28. Chapter 28
Chapter twenty-eight
I was five when my father realized something was different about me. I spent most of my time in the woods surrounding our house, climbing trees and crossing streams; imagining worlds with houses built into the shadows where magic ruled. My father had long given up on trying to corral me into the house, instead issuing stern, but amiable warnings not to climb too high, that I rarely heeded.
On a humid day in June, I fell from the top of the tallest oak tree on the property. My harrowing screams sent my father running from the barn, only to find me lying on the ground with two shattered legs and a broken back. He’d run to call the ambulance, but the by the time he returned, I was back on my feet, both legs whole beneath me. Determined to climb that tree again.
My father had cried and kissed me. Perhaps it was a gift from my mother’s side of the family, he said, the woman who left just after Celie was born, whose memory was little more than shadows and shapes in my young mind. Or perhaps it was a miracle from a god I didn’t know if I believed in. Either way, miracles were to be guarded and so we did, for so many years.
At the time, whispers of a plague that affected children had been circulating for a few years. But Celie, dad, and I lived in our own sheltered world on our farm, thankful for the protection of my miracle.
I was fourteen the first time I saw the plague’s effects firsthand, in the form of my sister, lying still on the floor of our garage in a pool of her own blood. Her beautiful golden hair was matted with crimson, a rusty box cutter discarded beside one of her bleeding wrists. I screamed for help, my knees pressing into the cold cement, begging her to fight. My sister had always been so full of light, it could only have been the plague shrouding her mind in such darkness; the plague that kept her from finding a way out.
My father, who’d heard my screams even over the loud purr of the lawn mower, crashed through the door. He’d always been a stoic man—more comfortable with the hard edges of logic and numbers than with the more vulnerable parts of life. He was always prepared, always steady, and never seemed frightened by how fast the world moved around us, like I was.
But as he took in Celie’s fragile form, and me panicking beside her, I saw my father’s fear for the first time since I fell from that tree. As he gathered my sister in his arms and carried her to the house, it radiated from him in silky waves and embedded deep inside his heart.
It was a fear that never left. Not when we saved Celie by giving her a transfusion of my healing blood; and not in the months after, when we kept her condition a secret from everyone around us, shielding her growing attempts to take her own life from prying eyes.
The fear that planted itself in my father was a mirror of my sister’s own angst. Both left deadened looks in their eyes, siphoning every bit of their energy and leaving behind empty husks. I didn’t understand it then— couldn’t understand the way everything good curdled inside them both.
I tried in those years to be the best sister to Celie. I took her with me everywhere. I danced goofily before her until I earned a hint of a smile. I stayed awake for days on end to watch her, to make sure she didn’t harm herself. My father spent all his time searching for a cure, so I took on caring for him as well. I cooked and cleaned. I tried to help him remember there was a life outside of his research, a world beyond Celie’s affliction.
The Amelioration camps were relatively new then. Waves of children around Celie’s age became afflicted as she was, like some unseen force had sucked every bit of light from them. They could only see the dark, only feel the pain, and they sought to end it the only way they knew how. The camps began as the world’s way of saving the population of children, touting safety and medicines for the mind. My father didn’t trust them, believing Celie was safest with us.
In that, at least, he was right.
Celie tried to end her life three more times that year. If it wasn’t for my blood, she would have succeeded. Each time, my father would hug me, his fingers digging desperately into my arms, his tears dripping into my hair as he whispered his thanks for my gift.
But my sister grew more desperate to end the pain, and on a rare outing to town, she slipped away from us. There was no hiding this attempt, no shielding her from the military’s attention no matter how my father begged. The last time I saw her, she’d been unconscious in the back of a military vehicle, headed toward a camp near the city.
Celie’s incarceration took my father’s kernel of fear and nurtured it. The seed grew until it burst, flooding like a poison through him. And while he’d kept Celie’s secret so diligently, he exploited mine. The military came for me two days after they took my sister.
“She’s too weak to survive alone,” he’d told me. “But you’re so strong, Willa. You’re going to keep her safe like you always have.”
He’d said it like a compliment, but that was the first moment being strong didn’t feel good . It felt like a plague of its own—something that would only bring me pain. But I’d grown up listening to tales of heroes sacrificing themselves for the world, for the ones they love, and I was brave enough to be one too. I could be that for that Celie.
I peered out the rear window of the military vehicle, and watched my father grow smaller and smaller. He shrank before my eyes until he was nothing more than a shadow. I never saw him again. Later, I’d learn that when Celie died less than a year later, he hung himself from the rafters of the same barn. Too weak to survive for the daughter that still lived, the one he’d sold and sacrificed.
In the first few weeks of my imprisonment, I would beg for my father. Then I begged for death. But as years passed, I learned not to beg for anything at all. There was no one coming, nothing to hold onto. Nothing but my hatred.
