39. Chapter 39
Chapter thirty-nine
L etum was beautiful in the starlight, but it is ethereal beneath the warmth of the sun.
The city of Caelum celebrates its return with a raucous celebration that lasts nearly a week. Music pumps through the streets, echoing out over the harbor. People dance and laugh, drunk on both spirits and light. They share wild stories and delicious food, their skin darkening beneath the rays.
Marina has kept a faithful watch on the forest above the Hollows, but there’s been no sign above ground of Dawson or the Strayed. Though Niko believes the absence is temporary, it’s given us both much needed reprieve. With each day, my connection to the island grows healthier. Like vines of the forest, new offshoots sprout from my pool of magic, winding roots into the heart of Letum itself.
I no longer have to claw through the walls erected around my heart to find my power. It’s always there, shimmering just beneath my skin. Waiting for me to dip my fingers in and paint a new possibility. I’m confident that when Dawson decides to make a move, I’ll be ready, but even the looming threat he poses isn’t enough to dim the joy blooming in me. Around me.
For the first time since I found Celie on the garage floor, I allow myself pieces of happiness I once thought I didn’t deserve. Every day with Niko smooths more of those jagged wounds left inside me. We spend the mornings in bed, and the afternoons floating around the hot springs. We hike through the thick forests to waterfalls hidden in the heart of the island, and laze in the sunshine beside the water’s roar. We visit Adira at the Grove, and my heart expands as I watch Niko chase after the children, their screams of delight trailing through the branches.
He takes me to every art gallery in the city; to operas and small, acoustic shows. He sits with Sam and I as we paint, patiently allowing me to study his bone structure and then promptly ruin it with my terrible technique.
And then, when the nights of Letum fall, the starry sky made more beautiful by the contrast of daylight, he takes me to our bed and worships me with that passionate darkness I’ve come to crave.
All of it has allowed me to make peace with Celie’s death and with myself. It was never me or my father or the camps that could have erased the crushing hopelessness she faced.
For without dreams, there is nothing to drive you forward. There is no light of possibility in the endless dark. And though I desperately wish Celie was here to know the way those things can feel, to watch the true healing of imagination and dreams, I know she’d be proud.
With every day I spend falling in love with the kingdom, every moment I feel it nurture me in return— each time the rotted roots connecting Letum to the mainland grow a little stronger— I save a little of the beauty in my heart for her.
Tonight, I save the sunset. The swathes of savory oranges and cotton-candy pinks painted across the sky in a way I’ll never be able to replicate with a brush. I sigh, sipping happily on the last dregs of wine straight from the bottle and digging my toes into the warm black sand of the lagoon.
When I pass it to Niko, it’s to find him not watching the sunset at all. He’s watching me.
“You’re going to miss it,” I pout.
He takes a swig from the bottle and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “There is nothing to find in the colors of the sunset, I can’t find in the colors of you.”
I laugh loudly, even as my cheeks heat with pleasure, and Niko leans in to taste the color himself. “I bet it took you centuries to come up with a line that ridiculous.”
Niko grins. “We all have our hobbies,” he says with a shrug. “And surely, it’s a better one than…what was it you said? ‘Idling away in a gothic palace, killing anything that comes close’.”
I roll my eyes, as one of his ribbons slithers over the tops of my feet in demonstration. “We’re going to have to find you a couple new ones for the next few centuries.”
Niko smiles, but something in his eyes dim. And in fact, it isn’t just his eyes, but all of him that’s grown dimmer over the past few weeks. He hasn’t used his magic since the night at the Grove, and yet he appears more exhausted than ever. His hands spasm where they rest on my thigh, and despite the time we’ve spent in the sun, his skin is paler than ever, the only color a purple stain of fatigue beneath his onyx eyes.
Everything around us grows more vibrant, while Niko fades into the shadows.
His tie to the island, his power—it all continues to exact its brutal price from him. And there’s nothing I can do but endure the time it takes for Letum’s magic to anchor entirely within mine.
