34. Chapter 34
Chapter thirty-four
“ I ’ve been looking for you.”
Marina glances up from where she’s tucked herself against a tree. She doesn’t bother with a greeting, only watches as I take a seat beside her, curling my legs beneath me. Her eyes are red-rimmed with exhaustion, and large swathes of her golden hair have come free of the tight bun she wears for battle.
She pulls a tattered cloak tighter around herself, like she can disappear within its folds.
I nudge her shoulder playfully with mine. “You look like shit.”
Better than you, she replies with a wry grin.
“I always look exquisite,” I reply, running a hand over my black silk shirt. “You, on the other hand, are in the same clothes you wore three days ago and have blood in your hair.”
You really know how to flatter a female.
“Considering the violence with which the women in my life respond to flattery, it’s purely a measure of self-preservation.”
Marina snorts half-heartedly.
I glance at her sidelong, examining her for a long moment. Marina’s been by my side for over two hundred years, and by now, her mannerisms are almost as familiar to me as my own. That she’s come here, to the edge of the pixie refugee camp, doesn’t mean anything good.
When the Aeternalis and his Strayed first took over the Hollows—the caves on the south edge of the island whose sacred depths housed the dust created by children’s dreams—Marina had been the driving force behind his success. Her kind have never forgiven her for the betrayal. The only one willing to give her a chance is Chrys, and now, because of me, Marina’s one tie to her own people has been broken. Again.
“You should have come home, Rina,” I say softly. A reminder that the pixies may be her blood, but the Lunaedon is her home. Sam, Tiernan, and I—we’re her family. We know the truth of her heart; the way she punishes herself day after day for her choices so long ago. “Why didn’t you?”
I don’t know.
But I know—know because I’ve felt it myself. When you are stained in violence, you feel too filthy to deserve home.
It was a lesson drilled into us repeatedly under the Aeternalis: home was something to earn, something that could be stolen. And after, when Marina had nearly shredded herself apart trying to make up for the wrongs she committed under Pan, the point had only been reiterated when the pixies banished her.
And though I’m a miserable bastard and terrible company, I’ve tried to give Marina what she’s never had—what she deserves. A place to come back to, a family who wants her, who sees her.
“Rina—I’m so sorry.” Sorry I asked her to go back to the Hollows, the place of so many of her worst memories. Sorry that using her magic again has rendered her a stranger to the woman she loves. Sorry for ruining everything I fucking touch.
Marina shakes her head, and when she finally meets my gaze, her eyes are fierce. There’s nothing to be sorry for. If you hadn’t asked me to go, we wouldn’t have been able to save the Grove and the Silva Lucai would have never recovered. The children would have been lost.
“I can be thankful you were there, and still sorry you had to be.”
Marina’s jaw tightens, but after a moment, she nods. I extract a small flask from the inner pocket of my cloak, and hand it to her wordlessly. With a grateful smile, she tips her head back and takes a long drag. She hands it back, and I do the same, appreciating the warm burn of the liquor. My body is still wasted from the power I exhausted at the Grove, the cold of death settled pervasively in my joints once more in the absence of Willa’s warmth. I feel brittle, like one blow will shatter me to pieces.
Spending the past three days tangled in Willa rather than resting certainly hasn’t helped the recovery, but I can’t bring myself to regret it, no matter how terrible the residual tremors. Every touch, every taste, pulls me beneath a heady thrall of emotions. I want to treat her skin like glass; gentle caresses and sweeping fingers until she’s keening with those soft little moans. I want to shatter her completely: dig my nails into those creamy thighs, spread her so wide there is no part of her not bared to me.
I don’t care how I must pay for it today; every bit of the pain is worth it.
I don’t think this is the end, Marina signs, drawing me brutally from my thoughts. He only brought a third of the Strayed with him to the Grove. Your brother is cunning. Those numbers were intentional. He’s planning something.
My ribbons flare savagely in the air at the mention of my brother.
The Aeternalis’ stole us both from an open nursery window during a particularly swampy heat wave in south London. I was too young to remember much from before I came to the island, but Dawson, four years my senior, remembered a lot. Our parents’ faces, the way their hands had felt when they held us, the stories they told to lull us to sleep. Dawson hoarded the memories, not to treasure fondly, but to taunt me with—to remind me over and over that I’d never had anyone to love me.
