The others still running wildly about, Dawson stalks forward, straddling my waist between his feet. He looks impossibly tall from this angle, his face hidden in shadows, but for the whites of his eyes and teeth.
I writhe furiously as he walks up my body, a new terror settling deep in my chest as I’m forced to stare up his legs to the bulge in his pants. And beyond, to his positively inhuman face. “Interesting little thing, aren’t you?”
He crouches over me, and I squeeze my eyes shut, if only to keep from having to see the insanity in his eyes; to keep fromimagining what that insanity will feel like when it touches my skin.
Dawson leans in closer, and whispers, “Your fear is so pretty. I can’t wait to splay you open, little Darling. See what sort of thing lives beneath your skin.” His breath is hot and clammy against my cheek. “Feelthe slip of your blood. The heat of your cunt. Break you so thoroughly, you’ll be begging to open whatever ward I please.”
His words are the last thing I hear.
An unnatural silence presses thickly against my ears, and this time, my cry of relief rushes up from the deepest part of me, a wave of vulnerability I rarely allow myself to feel. The earth beneath the sand begins to tremble. Or perhaps, it’s the air itself that vibrates with power. Softly, at first. Then violent, like the ground has rent apart.
When I open my eyes, my terror recedes as the world goes dark. I can’t see Dawson, or the Strayed, or the siren.
Because the King of Carrion, nightmare incarnate, has found me.
Niko’s magic horrified me when it descended over the beach my first night in Letum. I hadn’t understood it then—the ripples of death, the destructive ruin. But now, I see his ribbons for what they truly are: reprieve.
A reprieve that blocks out the rest of the world, that shields me from the violent mayhem on the sand. They undulate over me, around me, but never touch my skin even as I reach for the comfort of their void. There is no more of the awful laughter, no more of the siren’s agonized lament. There isn’t even the crackle of the fire or the hush of a soft step on sand.
There is only silence—thefinalsilence. And for the first time since I spied the Strayed, or maybe even since I arrived in Letum, my heartbeat slows. The blood rushing through my veinscalms. My breathing evens as each of my muscles release, as my body relaxes into the comforting pull of the quiet.
As quickly as the darkness arrived, it retreats. Rippling silkily, it shreds apart, threading itself back into individual ribbons until the air clears to reveal Niko standing beside the fire.
Shivers scatter over me as I take in the feral burn of his gaze, so black against his deathly pale skin. Some of his ribbons wrap around his wrists and ankles, while others span out around him like a speared halo of power. He looks impossibly inhuman, a beautiful creature of fantasy and fable. If it weren’t for the rapid rise and fall of his shoulders, proof of his exertion, I’d almost believe I dreamed him up.
The bodies of the Strayed litter the sand around him in different stages of decay. I stare at them all, trying to wrap my mind around Niko’s power. One moment—that’s all it took for him to steal so many lives and leave their corpses as carrion.
I should be terrified when that black gaze flicks to me—at the way it rakes over my skin and burrows into my blood—the pure possession that expands in the fathomless depths. But I don’t cower from it. Instead, I let him stare, allowing him to take what he needs from me.
I’m okay. I’m not hurt. You can come back to yourself.
I see the moment he does. His throat bobs as he swallows roughly, and his lashes flicker with a few rapid blinks. Then he’s moving toward me on unsteady feet and kneeling down to untie my wrists. His scent washes over me, a surprising comfort considering the nature of what he just did. Sandalwood and something fresh, reminiscent of running through winter air.
Up close, he looks even paler than he had in the shadows of the firelight, but also more beautiful. His hair is wild, the tendrils almost as dark as his death. His features are stark with exhaustion, his lips pushed down into a frown. He is softbeauty and jagged edges alongside one another, an outward representation of the things that live inside him.
His gloved fingers tremor wildly as they brush the inside of my wrists, but he ignores it, studiously working at the knots. As the ropes fall away, his fingertips hesitate a hairsbreadth above where my skin has been rubbed raw by the bindings, just long enough that, for a wild moment, I expect him to run them softly over the burns, to soothe the sting of them. Instead, his ligaments tighten, and his hands jerk with another spasm.
When he notices my curious stare, he rises to his feet and tucks his hands into his pockets, even as sick understanding sinks low in my chest.
I’ve seen spasms like that many times before. In victims of torture.
Before I can ask, the siren lets out a singular, mournful note. It expands in my chest—all her pain and horror and agony pressing against my lungs—and my heart wrenches with the realization that she’s still alive and suffering. My eyes jolt desperately to the king’s. “We can’t leave her like this…we have to help her!”
Scrambling to my feet, I try to ignore the empty eyes of the Strayed and the pungent smell of decay as I wade through the bodies. Try to ignore how tiny a few of them are.
The king follows me silently, watching as I kneel beside the siren. Her remaining eye finds mine, a beautiful aquamarine against the red of her exploded capillaries. “Please…end my suffering.” The plea, hardly more than a whisper, summons a hollow of anguish in my chest. “Let me rest in the sea.”
A ball of emotion lodges in my throat. She knows there is no saving her; there is only sparing her any more horror. And god, I understand how consuming the longing for peace can be when your entire body is pain. For a brief moment, something dark and jealous winds through me, but I don’t stop to examine it. Instead, I look to Niko.
“Give her peace.”
He’s gone entirely still, but for the spasm of his fingers and the unnatural rattle of his breath.
“Please,” I try softly.
I’d thought Niko merciless, but that was before I felt the depths of his magic; before I felt the touch of his death. Some would run from the inevitability of such a touch, would find the finite end cruel, but I know the compassion of granting a freedom from pain. And if the King of Carrion is death, it means that despite the horror he contains, he possesses an inherent mercy as well.
“Please…help her. End her suffering.”
