35. Chapter 35
Chapter thirty-five
I wake to a bed long gone cold, and no sign of Niko or his ribbons.
Though we’ve been locked in Niko’s rooms for over three days, and he’s probably ignored his kingly duties for too long, I still feel a thread of disappointment. We’d been so lost in each other—tangled and bare—it was easy to forget there was a world outside of us.
A world where devotion is a weakness to be exploited and hearts are landmines—one wrong step, and there’ll be nothing left of it to recover.
What does it mean that Niko willingly abandoned the safety of our haven to venture out into that world?
Look at what I’d burn to the ground for you.
I replay his words in my head as I bathe.
You are the only beautiful thing I’ve allowed myself.
Again, as I wander down to the kitchen to find breakfast.
You are adytum in a lifetime of purgatory.
As I devour the last few bites of an apple donut, courtesy of the Lunaedon’s magic, I resolve to spend the day figuring out the meaning of the word. It feels important—like if I decipher the one word, I’ll somehow decipher him.
It tugs at the recesses of my mind, some memory long buried by two centuries. I’ve heard it somewhere before, but as I meander aimlessly through the palace, it remains stubbornly out of my grasp.
It slips further from me as I roam deeper into the palace, my attention turning to exploring wings I hadn’t known existed and the beautiful things contained within them. I while away the hours taking in paintings and sculptures and tapestries. The luscious furnishings and gorgeous gothic architecture.
I don’t know how I ever wondered if Niko had been the designer of the Lunaedon when each detail of the castle is so uniquely him, like it was crafted from his very magic. While he may have avoided living beauty, he found a way to surround himself with it, nonetheless.
Sometime after lunch, I breeze past large glass doors on the fifth story, thrown open wide to a balcony overlooking the lagoon. A group of sirens have gathered on one of the far rocks, their silvery voices weaving together through the dark afternoon sky. The melody hooks beneath my ribs, its cadence somehow both sorrowful and immeasurably wishful.
I step out on the balcony, striding toward the railing, a sudden need to get closer to their song—to immerse myself in the sirens’ consonance the way I would in the sea itself—when a deep voice rings out from beside me.
“I’d step away from the edge if I were you.”
Heart flying up into my throat, I whirl around to find Sam sitting in a wooden chair, the many gold earrings that climb both his ears winking in the starlight, a half-finished painting propped on an easel before him.
“Sam!” I gasp, startled. “I—I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were back from the Grove.”
Sam smiles, nodding to the sirens. “You get used to it, eventually.”
“It?” I ask warily.
“Their song. The sirens were born from the combination of childhood mischief and innocent beauty. They can make their emotions yours through their songs, and they find great pleasure in doing so.”
I swallow this information slowly, as Sam goes on with a knowing wink, “I didn’t think you’d appreciate falling off another building.”
Grinning sheepishly, I gesture to the painting. “Sorry to interrupt. I’ll, uh…get out of your hair.”
“You aren’t interrupting anything,” he insists with a warm smile, motioning to the empty chair beside him. “I’d appreciate the company actually. Marina has disappeared, and Tiernan is still at the Grove.”
“Why aren’t you still there?” I blurt out, immediately wincing at the brash question and hoping Sam doesn’t hate me for it. “Shit,” I mutter, heaving a flustered breath. “I’m sorry, that’s absolutely none of my buis—”
“Sit, Willa,” Sam chuckles kindly, gesturing to a small pile of art supplies beside him. “I’d love for you join me.”
I shift awkwardly. “Oh, I, uh…I don’t know anything about painting.”
Sam waves off my protest, shoving the chair closer. “Neither did I fifty years ago, and now look at me.” He glances back to the canvas, which is more splashes of color than anything recognizable, and then laughs heartily. “Still terrible. But I’ve learned to enjoy the process, at the very least.”
In spite of myself, I smile shyly and take the seat next to him. He rises to set up another easel, before handing me a palette of paints. Red, blue, yellow, black and white. I examine them hesitantly, feeling the warm brush of Sam’s magic over my skin. Different than when he’d used it in the courtyard—this feels unintentional, like his presence simply radiates peace.
“You can make any color you can imagine from those three,” he explains, before frowning uncertainly. “Though I guess you don’t even need paint…you could just…imagine the painting?”
“Paint is probably safer,” I admit. “I haven’t really perfected the art of my power yet. I’m pretty sure I got lucky at the Grove. I could have accidentally sucked us all into the dirt.”
Sam dips his brush into an inky blue. “Well, if that’s the sort of luck you have, I assure you, Letum is happy to have it.”
“It isn’t,” I respond, clearing my throat and wondering why I even said it. Something about Sam’s company makes me feel at ease. Like every thought just slips from me before I have the chance to weigh them. “The sort of luck I have, I mean. Normally, I have no luck at all.”
Sam hums, in neither agreement nor dissent, working the deep blue into an existing swathe of violet.
“According to Niko, I should use my magic sparingly. At least until I have a better hold on it.”
Sam glances at me sidelong, the corner of his mouth turned down in a curious frown. “Niko said that?”
His tone is disbelieving, though I’m not certain why. Niko may be a lot of things, but even he would want to prevent the entirety of his kingdom from being buried alive.
“Yeah. Surprised at his benevolence?”
“No,” he answers immediately. “More like his…restraint.” He twists his mouth like he’s debating saying more, but instead, he adjusts the paintbrush between his fingers and turns back to his canvas.
