoulders, the last of it slips from my grasp.
“More wreckage. More carrion,” he replies morosely, with a shake of his head. His eyes deaden as he nods to the bedroom. “I can stop playing if you need to sleep.”
I watch him for a long beat, and then my body is moving before my mind catches up. Niko’s eyes flare in disbelief as I choose not to leave him to drown in his angst, but instead, settle beside him on the piano bench. The bench is small, but not small enough that we touch, a few generous inches between our thighs. Even so, I feel him stiffen, the wary way he holds his body.
Glancing up at him from beneath my lashes, I feel suddenly shy as his scent of sandalwood and icy air encircles me. We’d slept in the same bed last night, but something about being in his space when exhaustion has torn every mask from him, feels far more intimate.
Ignoring the sudden pulse of my heat in my cheeks, I set the flowers atop the piano and motion to where his long fingers have gone still on the ivory keys. “Will you play me something?”
His brows rise fractionally.
“There’s no music in my world anymore,” I explain, feeling oddly breathless. “The plague—” I pause, not wanting to drown either of us in any more thoughts of the plague. At least not tonight. “—I mean…without imagination, music was one of the first things to die.”
Niko’s face is indeterminable as he studies me, and I get the impression he’s stopped breathing altogether. Maybe he doesn’t appreciate my closeness, or maybe, he’d prefer to wallow in whatever is troubling him alone. For a long moment, he doesn’t move, and I consider giving up and going to bed.
But despite all Niko’s faults, he hadn’t left me alone to my nightmares, even though he could have. It would have been easier for him to leave me locked in that room, to remain enigmatic and indifferent. But he’d stayed. Fought for me.
He made me feel safe.
So, I try one more time. “Please.”
An echo of his plea to me only moments earlier.
The word seems to jolt him from whatever trance he’s in. He straightens, planting his bare feet on the ground and readjusting his hands to the proper position. Then his fingers begin to move over the keys once more, gliding and dancing in a mesmerizing grace. He reads no music, playing from his memory or his heart, I’m not sure. I only know that when he closes his eyes, so do I.
I let the melody flow through me like water, a wave of emotion rising up from the depths of my soul. It washes over me entirely, dousing me in the silky feel of memory, cradling me in a soft cloud of hope. Tears sting my eyes as Niko plays a song filled with deep notes of melancholy, peppered with quick, high inflections of something brighter. Teasing a wishful future, while acknowledging the dark of the past.
The last notes reverberate through the air, bouncing against the atrium glass, before dissipating into silence. The music leaves my body like a receding tide, even as I squeeze my eyes shut in an effort to keep hold of it. To imprint the feel of this moment onto the surface of my heart.
I brace myself for the empty feeling that always follows something pleasurable. Isn’t that how it is when I find something to fill me up? A temporary solution that only exacerbates the pervasive emptiness. But as I breathe slowly, the last chords still vibrating in my mind, for once, I’m still entirely full.
When I open my eyes, it’s to find Niko watching me with a reverent expression. A hot flush creeps over my cheeks, but when the king reaches toward me, his ungloved fingers stopping mere inches from my skin, all sense of embarrassment leaves me.
I want to lean into his touch, to feel his calloused fingers scrape over my jaw and throat. Hands of death, skin that promises no pleasure—only pain—and still, I want it. Ardently. Wretchedly. I’ve spent my life avoiding pain, terrified of having to relive the horrors of my youth; of losing myself in its depths, stripped down and debased of everything that makes me who I am.
Why, then, is Niko’s particular brand of pain so damned intriguing?
He slowly trails his finger through the air, and I swear I can feel the phantom pressure of his touch as he traces the roll of a tear over my cheek. I didn’t realize I’d let the tears fall; haven’t untangled the mess of emotions Niko’s melody unearthed from the depths of my soul. My lips part and my breath hitches in anticipation, my heartbeat walloping against my ribs.
Before I can damn all reason and throw myself at him, the king pulls his hand away, folding it into his lap with a rough swallow.
Disappointment threads through me. But he doesn’t drop his gaze, and in the fathomless obsidian, he allows me to see him. The raw sadness, the reverent worship. The agony and the hope. Everything that was in the song he gifted me, parts of himself laid bare at my feet.
“Thank you.” My voice is hardly more than a whisper, but he hears me well enough.
“I would give you everything beautiful you’ve been denied, Willa.”
It isn’t until much later, when I’m curled safely in Niko’s bed, his ribbons of death tangled beside my head, that it occurs to me he hadn’t spoken the words as a promise.
He’d said them as a wish.
“You’re not trying hard enough,” Niko snarls the next morning.
We’re back in the atrium, but this time, it’s far less pleasant. He’s slid the glass panels leading to a spacious balcony open, and wheeled his piano to the side, clearing the space for me to practice my magic once more. But where Adira had been calm and patient, Niko is all growling annoyance and barely tethered aggression.
