30. Chapter 30
Chapter thirty
M y death freezes in the air, as the world around me suspends the way it did in the atrium.
The Strayed, the Silva Lucai. The trees, the flames: it all washes into a blur of color.
Everything but Willa.
She sprints between the trees, her caramel hair whipping behind her, as she leaps over frozen Strayed. She’s replaced the gladius that tumbled off the balcony with two short swords, both gripped comfortably in her hand as she darts toward me. Through the chaos, her eyes find mine.
Determined. Furious. The most stunningly beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
Wreathed in smoke and starlight, her path never wavers as she darts through the vile ranks of the Strayed. Toward me.
Willa is here for me.
I’d been cruel and horrible to her, betrayed every small piece of herself she’d trusted me with, and still, she came. To spare me the pain.
I don’t know whether to be furious, or to drop to my knees and weep.
There’s no time for either as undiluted panic spills over me. I am already inundated in my death; it spears from my heart, through my veins. It fractures through my skin in ebony ribbons, shrouding everything around me in shades of void. And it wants.
A ravening hunger, a furious need. My death snaps tight in my grip, spearing indiscriminately toward every bit of life nearby. Including Willa.
I gasp, fumbling and desperate, as I struggle to pull it back into my heart, to contain it in my veins before it can ruin Willa as it ruins everything else. She’s immortal, but every power has a limit. What are the edges of hers? If my raw power spears through her, will she desiccate from the inside out? Be forced to endure the agony of healing every part of her body?
I groan with exertion, slowly dragging my death back into myself. It’s both slippery and sharp, slicing my palms, piercing my lungs as it thrashes against my control. As it lances toward the nearest life, it’s rapacious appetite becoming nearly unbearable, as it mingles with my own desperation. Terror grips me as Willa skids to a stop, the green and gold of her eyes winking in the frozen firelight.
I want to shout at her, to warn her away. But my voice is lost somewhere deep in my chest, buried beneath layers of rot and ruin.
Willa reaches through the death swirling around me to grip my hand in hers. Her touch is the opposite of mine—full and vibrant. Creation instead of death. I let it wash through me, even as a cold sweat breaks out over my skin and my muscles lock. My jaw clacks, as I focus on her palm against mine and slowly draw my death back to me, inch by excruciating inch.
The black haze recedes, clearing my vision well enough for the sight of Willa to burrow beneath my skin, etch irrevocably into my bones. There will be no unlearning the way she looks bathed in starlight, running toward the worst parts of me, instead of away from them. She is not ruined by my death but comforted by it.
But horror strings alongside my gratitude, as I remember who stands just beyond the fade of Willa’s magic. Dawson. The Aeternalis’ named heir, and the one who orchestrated this fight in order to draw her out. To witness her power for himself and determine how best to break us both with it. To take everything she is and twist it to his.
As a boy, I watched him tear apart so many others, piece by piece until they were nothing more than mutilated husks. It was Dawson who first discovered fear made it easier to siphon a child’s magic; Dawson who’d implemented punishments so depraved, they still stain my dreams.
And now, I’m going to watch him do the same thing to Willa. The light inside her she’s protected so fiercely, snuffed out by his horror.
I shout her name, in warning or prayer, I’m not even sure, but my words are lost in the rush of time around us as she loses its hold. My heart lurches into my throat as the world spins forward, the only anchor Willa’s fingers tangled in mine.
“Don’t worry, Niko,” she says softly, meeting my gaze. Those eyes drive straight into the sludge of my veins, lighting my blood on fire. “I found where my magic was hidden when you broke me open.”
Willa squeezes her eyes shut as the Strayed charge toward us.
And the Grove descends into chaos.
The ground before us gapes open wide like the hungry maw of an animal, swallowing the closest Strayed. The roar is deafening: the deep reverberation of the earth; the rush of flame above; the pure power radiating from Willa. The sound is a physical force that pummels my chest so hard, I’m flung to the ground. My palms scrape over dead moss and ash as I scramble up, readying my death once more as I search for Willa.
Fear has been a constant companion of mine since the moment I was brought to Letum, but the kind that runs through me as I realize Willa has disappeared into the throng of attacking Strayed is a different sort—corrosive. Intimate. Like I know exactly what I’m about to lose and am powerless to stop it.
I pitch sideways as the ground beneath my feet begins to roll like the waves of a great sea, and I'm tossed from my feet once more. My spine slams into a giant trunk, painfully forcing the breath from me. I wheeze, squeezing my eyes shut and willing the pain to pass, as the movement of the earth resounds through my entire body. I feel its power in my lungs, my bones—even my blood vibrates, as the world crashes down.
It's all I can manage to thrust my death up to protect my head, curling into the ball to keep from being crushed by the deluge of debris and branches tumbling around me.
As suddenly as it began, the world stills. Silence presses against my ears, and my heart recedes from my throat, settling back into my chest. I open my eyes expecting to see the Grove reduced to little more than a gaping chasm, but I find only flat, dead earth. Like the ground has sealed itself up.
Chaos reigns as Strayed retreat in every direction, streaming through the woods, melting into the shadows. The Silva Lucai advances with spears drawn, shouts of victory on their lips as they chase the monsters back to their caves in the pits of the island.
And at the center of it all lies Willa, curled up in the freshly churned earth. I surge to my feet, guilt and panic pulsing untethered through my chest, like the fluttering sails of a ship. Willa’s found her magic, but I’ve pushed her too fast, too hard, for her to prepare herself for the cost of its use. What if it demands something she doesn’t have to give?
My ribbons are faster than I am, spearing out toward the remaining Strayed with singular focus. It gores them through the chest, immediately severing their life source from their bodies. Pain lances through me, the intensity of which would normally bring me to my knees. But right now, I move through it with gritted determination to get to Willa.