In the following silence, I stare at the blank canvas and wonder what to do with it. Before Letum, I’d never had the opportunity to create anything, let alone something beautiful. And now, the possibilities spread before me, endless and tempting and overwhelming.
I dip my brush hesitantly into the black paint. But when I try to press it to the canvas, my hand freezes in midair. The brush wavers and with a curse, I toss it back on the palette.
“I don’t think I’m cut out for this.”
The truth is not that I can’t paint; it’s that I still don’t think I deserve to. A ball of emotion lodges itself in my throat, as I realize it isn’t just painting I don’t believe I deserve. It’s anything beautiful. It’s been over two hundred years since Celie died, and I’m still choking on the guilt of it—that I’m here and she’s not.
I’ve been running so long that I lost sight of what I was running from. It wasn’t just the military or the camps. It was from myself.
I’ve always considered myself a strong person—a survivor—but staying still requires a different sort of fortitude. The past few nights, I’ve been so certain I want to stay in Letum, but in the light of the morning, I don’t know I’ll be able to survive the pause; if I'll survive allowing everything I’ve outrun to catch up. To stand beneath it as it crashes over me like a tidal wave, and somehow, keep myself from drowning.
Sam merely raises an eyebrow at my outburst, before dipping his own brush into the black paint and lobbing it perfunctorily at my canvas.
“Hey!” The paint begins to drip slowly down the white cloth to the floor below. “Now you’ve ruined it.”
“Have I?” Sam asks innocently. “Or have I given you a place to start? Block in the colors. The details will come to you later.”
Somehow, the canvas does feel less imposing when it isn’t entirely blank. The dripping paint reminds me of Niko’s power, onyx silk slicing through pure light. Feeling somewhat heartened and more than a little silly, I press the brush into it and begin with long, sweeping strokes. The more color fills the canvas, the easier it becomes to continue, until I begin to lose myself in the motion.
Quiet spaces unnerve me more often than not, but with Sam, it’s amiable. The sirens have disappeared beneath the still water of the lagoon, leaving only the song of the wind and the waves to fill the silence. As I fill in the last bit of white on the canvas, I find the vast potential no longer feels overwhelming, but exciting. I can see the beginnings of something, all blurred edges and vague shapes just waiting to be carved out.
With a start, I realize this is what it means to create something from nothing— this is how it should feel when I use my magic.
“Everything okay?” Sam asks mildly, sensing the abrupt shift of my mood.
Or maybe he noticed that, for a brief moment, I stopped breathing entirely, like I’ve been punched in the gut. “Yeah, it’s just…well, I think I just figured something out about my magic.”
Sam waits expectantly, and I find myself thankful for his quiet attention as I comb through my thoughts and try to order them into something tangible.
“Using it is like this painting…the possibility feels so overwhelming—so enormous—that it’s hard to grasp one thing without being torn away by another. I need to paint it…to block in the shapes and then go back in with the details.”
Excitement threads through me as I close my eyes. I use my mind like a paintbrush, first with broad strokes and sweeping colors. My magic pulls painfully taut behind my heart as my creation begins to take shape, as I go back in with smaller strokes, dappling in light and blending in shadows until I see every intricate detail. My magic winds tighter with every added bit of precision, until my entire body seems to pulse with it.
Then with a loosed breath, I push the painting outside of myself.
When I open my eyes, I let out a whooping cry of victory at the small gladius laying in my palms. The same one I lost over the edge of the balcony, with a few added improvements.
“I did it!” I shout, jumping up and wielding the sword with a peal of laughter. I prance forward with a playful jab into the air. “I really did it!”
“Without sucking anyone into the ground!” Sam grins proudly.
I grin back, feeling absurdly light. Like if I were to step off the balcony, I could fly straight to the second star. Because for once, it wasn’t devastation or ruin I brought to life—but something beautiful.
“I’m trying to be supportive here, but I’ve been at this for half a century and can still barely paint a tree.” He motions half-heartedly to his painting. “You could have taken pity on me, and at least pretended to be bad at this for longer than five seconds.”
I laugh, settling back down beside him. “If you need a pick-me-up, you should teach me to sing next. I can’t carry a tune to save my life, and I don’t think Letum’s magic is enough to change that.”
Sam chuckles. “I’ll leave that one to Niko.”
Together, Sam and I spend the afternoon creating terrible paintings and ordering increasingly ridiculous snacks from the Lunaedon kitchen. He tells me of his time aboard the Indomnitus as Niko’s first mate, his voice filled with longing as he recounts their various adventures and the many different seas they sailed together.
Tiernan returns sometime after the sky has begun to fully darken, and after declaring he would rather perish than sit still long enough to paint anything, we abandon the canvases in favor of cards and a dusty bottle of rum.
We laugh into the late hours of the evening; until my belly actually aches with it. And for once, I don’t worry that my enjoyment will be something I’ll have to eventually let go. I just let my contentment settle warmly in my stomach alongside the shimmer of my magic.
Hours after I’ve finally retired to the king’s chambers, exhausted and a bit tipsy, I wonder if I’ve been chasing the wrong sort of freedom all these years. There’s a different sort of liberation in finding a place where you don’t have to hide any of the messy pieces of yourself. A place that cradles them rather than scattering them further.
And perhaps it’s Niko that first drew me to Letum, but he isn’t the only reason I want to stay.