“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 myheart. “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.
Chapter forty
Corrosive terror sluices through my veins as Niko’s legs buckle, sending him crashing against the shining deck of the Indomnitus. His head cracks against the ground and his eyes roll, as black blood begins to leak from his eyes and nostrils. Some of his ribbons writhe frenetically over him, while others reach toward me like they mean to pull me to his side. But I need no urging, already throwing myself down next to him, as his jaw grinds together and his body begins to seize.
“Niko!” I cry, gripping his face between my hands. Blood stains my fingers, an onyx as abiding as his eyes, and a wave of nausea surges up my throat as I realize his skin is ice cold. Not his usual ice of a winter’s night, but clammy. Drained. His body contracts beneath my fingers with vicious tremors, wave after wave of them.
His teeth clack, and spittle begins to foam at his mouth, as I helplessly try to hold him somewhere that won’t cause him more pain. But there is no place that isn’t rigid, no part of him that isn’t overcome.
When he’d seized on the beach, the spell had only lasted a few moments. But as the minutes drag on, the attack only grows more violent. Panic squeezes my throat and constricts my ribs. My mind races through the past few days, and my fear becomes a physical thing pressing against my lungs as I realize Niko hasn’t used his magic. Not even teasingly in the privacy of our bedroom.
Not once.
His pain shouldn’t be like this; something is wrong. And there’s no one here to help us, no one who will hear my screams from the bowels of the Crocodile. Dragging him onto the beach will only leave him out in the open, vulnerable to attack. And that’s if he even survives that long.
Only Niko can take a life, but what about his own? Is he as vulnerable to his magic of death as everyone else?
I need to get him back to the Lunaedon.
Swallowing the knot lodged in my throat, I take a leveling breath and hold Niko to me. His body jerks in my arms, but I dig my fingers into him, holding on tightly as I close my eyes. Feeling for that shimmer of power, the endless colors glittering behind my heart.
I breathe in deeply, attempting to smooth the jagged edges of my thoughts enough to concentrate. It hardly takes a moment to find my magic. Dipping into it like a pot of ink, I slowly draw out the dream on the blank canvas of my mind. Beginning with larger strokes and blocks of color just like I’ve practiced with Sam, the image slowly begins to take shape. Unlike when I use a brush, this painting is not crooked or blurred or miscolored. It is crisp lines and smooth strokes. The shadows and light of my heart.
It’s the intricate spires of the Lunaedon—the towering windows, the crisp rock path, the ominous stone gates—but it is more than that. It’s the warmth of sitting in the courtyardbeneath the stars with Tiernan’s wry laughter. It’s the shy smiles from Sam as he examines my newest painting. It’s the cutting remarks of Marina as Niko and I spar in the throne room.
It’s home.
You are my sanctuary. You are my freedom.
I hold my breath, finishing the painting in my mind stroke by stroke. And then with a wild laugh, I let it all go.
It spirals from me in a radiating wave, and when I blink open my eyes, I already know what I’ll find.
Niko in my arms, in the entry hall of the Lunaedon.
Spittle flies from his mouth, and a strangled groan erupts from him chest. A horrible, hollow sound, ripped from the depths of him as his body tears itself apart. Every muscle is pulled so taut, I’m sure his bones will fracture with the pressure. Blood streams from his eyes in black rivulets, staining his pale skin like ink splashed across parchment.