I burned with it so furiously, it imbued my bones with steel. It hardened the shell of thorns and barbed wire around my heart.
I strengthened myself with it. Every time they drained me of blood to heal other children, and then sat at my bedside taking notes as my body regenerated itself, my hatred burned. When they took me apart, piece by piece, testing the limits of my immortality and finding none, it flamed inside me, until I was fireproof.
The flames of my hate spread from my father to the doctors, to every person who was gifted my healing while I rotted away in a cell. They had the freedom of death—a way out when the pain was too much for one body to bear—but there was no end to the agony for me. Ever.
They destroyed who I was, stripped away everything that made up Willa Darling Fredrik. The only thing left was the burning inferno. Waiting for the moment to catch everything around me and bring it all to ruin.
It remains even now, two centuries later, as I stare down at the Lord of Death in a world named for the one thing I can never have. Watching Niko grant it with hardly a thought has been its own form of torture. And I fear touching him has only made my longing far worse—the silky feel I’ve always been denied, the relief of pure void, of endless silence, is too delicious to resist.
Absurd laughter threatens to bubble from my throat as I stare down at the king, ensnared just as surely as if he’s caught me in a steel trap. He stares up at me from between my thighs, the soft pads of his fingertips continuing their lazy exploration of my skin. His touch is gentle and tantalizingly slow, even as his black gaze sharpens into a deadly line. One dissected between lust and danger; worship and obsession.
“Are you going to run, Darling?” he asks so casually, I wince. He reads the lines of me so clearly. Like he’s memorized me word by word. “A vicious creature like yourself, used to the comfort of the shadows. I imagine the light must be burning you alive.”
My heart thrums, a ruthless rhythm I’m certain he can hear. I feel exactly as he’s said: exposed and vulnerable. Like Niko’s peeled back muscles, and blood, and even bone, to pierce through the armor I’ve been wrapped in for so long. Suddenly, everything feels far too raw: like he’s thrust his hands into my chest and scraped out what’s inside.
And I can’t bear it. Can’t bear for another to see the mess of me. The decay, the abandonment, the scorched ruins of who I am.
But like the predator he is, Niko senses my urge to flee. The pleasurable caresses cease, and he cages both my thighs in his long fingers. His grip is so hot, I half-expect to see scorch marks in the form of his hands on my skin, and I wonder how I ever thought him cold. How I never realized he burns like I burn.
His eyes glint in wicked challenge. “Not so fast, Willa. I’m already on my knees. I won’t let you go before I have the chance to crawl beneath that smooth, unmarked skin.”
Suddenly I hate him. Since the moment we met, Niko’s found the swiftest ways beneath my walls—always pushing me toward a terrifying edge even as I dig my nails in to resist. And now, he’s captured me as he would a wild animal. Tempting me to lash out, to strike with my claws and run away.
I hate him for knowing exactly how to press me; just how hard to squeeze before I shatter.
And I hate that in only a few simple sentences, he’s revealed something far more terrifying than my secrets—that I want him to know them. The corrosive acid that normally races through me, that has driven me away from anything that threatens to see me, is hardly noticeable beneath my sudden desire to be seen .
Why? Why is it Niko I’ve allowed to lay me bare before him? Niko, who I’ve allowed to stare and stare and not cower away from his gaze?
He smiles up at me, dark and mischievous, like he already knows exactly what he’s won.
“You are a cunning thing,” he says in a praising purr that makes me want to preen before him. “You’ve always counted on people not paying attention, haven’t you? Never seeing you well enough to notice the oddities surrounding you.”
His fingers unlock, resuming their devilish ministrations. I bite my lip, trapping my moan in my throat as renewed heat laces over my skin.
“You miscalculated with me.”
I raise a brow in annoyance. “How was I supposed to know your skin is poison?”
Niko shakes his head slowly. “I don’t mean today. You miscalculated by thinking you would ever be invisible to me. I have seen you since the moment I carried you from that beach, Willa.” I shiver at his dark words. “Every detail. Every color. I have studied too much of you for you to ever be able hide.”
His words leave me breathless, and there’s a violent tug from somewhere behind my heart. I gasp, as the world around us suddenly spins back into motion. My head swims and my heart flies into my throat as the room upends. Colors spin and swirl, like time races to make up for what its lost, greedily pulling everything forward.
The only thing in focus is Niko: his fathomless eyes, the sweep of his dark lashes against his snow-white skin. His face is one of pure focus, a ravening expression that speaks to his barely tethered self-control.
My own feels like its spiraling wildly beyond my reach. Like it’s escaped through the gaping hole Niko’s torn open in my chest and refuses to be ensnared again. In an effort to stave it off, to hold onto something familiar and tether myself back into my anger, I dig my teeth into my lip.
