My breathing hitches. “What?”
“Tonight, Willa,” Niko repeats in frustration, the sound of my name in his mouth both a challenge and a temptation. It curls low in my stomach like a lick of flame, calling things to the surface of my skin I’d rather keep in the dark.
“Ididrun. I saw what they were doing to that siren, and I tried to escape before they—"
“Notthen,” Niko snaps, surging to his feet. He’s so tall—slender, but well-built, like every piece of softness has been carved from him, leaving only the most essential parts behind. The most powerful.
He takes two charged steps toward me, his ribbons pulsating around him. “After.When I was lying on the beach. You could have left me there. And maybe Sam would have found me in time, or maybe the Strayed would have found me first. There’s no way to truly know, but the fact is, you could have run tonight. And you didn’t.”
I stare at him. Everything had been such a blur of violence and death and terror. But the truth is, he’s right. I never considered leaving Niko alone and hurt. Not even for a moment.Why?
Niko takes another step toward me. “You saved Letum tonight by saving me. Even if you didn’t know what you were doing. So, if you want the truth from me, Willa,earn it.”The words come out wanton and dark, and shivers rise on my skin.
His face is ardent as he draws closer, his lips parted like he’s considering devouring me at any moment. I shiver again as the thought threads through me like fire, snaking through my veins, pooling at my core. I press my thighs together as his voice washes over me once more.
“Show me that vicious creature I see behind your eyes. The one that doesn’t run—the one thatfights.”
Every bit of warmth leaves me as I stand before him stripped bare. The Willa he speaks of, the one who tried to do the rightthing—who cared so deeply she wouldburnwith it—has been gone for so many years. I’ve hidden her away beneath layers of hatred and fear, suffocated her in the dark, all to keep her from being hurt ever again.
Newfound fear settles over my skin like a viscous film. How has this man, honed by cruelty and drenched with death, seen so quickly to the heart of me?
“I can’t,” I admit softly, though I’m not sure exactly what I’m admitting.I can’t stop running. I can’t stop surviving. I can’t care about saving anyone else.
Because long ago, I’d fought as hard as I could—to end the plague for Celie, for the world—and it had shattered me entirely. If I allow myself to be shredded apart again, there won’t be anything left.
Niko growls in frustration, rubbing his face furiously with his gloved hands as his ribbons spiral wildly from him. They spear for me like they’d relish wrapping around my throat, but the king reels them back in with slow precision. His breathing grows heavy once more, beads of sweat breaking out over his forehead. Like each movement is a struggle.
I brace myself, worried he might pass out again. He turns his back to me, gritting his teeth as he attempts to gather himself. His fingers spasm, and I know the moment he feels the weight of my attention, because with an agitated breath, he clenches them into tight fists at his side.
A part of me knows I should look away—that witnessing Niko’s vulnerability will only make him more dangerous. But I can’t draw my gaze away from the movement in his hands, how the shine of the leather ripples with every tremor.
After I’d escaped the Amelioration camps, my own hands spasmed in a similar manner for well over a year. Something as innocuous as the sound of a boot on concrete sent the memories of what I’d endured rushing to the surface of my skin. Thephantom pain felt as real as it had every time they’d taken me apart searching for a cure, and no amount of breathing could convince my body I was now safe.
I assumed Niko was tortured sometime in his past, leaving him with a permanent reminder. But as I watch his death curl around his throat—watch his muscles pull taut and his teeth grind—I finally understand. Niko’s pain isn’tin the past at all.
“They—they hurt you…don’t they?” I clear my throat as Niko’s eyes snap to mine, his expression lethal. “Your ribbons...your magic. It hurts you.”
The anger he holds; the way he snaps like the edges of his nerves have suddenly frayed. And when he seized on the beach—it was because he’d used the power to save me, and the pain had finally become too much.
He’d known what it would cost him—the agony it would bring—and he’d done it anyway. For me.
“Normally, I have Sam with me after such a…a show of it,” he replies tersely, following the lines of my thoughts with barely concealed rage. Sam, whose power calms those around him, who can smooth the jagged edges of pain. It is why the king keeps him so close; why Sam regards Niko as someone to be taken care of, rather than someone to fear.
“You used so much of it today. Why didn’t you tell me?”
He glares at me hatefully. “Forgive me if I don’t enjoy parading my vulnerabilities to complete strangers. Particularly ones who’ve tried to murder myself and my staff on numerous occasions.”
Niko’s words are harsh and biting, but they no longer sting. Not now that I understand their source. Because who better to understand how pain can change a person than someone who’s been baptized in its depths? Who’s been awash in agony for so long that I was set adrift, that I lost sight of the shores of whoI am? Whose very shape, down to the bones, has been carved away and reshaped by it?
I’ve run for so long from it. I’ve upended my life, sacrificed my happiness and others, just to never feel the sting of it again. While Niko endures it every moment of the day. For his kingdom. For his friends. For a woman he hardly knows.
“Do close your mouth,” he snaps. “While you can hardly be blamed for how attractive I am, staring like that makes you look like a codfish.”
I jam my mouth shut with a dirty look, even as Niko smiles and crosses his arms over his chest with a smugness that heats my blood. Unfortunately for him, I now understand the source of his rancor. He’s trying to rile me, to shift the focus away from what I now know about him. To keep me from learning anything else.
As if on cue, he takes a swaggering step toward me, his black gaze glinting wickedly in the blue light of the cave. Something tightens near my spine, viciously hot. But instead of running away, I plant my feet and raise my chin.
“You see it now, don’t you?”