You and I, Willa, we endure.
He said it as a promise, but it’s beginning to feel like a curse.
Niko unfolds his long legs and stands, reaching out a hand to me. “I have something to show you.”
I don’t take his outstretched palm, instead narrowing my gaze on him warily. “The last time you said that, you tried to push me through a portal.”
“Still a bit touchy about that, are we?”
I place my palm in his and hop up, brushing the sand from my dress perfunctorily. “What is the point of immortality if not to be petty, Corpsey? One hundred and fifty years from now, I’ll still be making you grovel.”
He raises a suggestive brow, his head tilting in a predatorial manner. “So long as I get to grovel on my knees.”
I stick my tongue out at him, even as my cheeks flame, and my core heats at his wanton tone. He smirks, intertwining his fingers in mine, and leading me toward where the large, spired rock of the Crocodile looms. A siren’s harrowing song echoes over the water as we wade into the lagoon. The icy surf of the low tide laps at our ankles, and the achingly sad melody opens up a hollow in my chest, sending shivers racing over my skin.
Niko holds my hand tightly in his, as we circle around the rock cliff to the mouth of the cave. The last time we were here, the tide had been too high to see the stalactites spearing up from the floor of the cave entrance to meet the stalagmites hanging from the ceiling, creating the eerie illusion of a stone jaw.
I peer into the darkness warily. I’d been terrified and desperate here, and I’d lost three whole days. What could Niko possibly have to show me in its depths that I haven’t already seen?
“Are we going to be trapped in there again?”
“If I was going to trap you anywhere, I assure you, Darling…it would be our bed.” I shiver, loving the sound of our in his lilting accent. Natural and easy, like it’s always been true, and it always will be. “It’s low tide. We have a few hours before we’d be stuck.”
“ Normal hours, not crazy, Crocodile hours,” I mutter, unconvinced.
His fingers spasm against mine, a sudden, violent jerk.
I glance at him in alarm, but he only tucks his hand into his pocket and ushers me calmly forward. Anxiety curls beneath my ribs, as I follow him deeper into the cave. He appears skeletal in the odd blue light of the cave, and as I study him—the rigid lines of his muscles, the overly lean shape of him—the anxiety contracts around my stomach like barbed wire and squeezes.
Rather than leading me around the rock ledge, Niko climbs down into the deep bowl of the cave. The silty floor is soft and smooth on my bare feet as we duck into the shadows of the Indomnitus. The ship looms over us, the majestic mainmast stretching up toward the iridescent sparkle of the ceiling.
We circle the keel of the ship and around to the bow. A shining figurehead towers above us—a skull with flowers and ribbons growing out of the hollows of the eyes and nose and mouth. Similar to the carvings of the gates of the Lunaedon, and just as darkly beautiful.
When we reach the other side of the ship, a gangplank leads from the ground to the upper deck, one that definitely hadn’t been there during my brief exploration of the cave. Like the Indomnitus has been waiting for Niko to climb aboard.
If this unsettles him at all, he doesn’t show it. Just walks smoothly up the gangway, his bare feet near silent on the wood. I follow, feeling increasingly unmoored; a feeling that only grows when we reach the deck.
The ship has always had a presence about it, a dark enchantment that kept me from coming too close. Like stepping on these decks would somehow be like stepping on a grave; like one wrong move would awaken a long-slumbering power. But as we cross to the mainmast, and then up a small set of stairs to the quarterdeck, the Indomnitus doesn’t feel like a grave at all—it feels like we’ve stepped through time.
The wooden planks sparkle like the decks have been freshly scrubbed. All of the ropes, which should be long rotted, are neatly tied and stacked. The black sails ripple in an invisible breeze, as if the ship is on the precipice of a long journey, paused in time, waiting for its lost crew to return.
I run my fingers over the captain’s wheel, as Niko comes up behind me. “It’s beautiful.”
He nods, a wistful expression on his face as he glances around the deck. “It was.”
