36. Chapter 36
Chapter thirty-six
I t’s after midnight when Niko finally returns.
Unable to sleep, I’ve been working for the past half-hour on conjuring myself a set of throwing knives to match my gladius, but the painting slips entirely from my mind when I feel his icy presence enter the room. I spin to find him leaning up against the bedroom door frame, his onyx eyes devouring every bit of the lingering candlelight. For a long moment, we just stare at each other, as a mess of emotions begin to claw their way up my throat and pile atop my tongue.
He made me his and then he left, and I’m not sure which matters more. I only know anger is the easiest emotion to grasp, but as I prepare to hurtle it at him, he closes the space between us in two large strides, crushing me to his body.
His mouth sweeps hungrily over mine, and I lose hold of every bit of the rancor, every bit of the humiliation and regret I’ve been holding since I woke up this morning alone. Niko’s hold is tight and steadfast, as though he fears I’ll slip between his fingers like the wisps of a dream.
My legs go weak as he kisses me thoroughly, leaving me breathless. But I find I need no oxygen so long as I have him. As the day went on with no sign of him, I’d begun to wonder whether I’d imagined the pure magic that had erupted between us last night. But as our tongues dance, and I lose myself in him again, I know it was true.
Know we’re true.
We’re both breathing heavily by the time Niko pulls away, the small distance between us enough to recover some of my scattered thoughts.
“Where the hell have you been?” I demand breathlessly.
“I went to check on Marina.”
“All day and all night?”
His mouth twists. “No,” he admits in a strained growl. Like the confession costs him something. He doesn’t elaborate, his eyes drifting from my face to the variety of weapons piled on his bedroom floor. “Have you raided the armory again?”
“No,” I reply with a proud shimmy. “I was practicing. I’ve figured out how to control my magic better, thanks to Sam.”
“Sam,” he repeats faintly, still eyeing the knives and swords with an indecipherable look.
“Yep,” I reply, bending down to pluck up my latest creation. A gorgeous dagger, perfect for a thigh sheathe. Niko listens as I explain about the painting. “For some reason, weaponry has been the easiest thing for me to paint well. But I’m sure everything else will come with time.”
I expect his praise for how far I’ve come, but Niko only frowns and rakes his fingers roughly through his hair. “Fuck,” he mutters, more to himself than me.
I furrow my brow, fully taking in the state of him for the first time. His normally immaculate clothes are rumpled and unkept, his leather boots caked in mud and slouched untied around his ankles. Though he wears no eyeliner tonight, circles nearly as dark as the makeup stain the skin beneath his eyes. Dread begins to spiral through my stomach, tentacles that writhe and pierce through my earlier happiness.
“Niko, what’s wrong? Is Marina okay?” I don’t ask the question pressing down against my heart, strangling my lungs. Do you regret the things you said to me?
I don’t know if I can survive the answer.
“She’s fine,” he bites out, motioning carelessly to my weapons. “I told you not to use your magic.”
“You said because I couldn’t control it,” I reply uncertainly. “But look how—”
“There’s a cost, Willa!” he shouts, killing my words in my throat. Niko never raises his voice. He’s never had a need. But now, his voice is wild—panicked—and it slices through every warm feeling I allowed myself the past few days, turning them straight to ice.
He heaves a deep sigh, his mouth twisting in anguish. Before I can say anything else, he straightens and entwines his fingers with mine. “I need to show you something.”
I gaze up at him, searching his face for a hint as to what has him so rattled, but I’m met with a stubborn wall of obsidian.
“Okay,” I manage, feeling increasingly unmoored. “I, uh…I need to get dressed first.”
I gesture vaguely to the red lace nightgown I’d imagined for myself earlier—it had been even easier than the weapons, because I knew the way Niko’s gaze would spark greedily the moment he saw it. The way he’d take me to the floor in the middle of his bedroom, unable to wait even the second it would take to make it to the bed before he had his hands on me.
He barely seems to notice it, though, as he takes his cloak from his shoulders and wraps it around mine perfunctorily. It’s this, more than anything, that simultaneously heightens my alarm and increases my dread. Niko notices everything about me. Always. Whether I want him to or not. That he’s so distracted now can only mean something is terribly wrong.
“Come,” he says softly, leading me out of his rooms and into the corridor beyond.
He doesn’t speak as we walk. He doesn’t look at me at all, his eyes fixed straight ahead of him.