I glare at him, swiping at the beads of sweat that have begun to gather at my hairline. “I’m trying as hard as I can, Your Decaying Highness.”
My body aches from an entire morning of trying to draw up my magic on demand and getting absolutely nowhere. Not an inkling of anything beyond my usual anger, which is sparking higher every moment I’m stuck in the king’s presence. “We can’t all be expected to exude horror as naturally as you do.”
Niko peels himself off the glass wall he’s been leaning on, the fitted leather of his pants pulling tight against his muscular thighs as he stalks toward me, sizing me up like a predator ready to pounce. Unfortunately for him, I’m no one’s prey anymore. Whatever ominous reasons he has for wanting me to master my magic no longer matter. I’m doing it for myself.
Planting my feet more firmly on the floor, I glower up at him as he looms over me with an arrogant smirk.
“It’s almost been twelve entire hours since you last insulted me, and I admit, I was beginning to worry you’d come down with an incurable illness.” He leans close to my ear, and whispers, “And if that is your best effort, Darling, we’re all doomed.”
He ducks behind me, his booted feet making no noise on the black parquet floor as he circles. I try my hardest not to breathe in, to think about anything other than his closeness. To ignore the feverish heat sliding over my skin at his proximity, the images I’d dreamed last night nestled in his bed barraging me anew.
Sleeping beside Niko has kept my nightmares from returning, but the subject of last night’s imaginings had been almost as bad—the Carrion King himself.
That lithe body pressing mine into the floor. That wicked mouth skating over my skin. Those black eyes gazing up devilishly from between my thighs, while long, tattooed fingers curled into me.
I woke mortified that I projected my dreams onto Niko like I’d accidentally done in the Crocodile, and more than a little bothered. I told myself it was merely a physical reaction, a result of our close living quarters and lack of a proper outlet for my needs. I told myself it was my brain conflagrating my anger for a different sort of a heat, one that means nothing.
But even now, my skin still feels too tight, too hot—like a fever I can’t cure.
If the king felt any of it, he hasn’t let on. He’d kept to his side of the pillow wall during the night, his breathing quiet and even. And he’s given me no indication this morning either, aside from his particularly foul temperament which may have nothing to do with me at all, as Niko’s moods are as unpredictable as ocean storms.
As he steps in behind me, I wish desperately for Adira’s weirder, but far preferable methods. Even if it hadn’t yielded any magic. A scorching mix of irritation and desire spike through me as he leans into the crook of my neck. He’s so close, I can smell the sharp mint of his breath, despite my determination not to inhale.
“The power of Letum comes from dreams,” he rasps.
I huff, with a roll of my eyes. “I already know that. You’ve told me about a thousand times.”
“So then tell me, Willa Darling, what do you dream?”
His words are a soft breath against my skin, and unbidden, I extend my throat, suddenly aching viciously for something I don’t dare name. I want to run a blade through his heart at the same time I want him to run one through mine. I want him to pin me beneath his full weight, press into me until my bones ache and my core heats.
It’s a want edged in madness with no logic to bind it.
“In the dark of night, alone in your bed…what colors your deepest imaginings?” His voice slides over me like a slip of silk, my skin radiating wildly between heat and ice. He raises a hand near my bare arm, and I hate myself for how I instinctively inch closer to his fingers.
Because I’d rather die than admit to Niko what I dreamed of last night. Not when the thought of touching me disgusts him—not when the thought of touching him should disgust me. King of Death, destroyer of worlds.
“Tell me, Willa.”
You.
Though I remain silent, Niko laughs darkly. A soft sound, hardly more than a hot breath against my bare shoulder, but it’s enough to deepen the flush on my cheeks; to wash its stain over my throat and breasts. He knows. The Carrion King knows I’ve dreamed of him.
“Dreams are nonsense,” I snap, spinning around defiantly. But no matter how I glare or argue, the words sound unconvincing, even to me.
Because haven’t I learned since falling into Letum there is no truer thing than the pull of dreams, to children and adults alike? And hadn’t I known years before, when I stared up at the concrete ceiling of the labs as I was taken apart piece by piece? Dreams had been the only thing concrete, the only tangible thing to hold onto in a world filled with pain and horror.
There’s a reason the death of dreams had physical reverberations across the universe.
Niko’s eyes glint in dark amusement and his mouth—that stupid, lush, fucking mouth —is cocked in an arrogant grin.
“Your world and your plague have taught you the wrong things,” he challenges, not bothering to step away, even though I desperately wish he would. Give me space to breathe something that isn’t him; to gather my thoughts from where they’ve scattered around me. “Dreams are shaped by the things you have no words for. The things carved into your bones, shaped by the depths of your heart. That place…where logic and fear have no authority…that is where your power resides. That is where you must delve if you wish to use it.”