Even from a young age, my brother thrived on the Aeternalis’ brand of fun. He lived for the cruelty, for the depravity of torturing others for the pleasure of it. He’d been the one to steal Marina's voice. Cut off her tongue, and then severed her vocal cords for good measure. The fact that he’s gotten more horrible over the past century and a half since I’ve seen him is a morbidly impressive feat.
“I’m certain you’re right,” I reply with a measure of misery. “Especially now that he knows my…affection,” —my tongue trips over the word— “for Willa.”
I grit my teeth and take another swig of the rum, as my death curls around my wrists. I suck in a sharp breath through my nose, but it does little to ease the feel of flayed skin, of raw nerves.
“I should never have touched her at the Grove. He already discovered one weakness, and I foolishly handed him another.”
Because that’s what Willa is: a decadent, beautiful, vibrant, weakness. A part of my heart living outside my chest, vulnerable now, not only to Dawson, but to my own choices.
“The question now is what he plans to do with them.”
After I killed Pan, I hadn’t wanted to even think about my brother. Certainly not long enough to determine what his twisted mind was conjuring up in the shadows all these years. Because to think of Dawson, even for a moment, was to dwell on everything dark that was supposed to be light. His twisted version of family, his malevolent allegiance. The way he’d embedded them both into me with blood and pain.
He resented that while I was granted death, the island gave him nothing. Not one drop of magic beyond his own sociopathic tendencies. Despite his powerlessness, my brother became both resourceful and immeasurably cruel in his centuries with the Eternal Children. The Aeternalis ruled by chaos, but Dawson rules with militant order. Measured and controlled in a way unnatural to the childlike pandemonium of the Strayed.
“The attack on the Grove was a test of Willa’s power,” I muse out loud, even as my ribbons thrash around me, the urge to rot Dawson bit by bit boiling in my veins. Starting with his fucking eyes for daring to look at what is mine. “When he strikes this time, he’ll strike true. And it’ll be for her.”
Maybe Willa can head over to the Hollows and cave the entire thing in? Marina replies with a hopeful smirk. She seems to be pretty good at sucking people into the ground.
The mention of Willa’s magic sluices down my spine like ice water. Marina's brow creases, watching me in the way of hers that feels far too observant. Because the thing about knowing the little pixie so well is that she also knows me . And all that entails.
What is it? she asks immediately. Are you having second thoughts?
I release an irritated breath and take another swig, before passing it back. She takes it with a solemn look before taking her own swallow. A tentative silence stretches between us, one that prods at my skin. I don’t keep secrets from Sam and Marina. In a lifetime of being torn apart by holding the dark things close, being allowed to be myself around them has been my one tether to my humanity. To sanity.
But I can’t tell her that every moment I spend with Willa is another moment I’m tempted to betray everything we’ve worked for. Every touch of her skin, every sly comment from her decadent mouth, every piece of herself she hands to me for safe-keeping—all of it makes me want to live for the first time in centuries, while simultaneously drowning me in self-loathing.
I want to lie to Willa and save my kingdom. I want to tell her the truth and damn it to ruin. And I hate myself for both.
Niko, Marina signs softly. What was this all for if we’ve learned nothing?
Her words strike me in the heart like a dagger. “I have learned. Why do you think I’m here instead of in my fucking bed holding Willa? Instead of confessing my soul to her and begging for her forgiveness? Giving her my entire decayed fucking heart alongside my body?”
I stand up, swearing under my breath as I rake my fingers roughly through my hair. “Fucking star above, Rina, you think I don’t know what’s at risk? That the Aeternalis himself hasn’t risen from his crypt to tempt me with Willa? The one person in Letum whose skin I can touch, the one person who doesn’t fear me, but understands me? Whose mind follows the lines of mine, whose fire rivals my death? I fucking know. I’ve learned too well what happens when I allow my heart to beat. And I am hanging on by a thread here trying to stop it.”
The words are ragged as they spiral from me, too desperate, too slippery to pull back in.
I spin around, meeting Marina’s gaze. “I will stop it dead before I hurt my kingdom again. Before I hurt you. ”
Marina doesn’t appear assuaged by my words. She only shakes her head sadly. That wasn’t what I meant, Niko.
She pauses, her eyes flitting over me and then beyond, to the home she’s lost.