This island has taken everything from me. I’ll rend the entire kingdom apart before I allow it to take Willa, the one source of beauty in a lifetime of ruin.
My ribbons wind frenetically in the air above her body, searching for a source of injury—for the familiar feel of death. She can’t die, I remind both of us, repeating the words in a rhythmic chant as I kneel beside her.
Marina filters into view at my side, her face spattered with blood and gore, eyes filled with fire as she gazes at Willa. Sam and Tiernan rush up behind me, and I hardly take note of their battle-worn appearance as I frantically search Willa for any sign of ailment.
“Allow me, sir,” Sam says gently, kneeling beside me. His face is smudged with soot a few shades darker than his skin, and a fresh gash mars his temple, but his hand is steady as he reaches toward Willa.
I should allow him to ease whatever ails her, be grateful he’s torn himself away from Adira to be here with me, but I can’t think beyond the panic roaring in my ears.
With a feral snarl, I brush his hand aside, his gloves the only thing preventing my magic from rotting him where he kneels. Sam blinks in surprise, but I have no capacity to feel ashamed for my cruelty. Not when anxiety is barreling through me like a poisonous vine, squeezing my ribs, strangling my skull. I don’t think about what it will mean for the kingdom that I can touch Willa—I just reach for her, because reaching for her feels like the only thing in the world that will allow me to breathe again.
My need for her is instinctive. Feeling the warmth of her skin, the way it lights up my chest like the fucking second star itself is planted behind my lungs—reassuring myself that something as beautiful as her will hasn’t been snuffed out just when I’ve finally gotten the chance to touch it—it’s the only thing that will soothe the fear raging through me.
I stroke her arm and turn her toward me carefully. I don’t know exactly how her immortality works; there hadn’t been time to ask how long it takes to recover from grievous injuries. I hardly hear the hush of whispers that rise from the Grove Dwellers around us; hardly feel the press of my friends’ shock against the back of my neck.
I only feel Willa as she stirs beneath my touch. Eyes closed, long lashes fluttering against her cheek as another wave of power explodes from her skin. Her magic is the opposite of mine—all fractions of light and spills of every color—and I bask in its warmth. It pours from her body like starlight made liquid, splashing onto the dead earth surrounding us like an ethereal wave.
And where it touches, life blooms.
Grass spreads over the barren ground and verdant plants burst upward, spreading their leaves toward the stars above. Flowers like the ones bordering the north beach bloom wildly, their colors a mirror of Willa’s power itself. New trees climb toward the sky, just as large and magnificent as those destroyed, their branches shadowing and protecting the Grove once more.
All around us are gasps of delight, giggles of pleasure, as the Grove Dwellers, the Silva Lucai, and the hidden children of Letum, witness the rebirth of their home.
Sam’s eyes meet mine, his gaze full of the things I should be feeling: wonder, awe. Hope. Willa has found her magic, which means imagination and healing have returned to my kingdom. I’ve toiled and planned and sacrificed for this exact moment. The moment the scales of the universe begin to tip back toward their original balance. A balance systematically destroyed not only by the Aeternalis, but by me.
But as I watch Willa’s power, fueled by her beautiful mind, by her creativity—no hope lights my chest. I’m only filled with ice cold dread.
I’ve worked for so many years to keep the balance of the kingdom, never able to relax my hold for even a second. They say love is a powerful motivator, but I’d argue guilt is a more formidable one. My guilt has driven me to torture myself, over and over, every day for the last century, to make up for what I’ve done. For how I damned a kingdom and an entire world beyond.
I killed the Aeternalis, sliced him through the belly with a sharp, metal hook and watched him bleed out slowly at my feet without a hint of remorse. I didn’t know, then, that the island always needs an anchor. And when Pan had gasped his last breath, it had latched on to the only soul nearby.
Me.
But Pan’s power, even as twisted as it had become, was made of dreams. And in that moment, there had been no dream in my soul, no light in my heart—there had only been death. For everything he’d taken from me, and from so many others.
My power cursed us all, dooming the kingdom, and all who reside in it, to a slow death. A death of dreams, of imagination. And ever since, the island and I alike have been searching for a purer form of magic—to give it life, to return it to its former glory.
Willa moans, and when her eyes finally open, my dread becomes a solid thing, an immovable slab of iron deep in my stomach. The swirls of green and gold are brilliant against the night sky, even more so when her lips quirk into a small smile.
“I told you I could help, you necrotic jackass.”
Sam lets out a hearty laugh, but I remain still, taking in the soft slant of Willa’s nose, the angle of her jaw. Memorizing it all. Her brow creases as she searches my face. “I’m alright, Niko,” she assures me softly. “There wasn’t a cost—I just…” She shrugs, searching for the right words. “I think I just needed to stop being so afraid all the time.”
I nod, helping her to her feet. She curls into my side, and I hate myself a little more for pulling her closer. For reveling in each measure of her breath, in the way her body fits against mine, when I have no right to any of it.
I don’t need my magic to ruin Willa. With each moment of silence—every moment I choose not to tell her there is a cost to her power, she just doesn’t understand it yet—I’m destroying her a little more.
Because now that her magic has awoken, the island will take notice. I can feel it in my blood.
The transfer of power has begun. Soon, the island will anchor itself to Willa’s heart and finally let go of mine. She’ll be tied to Letum forever, unable to leave without feeling the pain of the binding.
It’s everything I’ve hoped for, but as I stare down at Willa, skin flushed with happiness and power, I feel no victory. Only an acute sense of grief and the notion that in liberating my kingdom, it isn’t only her I’ve shattered—I’ve destroyed myself.