“You should have bled out from your tiger-beast’s claws,” he says, running his fingers over my bare shoulder. Then continuing down my arm and lightly over my wrists. “You should have been wounded by your run-in with the Strayed. And you, most certainly, should have collapsed on the beach right beside me as soon as you picked me up and touched your skin to mine.”
“Nice of you to finally take notice,” I reply, but the words hold no bite. They’re breathless and warm, just like his hands.
Niko grins, before dropping his eyes to where his fingers spread wide, running slowly up my calf and thigh to the hem of the pale blue nightgown. Brushing the fabric up to my hips, far enough to reveal my flimsy underwear beneath. He leans his cheek against the soft flesh of my thigh, inhaling deeply with a satisfied noise—a reverent sigh that digs into my chest, and threatens to snap whatever paltry control still remains.
“How old are you truly?” His voice rumbles against me.
“Twenty-seven,” I reply automatically.
He nips at me, scraping the sensitive skin of my inner thigh with his teeth hard enough to elicit a squeal. Furious heat tears through me, and that same place behind my heart, the one that froze time and then spun it back, together pulls taut.
The place Niko has spoken of, where dreams and desires live and breed in the darkness, untethered by the expectations of the light. The place of my magic.
For a wild moment, it rises up, a shimmering wave of both darkness and light, as hungry for Niko as I am. The need for release is so urgent it aches, and I don’t know whether it’s a need to hurt him or to bind him to me.
Or how to manage either of those things. My magic has only appeared in moments of desperation, and this moment is feeling more desperate by the second.
Desperation to meld myself to him, to tear open his chest and crawl beneath his ribs—to splay his skin wide as he has mine and consume everything that has shaped him. To take what I’ve wanted so desperately to feel since I was a prisoner: the relief of death.
And Niko, with his ribbons of power and cruel refinement, is the embodiment of relief.
I’ve spent so long running from pain, that I’ve denied myself any form of pleasure. So now, I throw myself into it. Opening my thighs a fraction wider, I feel his pleased shudder vibrating through my legs. Higher, to where it isn’t only my magic that aches, but the core of me.
“I’m twenty-seven, give or take two centuries,” I amend. I’m rewarded for my honesty by the brush of his mouth, so gentle, I think I’ll come right out of my skin.
“No matter how you’re hurt, you can’t die?” he asks, his voice a hot whisper over my thighs.
I shake my head, sudden shame clenching my stomach. It’s a terrible thing to want for death when there are so many who would give anything for a few more moments of life. But what they don’t realize is what makes life sweet is its fleeting nature—the idea that if one is to live, one must live now.
Niko notices I’ve gone stiff beneath his touch, glancing up at me through a curtain of dark lashes. His gaze is weighted, the pressure like the edge of a blade, but it’s nothing to the slice of his words. “Is that why you want me? To touch what you’ll never have? That’s rather twisted, Darling.”
Humiliation and anger spiral through me in equal measure. I try furiously to close my thighs, to brush away Niko’s touch and escape from beneath his scrutiny. My cheeks heat as he clamps his hands around my hips, pinning me in place.
“You don’t get to judge me, Corpse King,” I snarl, leaning toward him and baring my teeth, just like the uncivilized savage he thinks I am. “Do you know what it’s like to be taken apart day after day? To have your skin peeled from your bones? To have your body broken over and over and be left alone to heal? To have your organs removed and your throat sliced and your flesh boiled? To know nothing but unending agony, but also know there is no force on earth to stop it?”
I’ve leaned so close into Niko, I can smell the sharp mint of his breath. The ice of his death.
“You think I’m feral? That I act like a caged, wounded animal? Well, that’s what happens when there is no promise of death. When your own body betrays you and won’t do the one thing it’s supposed to: die. There is no relief for me, ever. You don’t get to judge me for wanting a taste. For being so desperate for even the smallest bit of what I won’t ever have.”
Shaking my head, I push a breath through my teeth. “The plague may have killed humanity’s hope, Niko, but mine…mine was killed by immortality. There is no hope when there is no change, when the spiral is endless. When the pain is everlasting, and there will never be an end to it.”
Niko is silent for a long moment, but when I finally dare to look at him, there’s no judgement on his face. There isn’t even pity.
Only an understanding that goes to the marrow of both of us. Pain. Niko’s familiar and mine.
“Take however much of a taste you need, Willa,” he says softly, before yanking both my thighs forward. Too quick to catch myself before I tumble off the piano bench, but it doesn’t matter, as Niko’s there, cradling my body to his, pulling me into his lap. “Gorge yourself on it, if you must.”