I stare at him, my mouth parted as I go over his words.
The place he speaks of—the truest parts of myself—are better left to the forgotten corners of my body. I locked them away to protect them from the shell I became while I was tortured every day, shielded them in thorns and barbed wire and darkness. And after my escape, I kept them there.
I wasn’t the same girl anymore—I didn’t even feel human —and the soft and tender spaces that used to make up Willa Darling Fredrik were too delicate to expose to the monster I am now. So, I’ve left them locked away, to wither and die alone.
The idea of facing those parts, of sorting through whatever remains after being neglected for so long, is terrifying.
Niko cocks an eyebrow in challenge, and his mouth twists in disapproval as he runs his eyes over me in frank assessment. Like he can scent the sudden fear radiating from me. “Your abusers are long dead, and yet, you continue to allow them control. To steal your power from beyond the grave.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I snarl, my pulse beginning to hammer against my temples. How dare he speak to me of the past dictating the present, when his own fuels his every movement?
Niko’s face isn’t at all pitying. If anything, his expression only grows fiercer. “You’ve created the shadows, Willa. You can create the light.”
“This isn’t a fucking dream, Niko,” I spit out furiously. Rage spills through me in an acidic wave. It sparks in my veins, buzzes against my skull. “I didn’t create anything! My original abusers are dead, but there’s thousands more waiting in the shadows to take their place if they ever find out what I am—”
Niko’s head cocks curiously, and my heart plummets as I realize I’ve said too much. Tilted too far into the dark places of myself. And with a man like Niko, who crawls through every fracture to sift through what hides beneath, a mistake like that is catastrophic.
Worrying my lower lip between my teeth, I force myself to breathe. To calm the fire lapping at my veins, at my heart. There’s too much heat—the heat of anger, of regret, of want —it’s impossible to determine where it originates. I only know it’ll burn straight through me if I let it.
“And what exactly are you?” he asks in a low voice, his eyes searching my face.
I school my features into indifference, shrugging. “I just meant they can’t find out who I am. If they find out I escaped, they’ll drag me right back.”
The king’s eyes narrow further as he gives a disbelieving laugh. “You know I respect your self-preservation, Willa. But I cannot, and will not, ever be able to stomach your cowardice. You’ll never be powerful if you can’t even face yourself.”
I shiver beneath his gaze, my face carefully blank, even as familiar panic races through me. I’ve seen the way Niko goes after what he wants: with singlehanded determination. He’s caught the scent of something in my mistake, and even if he isn’t sure what it is, he won’t let it go. Not until it’s his, just like everything else in this godforsaken kingdom.
Niko already wants to use me for a power I’m not even sure I have. What will he do when he discovers my true secret? I’ve spent so long hiding, protecting it is no longer a decision, but a primal instinct, as natural as breathing. An instinct that’s driven me to sacrifice everything, including myself.
I plant my feet and narrow my eyes on Niko. “You wanna call me a coward while you’ve been rotting away in a palace for centuries, waiting around for someone to come fix your mistakes for you?”
Niko’s eyes flare, and the color leeches from his lips as he presses them into a tight line.
“Moping around, staining everyone around you with your own pathetic misery. Seems like you have no authority at all to speak to me about cowardice,” I hiss, taking an aggressive step toward him.
He measures it, keeping the same few inches of space between us. The small movement, the distance Niko keeps, is like a spark to kindling. Embarrassment, fury, and something else I dare not examine, flare so brightly inside me that I grab Niko’s gloved hand in mine.
He rears back in surprise, but I’ve already yanked the glove free. We both watch it flutter to the ground, as the world appears to slow around us, pulled tight by our tension. Hatred, desire, anger, intimacy. They’re all so blurred in the spaces between us, and they have been since the moment we met.
When Niko slowly raises his gaze back to mine, I should be terrified of what storms in the depths. But I only smirk sweetly, shaking my head with an irreverent tsk. “No wonder Letum is dying. Aren’t kings supposed to be brave? And here you are, too spineless to even touch your skin to mine and take what you so clearly want. What you’ve wanted since the moment you met me.”
Niko’s jaw works and his bare hand tightens into a fist at his side, before his fingers spread wide once more. The tendons in his neck go taut, but this time, it has nothing to do with pain and everything to do with the invisible leash he keeps himself tethered with.
I’ve unsettled him, just as I intended, and the monster inside me crows victoriously as I take three more steps toward him. He measures them all, backing up slowly toward the terrace, his dark gaze soldered to mine.
“I see the way you watch me, Your Majesty,” I drawl, half-mocking. Another step, and we’re both in the open air, the sweet breeze blowing in from the sea tangling in my hair. “And you’re too scared to even try.”
