Willa smiles, open and luminous, and it knocks the fucking air from my lungs just as surely as a blow to the chest. She guards her smiles behind a vicious wall of thorns, never giving them just because they’re expected. Each one feels like a precious gift,a secret intimacy. One I never in a thousand years would have imagined bestowed on the likes of me.
I’m still reeling from the feel of her happiness, the feel ofher,when her eyes flare. “Niko!” she gasps, her mouth parted in awe.
I don’t look—not as the sky lightens above us, nor as an alien heat flares over my skin. I only look at Willa, memorizing the glow of the rays in her hair; how they illuminate her hazel eyes in way the starlight never could.
The sun has risen on Letum, but I do not feel warm.
Because though the island has begun to heal, I know in the depths of my magic—in the deterioration of my body—my time is running out.
Chapter thirty-nine
Letum 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 tomake 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 beable 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, butallof 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.”
