She takes a deep breath, her eyes flickering uncertainly at Niko’s sprawled form. At the once strong King of Carrion, dying on the floor before her. Then she squares her shoulders, and her face goes blank and I know, I’m no longer looking at my friend. I’m seeing the pixie she was as the Aeternalis’ right hand—the one capable of making decisions that would tear another person apart.
Using your magic has already begun the process, but there’s a way to speed it up. Your magic runs through your heart and so it becomes ingrained in your blood. If you bleed into the heart of the island, you will become irrevocably tied. You’ll become the true anchor instead of Niko.
“And he won’t be in pain anymore?”
Marina’s mouth presses thinner. Finally, she replies,the island will no longer siphon his strength. It will feed from yours.
I stare at her for a protracted moment, wondering if it will hurt me the way it hurts Niko. Wondering if I’ll be paying the price he pays every day—wondering if I’ll be brave enough to keep paying it the way he has.
But I don’t voice any of my fears. Instead, I ask, “Where?”
Where Niko took you this afternoon.
My eyes widen in realization, even before Marina finishes her sentence.The heart of the island lies in the Crocodile. Beneath the Indomnitus, in the cradle of death.
Niko’s ship. He’d said the island had resurrected it as a reminder of what killing the previous anchor had cost him—had cost everyone. A constant reminder of the place where he slayed the Aeternalis. Where he’d taken a life and lost his own. Where he’d damned all of his people.
“Willa—” Sam begins, his face twisted in agony.
I shake my head, hardly noticing the sharp look Marina shoots him.
“I meant it when I told Niko I was staying…that I was brave enough to be a hero if he was behind me as a villain. If this is what it takes—” Another steadying breath. “So be it.”
Sam opens his mouth vehemently, but whatever he’s going to say is lost as Tiernan and Adira burst through the palace doors. The Princess of the Wild appears entirely out of place in the dark lines of the castle, and Sam seems to agree as her appearance in his home has him gaping at her in shock.
“Addy!” he exclaims breathlessly. “What are you doing here?”
Her stormy gray eyes are wild as they find mine. “The Strayed are at the gates.”
There is no more oxygen in the room. There might not be any in the entire world for how desperately agonized my breaths now come, like my lungs have been filled with cement.
Tiernan is red-faced, panicked, as he takes in the state of his king on the floor. “They’re coming for the wards. They’re coming for you, Willa.”
Chapter forty-one
The Lunaedon shudders.
Gently, at first. Paintings quiver in their frames, and the thick curtains begin to sway though there is no breeze. Glass rattles in the lanterns along the walls, the sound beginning as a soft chime in the hush of the entrance hall, before fluctuating to a clanging ring with the increased force of the attacks at the gates.
The large windows at the edge of the hall emit an ominous groan, and the lanterns tumble to the ground with a crash.
Glass sprays everywhere as more follows, and for a moment, I’m tempted to close my eyes and open myself; to pull Niko through the wards to one of the remote worlds I’d glimpsed as the star. A world where there’s nothing but wilderness. No one to protect. No one to rule. No sacrifices to be made.
Only us.
Niko’s lashes flutter wildly as another painful tremor ravages through him. I stare at the dark sweep of ash against snow-white skin and know I can’t do it. Even if I could somehow find my waythrough the wards, he would hate me for it. The monster he’s embraced, the pain he endures—it’s always been for a reason. This island and its people. Letum is embedded into his soul.
He's turned into the worst version of himself, bore the pain and horror and death, all to protect his world.
If I leave it to ruin, he’ll never forgive me for it.
You’re no hero, Darling. You have the heart of a villain.
The old me would have run without looking back. It wouldn’t have mattered what Niko’s given up to keep the balance between worlds, I would have stolen him away for myself without remorse.
But my time here has shredded through the walls I’ve spent two centuries building around my heart, shining light into places I’d thought long dead. And now, there’s nothing left to keep hope from spilling from my soul; nothing to temper the fire Niko’s awoken inside me.
I can be the hero, if you will be my villain.