His refusal to see me opens up a hollow in my chest, and I wish it didn’t. It shouldn’t matter that he isn’t staring at me like something hallowed; it shouldn’t feel like I’ve been scraped out and gutted. But it does. And somehow in this moment, I miss him even as he stands next to me.
Miss the way he grounds me into myself—the confidence I feel in my place not only in the world, but beside him. It seems ridiculous now, to think I could not only touch death, but know it.
My only consolation is his hand in mine, and the way his ribbons dance around my feet as we walk silently through the Lunaedon. They spiral around me, playful and wild, like they’ve spent all day as bereft at our parting as I’ve been. I cede a small smile, resisting the urge to untangle my hand from Niko’s and hold his ribbons instead.
At least I know they like me.
After what seems like ages of walking, Niko brushes a large tapestry aside, revealing a hidden door. Unlike the doors in the rest of the palace, this one is plain, an undecorated panel of black.
My heartbeat ratchets up into my throat as he places a palm to the surface. The door disappears, revealing a narrow staircase leading up and out of sight. Niko’s rooms are situated in the upmost floor of the palace, but these stairs lead even higher, most likely to one of the towering turrets.
As we step inside the stairwell, the silence presses uncomfortably against my ears. I lose count of how many steps we ascend, instead focusing on the rustle of the cloak against my ankles and the icy feeling of Niko’s hand in mine. Physical things to ground me to the present, even as my mind spirals beyond my control.
My thighs burn as we climb, my anxiety rising in time with my steps. Niko knows I don’t like heights. What would he need to show me at the very top of his palace?
His face reveals nothing, as we step onto the landing of the narrow stairs. I swallow, wishing I possessed even a molecule of Sam’s natural calm. My thoughts rapidly fire through me like scattered pieces of glass, slicing through my brain and carving through my chest.
As Niko places a palm to the next door, this one carved with the same skulls and flowers as the Lunaedon gates, I remind myself the fear, the adrenaline, the instinct to run—none of it has to do with him.
It’s residual, the echoed imprint of everyone who was supposed to love me splaying me open instead. Taking and taking until there was nothing left, and then abandoning me to endure the emptiness alone.
Look at everything I’d burn to the ground for you.
I replay his words in my head. Niko is a villain— the villain. The dark and selfish shadow from all the stories. He told me he’d burn the kingdom to the ground for me, but would he save me from his own fire?
You are adytum in a lifetime of purgatory.
I wish I could remember what it meant.
Adytum, adytum.
The word repeats to the rapid beat of my heart, as the door disappears revealing a small observation deck atop the highest Lunaedon tower. The word is a chanted prayer to the swirling Letum sky, a cornerstone to hold onto as my head begins to swim with the height.
I hesitate in the doorway, my limbs suddenly feeling far too light for my body as an icy breeze nips viciously at slips of my exposed skin. Niko steps out into the night air, pulling me gently after him. When he finally looks at me, his expression only heightens my dizziness.
Pure, undiluted anguish.
I tense, my fingers slipping from his. “Niko, what is this?” I ask warily, eyeing the ornately carved stone railings lining the circular tower.
“Look,” he insists, the words sorrowful. He steps behind me, crowding me with his body against the railing even as I try to step back toward the safety of the stairs. “Please, Willa. Trust me.”
It’s a ridiculous thing to ask of a woman standing on the edge of precipice; a woman who’s been burned by the fall.
But the truth is, I do trust Niko, and it’s never been a decision so much as an instinct. Something woven into the marrow of my bones, carved into my lungs. I step toward the edge of the turret, gripping two of the decorative spires in my hands, as I lean forward.
Adytum, adytum.
My palms sweat, and panic threatens to send me toppling over as I gaze down at the sprawl of Letum so far below. But then Niko is there, the solidity of his chest grounding me as his death envelops the space around us. I relax into the dark relief of it, and after a few moments, my breathing calms enough to appreciate the stunning landscape.
I can see everything from here—the lights of Caelum glowing against the shadowed ships trapped in the harbor. The dark sprawl of the forest and the mountains beyond, their violet peaks illuminated by the soft lights of the Grove.
The sparkling black sands of the beach and the glittering water of the lagoon. In the distance, a group of sirens lounge on a cliffside, their opalescent tails shimmering in the starlight. And beyond them, the sea rages, white-capped waves crashing against the island cliffs.
I feel the beauty of it in the place behind my heart where my magic shimmers. The palette of colors awakens, immeasurable and infinite, and for a moment, I see Letum as it once was—not a land of carrion and death, but a land of dreams.
Niko’s hands slip beneath the cloak, his bare fingers gently grazing over my skin.