There is nothing gentle about the way he touches me; his hands tug at my dress frantically as his mouth crashes against mine. He catches my moans of pleasure on his tongue as both the cool ice of his power and the hot brand of his skin war with each other over my body, enveloping my senses and tilting the world almost as readily as my magic had.
Niko’s skin against mine feels entirely untenable—it is both the pain of death and the relief of it, the end of the world and the beginning—and it is more addictive than any drug, more encompassing than anything I’ve ever felt. It’s been so long since the numbness of my circumstances have abated, so long since there was something other than hollow emptiness. Now, there’s all fire. My body burns at his command, and I want to be consumed until I’m nothing more than a pile of ash.
I wrap my legs around his bare torso, digging my nails into his shoulders and drawing him closer. He runs his hot mouth over my throat, clamping his lips gently where my pulse flutters. “You think you’re the only one who understands pain, don’t you, Darling?”
His words float through my mind in a heated haze as I bare my throat and roll my hips, grinding into the hard length of his erection straining against his sweats.
“But you are not in your agony alone. I am the lord of pain, both its disciple and its commander.” His words are a guttural sound, primal and commanding, and my body tightens in anticipation as his ribbons swirl behind him, painting us both in shadows of night. “I am it’s king.”
He clamps his teeth over my pulse, hard enough to bruise, just as he brushes the most aching part of me through my soaking panties. I cry out, gyrating my hips wildly as more wet heat pools at my center. He sucks hard, flicking his tongue lightly over the sting before pulling away with a dark laugh.
Fury and desire careen through me but my protests are lost when he fists his fingers in my hair and takes my mouth beneath his once more, swallowing every demand I have. Because Niko is right—he is the only one in my world and his who understands me on a base level. Who knows exactly how to break through the cold apathy of my existence, and light me up with feeling. The only one who knows how pain has torn me apart, flayed me down to nothing, and built me back up as something different.
And with him, I don’t need to hide what I am now, twisted and angry as it is.
His tongue dances with mine, and his fingers, needy as they are, tug at the tangled fabric of my nightgown. I join him with careless, fumbling hands. Desperate to be bare, to feel his skin, his magic. Together, we pull it off, tossing the silky fabric to the floor beside his ribbons.
“Willa…” My name rolls gently from his tongue to mine, given like a prayer. Exalting hands run the length of my spine, fill themselves with my hips and press me closer to his chest. Each touch, a sacred ritual: a rite to bind us together. “You are—"
Niko’s words die in his throat as a harsh knock sounds at the outer door to his rooms. I jolt in surprise, the sound tearing me from a fever dream and thrusting me back into reality. Niko’s own brow furrows, his eyes blinking in a slow daze as if suddenly remembering a world exists beyond this atrium—one somehow corporeal enough to interrupt the force between us.
The knocking becomes more insistent. More frantic.
“NIKO!” Sam shouts. His voice, usually a calm rumble, is now a deep, ringing boom. Laced with sheer panic. It’s enough to plant a heavy stone of dread in the pit of my stomach. “Niko, it’s Marina!”
Niko’s eyes lock on mine, something close to regret flashing only for a moment before his face smooths. I watch him piece himself back together, fragment by fragment, until he’s armored in the swaggering assurance of the Carrion King. Whoever he was while we were tangled together—while he kneeled before me and pried me open—is decidedly not who he is now.
He lifts me off him, gently setting me on the floor before rising to his feet. I scramble up behind him, hastily throwing my nightgown back on and smoothing my hair in vain, as he disappears from the atrium and into the study beyond. He’s already placed a palm to the door by the time I careen around the corner, sliding across the parquet floor.
Sam’s appearance mirrors the alarm edging his voice, his usual composure fractured and harried in the dim light of the corridor. His throat and wrists are devoid of their usual layers of jewelry, and his shirt hangs untucked from his pants. One of his boots is unlaced, as if he jumped straight out of bed and into his shoes.
I’m still staring at the laces when a soft tendril of his power brushes my skin, slowing my heartbeat and smoothing the sharp edges of my rising panic.
Niko furiously waves Sam’s magic off as if it’s an errant bug. “What’s happened?” he demands without preamble. “Has she been discovered? I swear to the second star, if Dawson’s laid a finger on her—”
I stare at Niko, stunned at the pure animosity radiating from him. It isn’t just a general hatred for the Strayed—it’s an intimate anger. One that tells me he’s all too familiar with Dawson’s brand of depravity.
Sam shakes his head. “Marina is safe,” Sam assures him hurriedly, but Niko doesn’t appear at all assuaged. His death has begun to writhe around him like snakes, and his hands are twisted into tight fists at his sides.
“Marina tried to send word, but—I don’t know, Niko…” He curses, shaking his head. “It might be too late.”
“Send word of what, Sam?” Niko says, his voice laced with barely concealed death.
“The Strayed. They’re in the Grove.”