The ship is as ornate as everything else about Niko—not only made for functionality, but a work of art. All of it built with precision, all flowing curves and shining carvings.
He swallows roughly. “Sam and I left Somnya when we were fifteen on a raft. We were desperate to find a different life or die trying. We probably should have died.” He lets out a humorless laugh. “The wards were still healthy then, and anyone could travel through them if you had enough guts to find one. By some blessing, in the midst of the wildest storm I’d ever seen, we found one and followed it to another world. A place cursed by a darkness, but also ripe with the freedom I’d always longed for. I grew up there. Built a life for myself, one where I’d never be powerless again. This ship represented everything I’d always longed for growing up under Pan. The crew became my family. The ship became my home. I explored every inch of that world, and many others beyond it. Always chasing another horizon, another shoreline where I might find something to fill the eternal hole inside me.”
I listen intently, desperate for every piece of him he gifts me with. We’ve had lifetimes apart, lifetimes alone. And getting to learn everything that happened to him, every scar, every moment, is an immense privilege.
“I never did.” He meets my gaze. “Until you.”
“Thank you for showing me,” I reply softly, humbled.
Niko lets out a shaky breath. “In honesty, I haven’t stepped foot on this deck since before I killed the Aeternalis. After I kidnapped Wendy and sent her away, he burned the masts and sunk the Indomnitus in the sea. It was only fair in his eyes…I took something he loved, even if his love was twisted and dark. So he stole mine."
There is a deep longing in his expression, as he glances around his beloved ship. “Not only mine, I suppose. He closed every ward after my betrayal, trapping us all here eternally.”
I furrow a brow, staring at the ship. “How—”
Niko laughs ruefully. “The island brought her up from the depths. A reminder of everything I lost by murdering its anchor. In case I ever forgot.”
He wraps his arms around me and buries his face in my hair. I sidle into his chest, savoring the icy smell of him. The cool relief and burning heat that cascades over my skin at his touch.
With his body curled around mine, I realize with horror, it isn’t only his hands that spasm. The muscles of his arms, of his neck and back, pull tight with strain. The weight of his exhaustion, his pain, is evident in the way he holds me; the way his fingers dig into my back, like I’m the only thing keeping him upright.
“Niko, maybe we should—”
“I needed you to know, Willa,” he says, his voice a rasp of a whisper. Soft and desperate.
Fear spikes through me, far different than any I’ve ever felt before. Intimate and sharp. I try to pull away, to examine his face, or to insist we go back to the Lunaedon, but he only holds me more firmly against him.
“I need you to hear me—” he says. The angst lining his words has me freezing in his hold, dread crackling like ice over my heart. “I would do it all over again. Every bit of the pain, the guilt, the darkness. I would choose the same path, and let the entire world know me as the villain, so long as it led me to you, Willa. Even if all I had with you was a few moments, I’d do it all over again.”
He pushes my hair from my forehead and leans down to run his lips over my jaw.
“We have eternity, Niko. Just a little more time until I’m anchored, and all of it…all of it will be worth it to be with you.”
Niko smiles faintly. “You are not an anchor, Willa. You are the freedom I’ve always been searching for. And I hope you know just how deeply I love you.”
My heart stutters to a stop, and then races forward, as if its beat has been altered: no longer an isolated rhythm but a melody. In tune with the beat of his.
I throw my arms around his neck, and kiss him desperately, imbuing it with everything tangled between us. The pain and death, the creation and light, and everything in between. Everything we’ve endured fighting our way through time and worlds to find each other.
Because Niko is my anchor and my storm, my freedom and my home. I’d thought to have one meant giving up the other, but now I see a true home is liberation. It is the chance to live entirely as yourself. To never have to shield your messy or your dark. It is knowing you always have a sanctuary to return to.
Niko kisses me back without restraint, his tongue dancing with mine as the hollow in my chest fills with warmth.
I’m thinking I may die with the fullness—with happiness—when the King of Carrion’s legs give out, and he collapses to the deck.