Chapter 14
EMBERLINE
“Okay, they’re out of earshot. Tell me what’s going on.”
“Gabriel’s pissed I told him you and Luca took the boat and escaped. He blames me for abandoning you and rightly so. I’m fucking furious with myself for how I handled everything.”
I put my hands on my hips. “There’s more going on here.”
“Go back to the villa, Emberline.” Nico sighed, his shoulders slumping as he turned back towards the ocean. He sounded calm. No, not calm.
Like he’d completely given up.
I stepped toward him, cold-as-ice shadows brushing my bare toes, swallowing down my fear as I plunged in, frozen air wrapping around my ankles and calves, like hands trying to pull me down into the Underworld.
I shivered.
Where had that thought come from?
“I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what all this secrecy is about.”
“Please, Emberline. Just go back. You don’t want any part of this.” His pleading tone surprised me enough, I almost stopped right there, but I plowed through those grasping shadows until I wrapped my arms around his waist, and I laid my chin against his chest.
All around us, the ocean crashed and retreated, like the water had for eons and still would, long after we were gone.
“You can’t shut me out forever, Nico. You know I’ll always find a way in.” I smiled when his jaw flexed in frustration, and I held on tighter. “Why can I see your shadows, but no one else can? Why do I feel like I’m standing in a foot of snow, not a beach in the middle of summer?”
“I can’t,” he murmured, dropping his chin to his chest, as if trying to block out the sight of me.
“Tell me why I can see them, and I’ll stop asking questions.” I stroked his face, staring up into a pair of pain-filled eyes, full of the kind of torment usually reserved for someone who’s lost everything.
I’m right here, I wanted to tell him.
“So. These shadows.” I decided I’d either get my answers, or we’d stand here until we turned to dust. “I’ve been seeing them for weeks, ever since I drowned. They have something to do with me dying, right?”
His entire body jerked, like I’d struck a nerve.
“You don’t want that answer,” he insisted, but he reached down to stroke my cheek, the pink mark that stubbornly wouldn’t go away, the reminder of that night in my father’s office when he saved me from Blackwood.
“There are some secrets, Emberline, that you don’t need to know. Secrets that will haunt your dreams, and the very last thing I want to do is make those anything less than sweet. I can’t become a monster to you. I just… can’t. It would break my godsdamned heart if you ever thought of me that way.”
“First, you’re no monster. Second, stop deciding what I do and don’t need. Just tell me the truth.”
He ground his teeth together, temper flashing, the first real emotion I’d gotten from him all morning.
Good.
“Fine. If you don’t want to talk about the shadows, then tell me about the spiders. I saw them, Nico. Hundreds of them. I watched them hatch from their sticky nests, and I had no way to fight them. Tell me how to kill them, and we’ll be done with this conversation.”
His throat worked.
Once.
Twice.
Like he was arguing with himself, and losing, until finally he pinched his lips together and shook his head in silent denial. Disappointment swept through me, but I asked the last question that had been haunting me for weeks.
“The dream, then,” I prompted softly. “Tell me how you were inside my dream. How did you touch me, like this?” I ran my palm down his neck, his chest, so my whole hand covered his thumping heart.
“Tell me how you were real inside my head. How can you walk through the Underworld with me, Nico… unless you’ve known Death, the same way I do. ”
“You weren’t supposed to remember that.”
My breath caught, heart tangled in knots as the words settled. The admission that wasn’t quite an admission but answered my question, just the same.
Then every nerve in my body lit up because everything was true.
The dream, the veil, the Underworld.
My parents, together in death.
All I could do was hang onto him as shadows nipped at my bare legs.
Gods. All of it was true.
He could really visit me in my dreams.
“You see my shadows the same way I see the silver in your eyes. The same way I track where you are, every minute of every day. The same way I know your heartbeats and your sorrows and your every waking fear, like they are my own.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“Doesn’t it?” He smiled down at me softly. “Funny. It makes perfect sense to me.”
“Then how about this? Why does your magic look exactly like Blackwood’s guards’ magic? Were you one of them, once?” I held my breath, not expecting an answer, and as expected, I didn’t get one.
“If I told you, you would never see me the same way as you do now.” I opened my mouth to argue, and he laid a finger over my lips. “No, you would despise me, Emberline, and rightfully so. Leave me this one secret, I beg you, and I will do whatever you want. I will wake Emilia from her sleep.”
“You can really do that?”
“I don’t make promises I can’t keep.” A little of the old Nico came through, that touch of wry humor, and I breathed easier.
“How do you know how to do all of this? The spells and the shadows and going into my dreams? That’s serious magic stuff.”
“I’m very good at serious magic stuff, I’ll have you know,” he pressed his forehead into mine. “But Emilia taught me. She’s been helping me for decades to keep my… magic under control.”
“What happens if you lose control?” When Nico went quiet, I stroked his cheek, his eyes slipping closed beneath my touch, strong body relaxing against mine.
“Nothing good,” he said quietly. “But I rarely lose control these days, and along the way, I picked up a few tricks from her that have come in handy.”
“Like dreamwalking?”
“Like dreamwalking, yes.” Something wicked ignited in his smile. “In fact, I can do other things in your dreams if you’re curious. Things that would only be possible in a dream.” He pressed his lips to my ear and whispered, “Deliciously wicked things.”
I shivered, heat tangling low in my stomach. “Now you’re just trying to change the subject. I still want to know how waking Emilia up would work.”
“I’d need time to cast the spell. And time will be the hardest thing to come by, even harder than sneaking onto that godsforsaken island.
Though I might… might be able to entice a few of the priests to assist.” He slanted me a look.
“They despise the sons. It has to rankle, having their queen trapped in stasis while those two stronzos strut around.”
“Could you really enter my dreams again?” I asked breathlessly. If Nico was with me, if we could somehow act together in that realm, if we could locate Emilia, what if we could convince her to wake up?
To come back.
I’d been toying with the theory ever since we’d arrived on this island, trying to work out the logistics of simply finding someone within my dreams. And while I might not have a clue what I was doing, something told me Nico would.
If we could wake Emilia without breaking through wards or enlisting the help of priests or endangering Gabriel or Dante…
“I’m offended you doubt my abilities.” He really did sound hurt, then he paused, eyes narrowed in suspicion. “What’s going on in that head of yours, princess?”
“Nothing. Yet,” I hedged, even though possibilities whirled faster and faster. “Just working through a theory; I’m not sure if the idea is even feasible. Let’s assume we wake up Emilia. What then?”
“Mayhem, darling.” His grin was like the sun coming out. “Absolute and complete mayhem.”
But beneath the brightness, darkness lingered.
Like a shadowy smudge, it hadn’t disappeared, simply gone into hiding. Like whatever secrets he was keeping from us. And while I would never suspect Nico of wanting to hurt me, the simple fact remained.
Secrets were a poison that ate away at you. Until there was nothing left.
“Gods, I adore you,” I told him softly. “I want you to know that.”
“Well, I am quite adorable. So, was that a yes on the dreamwalking? Because I’ve been dying to try a few things, but I’m not quite sure they’re physically possible… here.”
He waggled his eyebrows, and I punched him in the shoulder, even as more of that delicious heat gathered between my legs. “You are incorrigible.”
“That I am,” he said, without apology. “But you love it.”