With each step I take, each bit of space Niko cedes, the fire inside me grows. It began as anger at having to hold onto my secret so tight, I’m forced to cut down anything that dares come too close. But now, it swelters through my lungs, smolders in my heart, until it’s an inferno of rage. As I stare up at Niko’s beautifully monstrous face, I think it’ll consume me whole.
Because though I’m now the one in power, the one distracting him and pushing him away—he’s letting me.
And I want to scream at the unfairness: that no one, not even the King of Death himself, is strong enough to withstand the black hole inside me. A fathomless chasm no one will ever be able to cross.
Half-mad, and one hundred percent furious, I pull the gladius from where it’s sheathed at my hip and point it at Niko. His death begins to swirl wildly around him as I take another step. There is no more room, and he bumps unceremoniously into the stone railing.
I dig the blade into his sternum, just hard enough to draw a pinprick of black blood. “Who’s the true coward, Niko?” I let out a dark laugh. “You won’t even touch me to save yourself, will you?”
Niko sneers, the lines of his face baleful and sharp in the starlight. “Your crude nature grows tiresome.” Ignoring the sword at his chest, he rakes his eyes over me in disdain. “Perhaps I overestimated your capabilities, as here you are once more, doing anything you can to avoid claiming your power.”
He leans further into my blade, more blood beading on his pale chest, his eyes devouring every bit of light around us. “I am the lord of death, centuries old…the most powerful man in this world and the next. You could shove this blade straight through my heart, and it won't matter.” Niko’s expression is furious. “You are nothing more than a powerless, petulant child.” His ribbons begin to swirl frantically, their writhing forms a blurred void around our feet, as he whispers, “I’d have to be pathetic to want you for anything more than opening my wards.”
Humiliation conflagrates in my chest, burning away anything logical and igniting a primal fury that began when my father abandoned me and has only grown, twisting into the dark thing it is now. I can’t kill Niko, but I can hurt him the way he’s hurt me. Make him bleed like I do, every moment of every day, a seeping wound.
With a savage snarl, I lunge at the Carrion King.
His ribbons are faster. A blur of darkness, a touch of ice and silk, they spear between us, entangling my feet and knocking me off balance. My stomach leaps into my throat as I stumble sideways over the waist-high balustrade. My nails scratch helplessly against the slick stone as I pitch forward, the breath shooting from my lungs at the sheer drop to the sea below.
The gladius falls from my grasp, disappearing into the crashing waves, and a cold panic races through my veins at the knowledge I’m about to meet the same fate.
Then a strong hand wraps around my wrist, pulling me back over the railing. Spikes of pain tingle from the contact as Niko yanks me backward and hauls me up against his chest. His grip is like iron as he stares at me in shock, his breathing so wild that each of his breaths press the carved heat of his chest more firmly against my breasts. His eyes are frenzied, flickering between my face and where his bare fingers are still wrapped tightly around my wrist.
I brace for his fury, but it’s his other emotions burning alongside it that pummel me so forcefully, I almost stumble backward.
Shock.
And a devastating hunger.
The world around us narrows, the colors of the atrium, of Letum, all blurring like a watercolor painting. The only thing in focus is him .
Niko blinks suddenly, dropping my wrist like my skin has burned him. His palm spreads wide as he clutches it to his chest, stepping quickly away from me.
The distance between us smolders and pulls, a tether drawn too tight. But neither of us move to cross it again, as we stare at each other. Niko gazes at me like he’s never seen me before, his body entirely still.
Thoughts fire so rapidly across his face, it’s impossible to pin down one emotion. They’re too fast, too convoluted—one bleeding into the next before any can fully settle. And I feel the same, unbalanced and slightly hysterical. His touch lingers on my wrist, a mirror of the expression on his face—wonder edged in horror. It had been so cold, it burned. Relief and agony.
His death swirls between us, careful once more not to so much as brush my skin. Why had it been so quick to touch me when I attacked, if Niko can’t die? Had my words truly wounded him deeply enough that he wanted me dead, even if it meant never opening the wards?
I inhale a sharp breath. “Look…I think we can both admit we overreacted.”
It isn’t an apology, and he doesn’t seem to take it like one. Niko hardly appears to hear me at all, just continues to stare at me warily—like he’s just now realized the breadth of danger he invited into his palace.
I push a breath through my teeth, trying to calm the acid rushing through my veins. I shouldn’t have lashed out at him. I should have been more measured in distracting him, lulled him so softly away from my secrets, he never even realized what he’d missed.
But calm collection has never been my strength. Not when I’m cornered.
“Look, I’m sorry for touching you. I know you don’t like it, and it was wrong to—”
The words never make it out of my mouth, because fast as lightning, Niko grabs my hand for a second time, drawing me against his chest and crushing his lips against mine.