I lean into his touch with a shiver, the feel of him unleashing an acute ache beneath my ribs. His fingers trail over my throat, and then hook gently beneath my chin to lift my gaze from the jagged shadows of the Crocodile to the swirling sky above. Deep violets and midnight blues crash together in wild splashes, the astral colors so vibrant against the fathomless dark of the sky.
And at the center of it all, the star that brought me to Letum. That drew me from a colorless life and threw me into a world of violence and dreams. Of blurred edges and vivid strokes.
“It’s beautiful,” I whisper to the sky, as Niko nuzzles into the juncture of my throat and inhales sharply. Like he doesn’t need oxygen to sustain him. Only me.
“You’re beautiful,” he replies so softly, the words are hardly more than a murmur. “You have been my only breath of life in centuries of death. You’ve left me forever undone. No matter the rush of dreams or sprawl of the stars or the span of time, I will always be on my knees in benediction and gratitude…to you, Willa.”
His words send a thrill of warmth shooting through the center of me, electrifying every dark recess of my soul until I am awake. There is no more numbness, no more indifference. I feel everything with such intensity, for a moment, I can’t speak around it.
Niko steps away, pressing himself against the stone castle, putting as much space between us as the small turret allows. The absence of him—of his relief and ice and warmth—is nearly as dizzying as the height, but when I try to go to him, he merely shakes his head and points back to the second star.
“Look, Darling.”
“I see it,” I reply, uncertainty and irritation rising in tandem. The star is as beautiful as it was in my world the night it called me to the top of the roof, but I don’t want to look at it now. I want to look at Niko, and I want him to look at me back. I want to lose myself in him and forget about the star and the Strayed and the way he’s unmoored me—I only want to remember us.
“Don’t just see,” Niko murmurs. So earnestly, I do as he asks and turn back to the sky. His gaze is heavy on my skin as I examine the star, his eyes filled with a desperate longing he won’t let me see.
You don’t have to want, I think. I’m right here. I’m yours. Adytum.
“Don’t just look, Willa, feel . Reach for it with your heart. With your magic.”
Niko’s voice is a silky caress of night, and I try to do as he asks.
“Feel the scorching heat. The deathly cold.”
His power. Mine. Both tangled together in the ethereal light.
I shiver as the soft thought rolls over me. As starlight spills over my skin, through my veins. As my magic rises from its pool behind my heart in answer, and collides with the star’s power, lashing through me until I’m breathless and wanting.
An aching want. For something endless. Reaching for the edges of possibility and finding none.
It batters against my heart and lungs; it crashes against my bones. And when I’m entirely full and my skin is stretched to the limit, the shimmering, ethereal light spills from me. From my eyes and mouth and fingers. It pools in my hair, and trails over my lips until I am nothing but dreams and starlight.
The power unfurls around me, reaching for the sky, as the second star calls it home. Fractals of every color imaginable, framed by the fathomless dark of the night. Hot and cold. Void and creation.
Like Niko and I, the sky is a dichotomy of the beginning and the end. Of birth and death.
I close my eyes, as my magic threads into the star, gently at first, like tendrils of gossamer. And when it touches the center, the well of power behind my heart explodes in a shimmer of sparks. I gasp aloud, as a pulse of something electric, originating both from inside me and out, radiates in the sky between us.
The shockwave reverberates through the island, its force sending me stumbling back into Niko. The cold of his death washes over my skin, the small bite of pain the only thing keeping me tethered to earth, as the magic drags at my heart and reorders its beat; pulls at my blood so fiercely, I’m sure it’ll all spill from me. The star and myself entwined are an explosion of light and color—one that threads through my bones, winds around my ribcage until I can hardly move.
Until I’m fully immersed and can no longer feel the divide between us.
Because the wards were never a path to travel, or a gate to be opened and closed at will.
I am the star, so I am the ward.
The realization pulses through me. I am the second star, the imagination of the world. I hold its dreams, its light, its innovation in my blood.
“Open, Willa,” Niko murmurs near my ear.
Words are beyond me. There is no language, no sentiment to capture the pure power spiraling through me. Birth and death and every possibility between. The endless potential of dreams expands not just before me, but in me. Intangible; too wild, too ethereal, to ever hold. It now blooms inside me, fed by the pump of my heart.
Once, I’d despised the sound of it. The never-ending tick, tick, tick, thumping against my chest eternally. I’d felt betrayed by its beat, betrayed by the universe for its inability to just give up.
