“I’m fine. It’s just a scratch.”
I glance at the beast’s ivory claws doubtfully and raise an eyebrow. “How is it that you were pinned bythoseand only came away with a scratch?”
Willa shrugs. “Just lucky, I guess,” she says, but she doesn’t sound at all lucky. Her voice is hollow and wrung out, and her entire body trembles violently. For the first time since we met, Willa doesn’t appear larger than life. She seems—small.
An absurd part of me considers shedding my cloak and wrapping her in it, but I’d probably get stabbed in the throat for my trouble. So instead, I make a humming noise of disbelief and settle for offering her a hand up. She stares at my gloved fingers for so long, I’m certain she’ll refuse and tell me to go fuck myself. But after a stilted moment, she places her hand in mine.
Willa sways as I help her to her feet, but for all the blood soaking her dress and skin, she appears mostly unharmed. Her hair swings as she finds her balance, and beneath the sharp scent of blood, is the scent ofher.
I yank my hand away as my ribbons dig into my skin so roughly, I bite my lip to keep from crying out. After the fight with the Strayed, every inch of my skin feels raw—like it’s been peeled back from my bones and regrown—and Willa’s presence only compounds the pain. The obsessive way my death reaches for her, the force of its yearning: I don’t have the strength for either right now. All I want to do is curl up on my bed and wait for the agony to abate.
Unfortunately, I can’t just leave Willa out here with rabid beasts roaming the property, no matter how lucky she is.
I grit my teeth and turn to examine the creature, attempting to focus on its odd appearance rather than the throbbing ache of my nerves. “What in the fuck is this thing?” Skeletal wings lay sprawled over the ground, it’s enormous mouth now slackwith death. “I’ve never seen anything like it. On the island, or anywhere else.”
“Yeah, me neither,” Willa mutters, without meeting my eyes. In fact, when I turn back to her, she begins to shift restlessly beneath my gaze.
In our short time together, Willa hasalwaymet my eyes—usually, with brimstone and fire, locked there in a challenge. That she doesn’t now has me turning back to the animal thoughtfully.
A tiger’s body. Red glowing eyes. Giant fangs that would be more at place on a dinosaur than a mammal. And wings.
The thing looks like a child’s drawing. Imagined, unreal.
Hope sparks like a lantern in the hollow of my chest. A kernel of flame that eviscerates the dread, the fear, the regret.
And when I turn back to Willa, I see her through new eyes. How many times have I prayed to the second star? How many times have I begged in dreams? And now, two hundred years later, the answer has appeared before me in the form of a small, savage woman. My instincts about her were right and I no longer need Adira to confirm them.
Willa may not know it yet, but she will be my salvation. My penance.
Even if I have to tear her apart to make it so.
Energy thrums through my body as I burst through the palace doors, my earlier exhaustion having given way to fervent determination. The pain, the desperation, the fear—none of them matter now. Not when I have Willa in my grasp.
Sam stands in the foyer, his brows leaping up his forehead as he takes in the bedraggled sight of us—me, reeking of decay, my ribbons frenetically winding around my throat, and Willa, covered in blood and clutching the tattered remains of her dress tightly, lest it drop to the floor.
Without bothering to explain, I usher Willa into one of the Lunaedon’s many libraries, careful not to touch her even as she tries to dart around me.
“Sir, perhaps we should draw a bath—” Sam begins, but I slam the door before he can finish, whipping to Willa with a maniacal excitement.
Her face is pale and strained, her hair plastered by gore and sweat into tangled ropes. A better man would do exactly as Sam suggested and take her upstairs to clean up. Allow her to rest until the shock of the day has eased, and then have a proper conversation.
But I’m not a good man. And I’m done waiting.
Willa straightens her spine and plants her feet, as I prowl toward her. For a moment, it’s hard to remember she was the one attacked with the way she’s always poised to strike. My death sings through me as I take in the way her body responds to my advances, something dark and hungry sparking alongside my hope.
I invade her space, stopping just short of actually touching her as I lower my face mere inches from hers and whisper, “You are immune to the plague.”
It isn’t a question, and Willa doesn’t answer. Only purses those wicked lips, and glares up at me so hatefully, I finally see the resemblance. Her face isn’t identical, the features watered down through the generations, but as I stare at her, I catalogue the undeniable similarities.
The slight upward tilt of her eyes. The delicate angle of her jaw. How had I not fucking seen it? I’d had my suspicions,but how had I not immediately understood the source of the magnetism that existed in her, the force that drew me closer and repulsed me simultaneously? The force that made me want to drown in her eyes; that made me want to sully and destroy every bright thing inside her?
How had I not looked at her face, and immediately been reminded of both my greatest mistakes?
“You lied to me, Willa.” My voice is low, a perilous scrape that sounds of death and rot. She stiffens, sensing the dangerous shift in my mood even as she raises her chin in defiance. “Tell me where you’ve seen that beast before.”
She scoffs. “What does it matter? It’s dead now. Ruined…just like everything else you touch.”
She doesn’t know how right she is. “Where, Willa?” I growl.
