“Not even Sam.” Willa’s mouth parts in a pretty little ‘O’ of surprise, and she leans forward like she’s desperate for more. She does this a lot—digs into every part of me like she can’t get enough of what she finds—and I find myself humbled by it each time.
“I haven’t even been here in—” I shoot a breath through my teeth, considering. “—probably over two centuries. Since before I left the island.”
“Why?”
I shrug with a casualty I don’t feel. “Because I made the mistake of showing it to my brother once. A boy who ruins beautiful things.”
A dubious crease appears between Willa’s brows. “You have a brother?”
I nod. “You’ve had the distinct displeasure of making his acquaintance. Dawson.”
Willa nearly flies out of my arms, her eyes growing so wide, for a moment, she looks like a rosy-cheeked doll.
“Dawsonis your brother?” she spits out in disbelief, shaking her head.
I run my hands absently over the curve of her thighs. “The family resemblance was more pronounced before I left the island and grew up. And before…” I trail off, motioning vaguely to the color of my eyes, the snow-white tone of my skin. The waifish state of my body. All physical manifestations of the death inside my heart. “Well, before everything, I guess.”
“I don’t know what’s more unbelievable…that you’re related to that—that…rat-faced asshole…or that he was ever kind enough to take you swimming.”
“Has anyone ever told you, you have quite the penchant for creatively poignant insults?” I remark with a chuckle. “And he wasn’t—kind, that is. Or at least, never without an ulterior motive.”
I glance around at the small hot spring, remembering my own wonder when I’d first laid eyes on it. Peaceful, quiet. Everything the world I knew growing up in the Hollows was not.
“I was too young when I was taken to remember anything about our parents. Dawson was the only family I knew. For a long time, I chased after him, hoping to somehow earn his approval. He, of course, only used my allegiance and naivete to his advantage.”
The softness in Willa’s gaze chafes against my skin, but I force myself to continue. “I used to explore the island in my spare time. I found a lot of hidden places, but this was the first one I’d wanted to share with someone. I didn’t know much aboutlove but something about it…it felt special. Like it needed to be shared.”
Willa runs her fingers through my hair, gently scraping my scalp with her nails as she listens. I lean into the touch, letting myself only feel her and not the horrors of my past.
“When I came back, it was filled with rotting bodies. Bloated, decaying. Skin half-sloughed from bones and the hollow, empty sockets of eyes I’d once known well. The smell was horrid. Inescapable for miles. I couldn’t look at water for months afterward without being sick with the imagined scent of death.”
I bury my face in her hair to keep the scent from surrounding me now. To inundate myself in Willa—in somethingalive—even as I ruin the beautiful moment between us with my decay. Just as I always do.
But when I finally pull back to look at Willa, her face isn’t pitying or angry. It’s full of that fierce determination I glimpsed the first day in my throne room, when she’d fought against me with everything she had. And by the second star, I am so thankful for that fight—for her vengeful fortitude. The way she survives, no matter what, and demands reparations for what’s been stolen from her.
“We’ll make him pay for everything he’s taken from you, I promise, Niko. I feel the island’s magic growing stronger every day. When I’m the anchor, there will be death again…and his will be my first.”
Her words are lethal, and they sink beneath the cold armor of my magic to penetrate my heart. In my centuries alive, no one’s ever been able to stand next to my death. And Willa not only stands beside it, sheunderstandsit. The depths of its wants and the ravening edges of its hunger.
My throat constricts and my eyes sting, and before I do something ridiculous like throw myself at her feet, I kiss her.Languorous and deep, the sound of her moan driving all thoughts of Dawson from my mind.
“Your violence is the most stunning thing, Darling. And I doubt I’ll ever deserve its fervor.”
“I think you’ve deserved it quite a few times, you necrotic ass,” she laughs, sweeping her fingers along my tattoos.
I grin, leaning in to run my teeth lightly over her throat. “You’ll find no arguments from me.”
Willa shivers beneath my mouth, her legs clamping tighter around my waist. And despite the wasted state of my body, I have every intention of claiming her right here in the middle of this hot springs—of painting over the memories of horror with the beauty of us—until she says, “I wish there was a way we could speed it up.”
Her words drip like ice water down my spine.
“The anchoring. I hate waiting…it makes me feel like I’m going to come out of my skin. I want to bedoingsomething instead of just waiting around for Dawson to attack again.”
My fingers tighten in desperation on her waist and for a moment, I consider fitting my mouth over hers and swallowing whatever else she’ll say. Lapping it up with my tongue and shifting her body over mine to bury myself inside her. To fuck her until she forgets my brother and the island and magic; until she has no other words to hold onto but my name.
Instead, I tell her the truth. “I won’t wish away one moment of being with you, Willa. Not for the island. Not for anything.”
One last selfishness in a lifetime of them, a final vow to the creed of my own avarice.