But maybe this is what the agony had been for. This land, this moment. In the sprawl of people and time, this is what I was born for.
So, I do what Niko asks, not because he asks it, but because the rightness is in my very being. My soul, my heart, my bones.
I open.
And so does the universe. Worlds upon worlds, all tied together by the link of imagination, built on the foundation of dreams. Thousands of pathways, rotted and dusty with unuse, flare to life. And just like the soil at the Grove, vitality spills through them. Like the universe has awakened at my touch.
“The wards are now yours, Willa.”
Mine. The world is mine .
I turn, blinking at Niko as the freedom of the wards pulses wildly through me. The freedom I’ve always longed for—that I’ve scraped and bled and crawled for but could never reach—is now mine. Because of Niko.
There are so many emotions in the depthless black of his eyes, it’s impossible to pinpoint just one. He’s gone entirely still, his hands balled into tight fists at his sides, his mouth pressed into a thin, white line. Even his death is suspended in frozen ribbons around him.
Like it’s taking every ounce of strength he possesses to hold himself in place.
To hold himself back from me . With sudden dread, I understand.
He’s not only gifted me freedom—he’s expecting me to take it. Now that the wards are mine, I can leave Letum, leave him, whenever I choose. Something near devastation crashes through me, even as I struggle to keep hold of everything I’ve felt in the past few days.
Why would he let me leave when he told me I was his?
“Are you…” I clear my throat. “Are you telling me to go?”
Though I struggle to keep my voice unaffected, there’s a pathetic waver to it. A fracture that I hate. It’s too hard with the star’s power rampaging through my veins to keep hold of any but my most primal thoughts. The ones too deep to float away in the presence of such strong magic. The ones grounded into the depths of me.
And Niko—he’s rooted into my soul.
“You should.” His words are guttural, hardly more than a grind of his teeth.
Hot anger rises to wash away my hurt, to shroud my heart and keep it from shattering entirely. “Why?” I grit out venomously.
“Because you should,” he snaps again, his body still planted firmly in place. “That is all I have to offer you. Go back to your world, Willa, before you’re forced to make a decision as a hero instead of a coward…a decision that traps you inside of it forever.”
His eyes are icy and sharp, the ruthless gaze of the Carrion King. “The island needs an anchor. A magic that will give it life instead of death. Go before you’re as trapped here as I am. Eternally. Irrevocably.”
Niko’s mouth thins in disgust, the same disgust I’d glimpsed when he first beheld me in the throne room all those weeks ago. I thought it was for me, but now that I’ve seen the parts of Niko he shields from the rest of the world, his hatred exists in a new light. His revulsion was never for me—it was for himself.
And right now, he hates himself entirely for telling me to leave, but I hate him more. For being selfless, for giving me up when he promised he wouldn’t. My hatred is a flash of heat, of acid, that sizzles and explodes as it meets the starlight flowing through me.
Niko’s eyes narrow on me, so black that the light of the second star is entirely lost within them. “ Go Willa. I won’t keep you in a cage.”
I hate him so much I think I’ll combust. For knowing my heart so well; for seeing me in a way no one else ever has. In a way I haven’t been able to see myself. Niko knows how the thought of being trapped makes my skin itch and my mind ache. He believes he’s giving me what I want, and he’s sacrificing himself and his kingdom to do it.
I can’t decide if it makes him the villain or the hero. I only know he’s right.
Freedom is all I’ve wanted for so long. But on top of this tower in the land of dreams with starlight pouring through my veins, staring at this lethally beautiful man—I can’t remember why.
“You’re a fucking idiot,” I spit venomously, stalking toward him. “An idiot with a hero complex!” His eyes flare as I shove him roughly, and he rocks back into the stone of the palace wall. “And if that’s who you’re going to be, then I will leave.”
“Good!” he shouts back, his eyes wild as his death finally unfreezes to spear out around us both, violent dark slashes against the glow of the sky. “Go!”
I shove him again. “Tell me who you are, Niko—who you really are. Are you the King of Carrion who takes what he wants without remorse? Or are you some simpering savior who’s going to give me up because you think it’s what I want?”
Niko’s jaw tightens and his eyes flash with that mad obsession. The one I revel in, that consumes me in its darkness. “Don’t you see? That’s exactly what you’ll be if you stay! You are already their star, and it won’t be long before they turn you into their queen, Willa. They’ll turn you into their savior, their god…and you will never be able to escape it.”
“I don’t want to escape it!”