I meant what has this all been for if we become empty in the process? If you give up your heart, your humanity, you’re no better off than if you’d remained a Strayed forever under the Aeternalis. What was all of the suffering for if you end up no better than you were? If we end up no better.
“What are you saying?” I demand through gritted teeth, a fresh wave of pain raking over me as my death crawls over my wrists.
Marina stands, her small stature doing nothing to temper her intimidating poise. Her raised chin, her planted feet, they all speak to the vicious pixie she is, even as a Fallen.
You think your heart is some decomposed thing, but I’ve seen the truth of it, Niko. I’ve seen the power, the way it will tear through anything that threatens the things it holds close. Your heart is the reason any of us have survived as long as we have. You shouldn’t sacrifice it to save Letum. It isn’t worth it.
Marina’s eyes shine as she stares up at me, her pity scraping against my skin. You should tell Willa the truth and let her decide what to do. And if it isn’t anchoring herself to the island, then you should let her go knowing you loved her well enough to give her what she needs.
My breath hitches at her words. Not her words—her word: love.
Is that what I feel for Willa? Is that what scorches every nerve ending in my body and lights my brain on fire?
“Don’t you ever fucking say that to me again.”
My words are a sharp snap of my teeth, a gnash of my jaw so brutal Marina blinks in surprise. I don’t speak to her like that. Not ever—not even in the depths of my worst pain. But her words have sent a torrent of guilt and rage and fear crashing through me, uncontrollable and wild. One that will consume me if I allow it, because it isn’t directed at Marina at all.
It’s deep seated, rooted into the marrow of my bones—just how fucking unfair the universe is. That whenever I manage to claw something for myself out of the agony, I’m fated to give it up.
My freedom. My body. My family. Wendy.
Not being able to fully let go is what damned us all in the first place. And now, the lines of the universe tempt me with the same. I’ve already made my situation untenable by taking Willa beneath me. If I’m to survive it at all, I cannot entertain thoughts of anything soft .
No matter how they settle into the spaces of my soul like they were made to be there, I will shove them down into the deepest recesses of myself. I will starve and mutilate them until I no longer recognize their truths.
I won’t let anyone speak of them, because speaking words into the air transforms them into something tangible, even here, in the land of death and dreams. “Do not ever speak to me of love again, do you hear me?”
Marina’s mouth twists and her eyes flash furiously, but I’m not finished.
“Do not ever speak to me like I’m not your fucking king. I am the one the island has tasked to protect its people; I am the one who has to live with guilt of failure. Tell me, Marina…would you be able to bear the weight of the thousands of children that have already died on the mainland, and the thousands more that will if Letum's magic rots entirely?”
Marina flinches, just fractionally, but it’s enough. I dig into the chink in her armor with ruthless claws.
“Would you be able to survive the soulless collapse of the children in ours? No heart is worth that.” My mouth curls around the word in disgust. “Letum may be the land of dreams, but do not for one second think that dreams are what is true.”
My breaths are ragged and blood rushes past my ears as I glare down at Marina. Perhaps, by the end, I’ll have lost her, too.
“Sacrifice is the only thing this universe understands. The only power dreams hold is in giving them up…handing them over, piece by piece, until they are empty.”
Marina’s hands fly as she says, Fuck you, Niko. You’re an idiot and an asshole. You think you’ve learned so much, but it’s all the wrong things.
My death whirls in the air around my head like tentacles as I open my mouth to retort, but the words stick in my throat as Marina slices an angry hand through the air.
I’m not finished! You may think you’re protecting the island, but all you’re doing is protecting yourself.
“Protecting myself from what?! Can you not see this is killing me?!” I shout back.
You’re a coward! You’re killing yourself! Sticking a knife through your own heart, so you won’t have to give Willa the chance to. Because you know better than any of us, the pain is far easier to endure when you know it’s coming. Isn’t it?
I step back like she’s struck me square in the chest, her words vibrating through my ribs like the strongest of blows.
You don’t have to do everything on your own. You’ve always chosen to be alone. And if that’s your choice, then you fucking deserve it. Marina bows sarcastically, her eyes sharp and cutting. So with all due respect, Your Majesty, I’ll leave you to it.
With that, Marina spins on her heel and stalks off, leaving me staring after her. Alone.