The words are half-shout, half-sob, and wholly wild. But I don’t take them back as I stare at Niko. I don’t take them back as I let go of the star’s power, as I let it drain from my veins. Niko swallows roughly, as my skin returns to its normal olive-toned hue; as the shimmer recedes back up into the sky.
“I have run for so long, Niko, and I’m…I’m tired.” Hot tears well in my eyes, and I hate those, too. “I’ve been running away from anything that could touch me, tie me down, because I feared what it would cost. But here with you, my fear has been replaced by power.”
I clear my throat, swiping irritably at the wetness on my cheek. Niko’s indifference, his hardness, has given way to agony.
“Letum has made me realize— you have made me realize—that freedom isn’t some unreachable horizon. It’s being somewhere you’re known. Being with someone who sees you entirely, every horrible part, and doesn’t shy away from it. That is true freedom, Niko. And it’s what I want. Even if I have to sacrifice to keep it.”
Niko’s own tear falls, as he opens his mouth to argue, but I don’t let him get the words out.
“It’s okay. I can be their savior—I can save both our worlds. I’m not scared to do it anymore.”
“Willa, you shouldn’t have to—”
I step forward, framing his face with my hands, the roughness of his stubble scraping the tender skin of my palms. “It’s different this time.”
“It’s not,” he insists, half-heartedly trying to brush my hands away. To avert his gaze from mine.
“It is,” I reply fiercely. “Because this time, I have you. ”
Niko’s gaze snaps back to mine, fervidly searching my face.
“I can be the hero so long as I have you as my villain.”
A line appears between his eyebrows, and I swear, he stops breathing entirely as I continue, “I don’t want you to send me away to protect me. I want you to be exactly what you are…cruel and selfish and obsessive. You won’t ever let me sacrifice all of myself for this kingdom, because you won’t let anyone have what is yours.”
I run my fingers gently from his cheek, down his throat and over his collarbones. I trace the miniscule words, the sprawling stories of his heart.
“Tell me right now what kind of man you truly are, Niko. One that gives up everything because he’s trying to be good? Or one that will burn the world if it means keeping what’s his?”
His lashes flutter as he sucks in a shaky breath. “I’m holding on by a thread here, Willa. This is your last chance to escape me. To leave me unscathed.”
I smirk and rise up to my tiptoes to trail a whisper over his lips. “I’ve spent my entire life in unscathed skin. Ruin me, Niko.”
His answering look is terrifying—cutting and lethal—and I shiver with pleasure beneath it. His next words are a dangerous chant, a deadly invocation.
“If you stay, I will lie and kill.” His vow is a hot caress over my throat. “Hurt and maim, trick and scheme, to keep you with me until the end of my days. I will sacrifice all morals, betray all honor, to keep you in your power. You are my only altar, my only religion. I pray to you, Willa, and you alone.” The space between us pulls tight with tension as he breathes the next words. “Is that truly what you want?”
It’s my last chance. To keep hold of my freedom, my fear, my self-reliance—the things that have kept me alive for so long. Staying means allowing the ghosts of my past to catch up, to face the fears I’ve so studiously avoided. Fear that I won’t be enough for any of it.
It isn’t sudden honor that makes the task of facing up to my worst failings seem surmountable—it’s entirely selfish.
Because love is both selfless and selfish—I’d give up the entire world to keep Niko, to keep my power, to keep Letum, but I will not give them up for the world. I’ll damn it all to hell—everything, including my freedom—for those precious things.
“Yes,” I whisper as more tears pour down my face. Tears borne of newfound clarity, of Niko’s heart and mine both laid bare between us.
Adytum.
I’ve finally remembered what it means. In the most ancient of stories, the myths and legends my father told me as a child from civilizations long extinct, towering temples were built to gods whose names have been lost to time.
And in these, were always an innermost chamber, a place reserved only for the most holy. Small and deep, a place of peace, of quiet reflection and dedicated worship: a sanctuary.
And in a universe of pain and darkness, what is more sacred than a place of solace? Of respite?
“Yes, Niko,” I say again. “I want you. I want an adytum. ”
His eyes widen and his hands finally unfurl from his sides, like my words have freed him from his self-inflicted cage. He wraps me in his arms, lifting me up and pulling me firmly against the carved planes of his chest. I wind my legs around his waist, meeting his gaze.
“Give me sanctuary,” I plead softly.
The King of Carrion’s control snaps and he crushes me to him, taking my mouth beneath his. He kisses me with an ardent desperation, and as I lose myself in him, I find exactly what I’ve always been searching for.
True freedom.