Fires burn in the hearths when I arrive in my room, a foresight of Marina’s, no doubt. Though I hardly have the energy to bathe, I drag myself into the bathroom. My clothes are crusted with seawater, and the taint of death is thick on my skin beneath them. I’d been so weak in the Crocodile—preoccupied with the nearness of both the Indomnitus and Willa—that I’d been able to ignore it. But alone in my rooms, I have to hold my breath to keep from gagging on it, trying not to think of its slimy feel as I scrub viciously at my skin.
After I’m finished, I slip into a soft pair of pants and collapse onto the bed. Normally, I’d play a few concertos on my piano in the atrium or drown my pain with a bottle or two of rum. But tonight, I can only muster enough energy to bury my face in a pillow. My ribbons are as exhausted as I am, so rather than writhing and scraping along my skin, they simply drape over my body. If I don’t move, I can hardly feel them, and I’m thankful for the momentary reprieve.
Closing my eyes, my mind wanders to Willa, as it seems to do whenever I’m too exhausted to bind my thoughts to more appropriate subjects.
She may be the one with the power to imagine, but I find my own to be perfectly adequate. I can see the part of her feral mouth, the way her caramel hair spread around her head like a halo on the black rock. Those wicked curves, that supple skin. I hadn’t been able to find one scar, not one thing that told me about her life before Letum. It made me want to strip her completely, search her with my hands. Break her open and discover every piece of her story.
Despite my exhaustion, my cock hardens. I resist the urge to fist it, because I know it’ll do nothing to relieve the ache. Thinking of Willa that way will only fuel my desire to touchher, until it becomes an uncontrollable urge—an inferno that destroys everything I’ve worked for.
I can’t touch her. There’s no changing that fact. Both because it would kill her the instant I did, and because I shouldn’t evenwantto. Not with whose blood runs through her veins.
His blood.Herblood. Peter and Wendy.
Willa is a walking conflagration of my greatest hate and my greatest love. It thrills me and disgusts me in turn, and I can’t decide which one matters more.
Probably neither. In a few months’ time, I’ll be nothing more than a distant memory in Letum’s history books, a villainous stain on an otherwise peaceful timeline. I tangle my fingers in the sheets, and force Willa’s face from my mind.
When I wake hours later, something has shifted in the air. My tongue feels like cotton, and though my muscles are impossibly stiff, I hurtle out of bed.
Something is wrong.
I feel it in my connection to the island but not the way I normally do.Thiswrongness burrows into the marrow of my bones, wraps around my lungs. My death feels it too, already far ahead of me. It slices through the still air of my rooms, before slithering beneath the door to the corridor. It yanks at my soul, tugging me toward it, and dread settles in my stomach.
Willa. Something is wrong with Willa.
I grab my discarded gloves from the end table, hastily shoving them onto my fingers as I dash into the hallway. Screams echo from Willa’s room—harrowing, terrified screams that resound so deeply in my veins, I’m barreling through her door with abellow of rage before I can consider what awaits on the other side.
Sliding across her floor on bare feet, the air freezes in my lungs as my eyes adjust to the darkness of her room.
Two figures, made of sweeping shadows and inky darkness, lean over where Willa writhes on the bed. They have no faces, only humanoid outlines, but despite their incorporeal appearance, the instruments in their blurred hands are entirely physical. Willa’s eyes are squeezed shut as another scream is ripped from her throat. One of them binds her wrists above her head as she thrashes, the thick sob of despair that bubbles from her summoning a flood of dark fury careening through my veins.
The other leans over her with a syringe and whispers, “There is no need for the dramatics, Willa. Selfish, selfish girl. We’ve been through this. Hold still, or Celie will die.”
I don’t know whether it’s my death or me that lunges first, but the dark rot of my heart surges to my blood, and sharp pain slices through me in time with my ribbons impaling both of the creatures’ shadowed chests. And they’re proven to be real enough, as the smudged darkness of their forms bursts from the wounds, dissipating into the night air and leaving the room silent, but for Willa’s heart-wrenching sobs and my labored breathing.
Shock keeps me frozen in place until another desperate cry sounds from the bed. It latches beneath my ribs, pulling me toward her even as my head tells me I should turn and run. It was easy, before, with Willa’s violence and bluster, to never see Willa as someone who needed my protection. I know the cost of allowing someone to burrow inside me all too well. I’ve been paying the price of it for over two centuries.
But as she writhes in terror, I go to her despite the alarm bells ringing in my head. Her hair is wild around her as she thrashes, her small hands clawing desperately at the sheets. A tiny whitenightgown is plastered to her body with sweat, the lashes of her closed eyes beaded with tears that gather thickly but refuse to fall.
She’sasleep.
I furrow my brow, thinking fast.
Willa’s magic.Pan’smagic. The ability to dream anything into reality. And right now, she’s dreaming of the worst things to have happened to her.
If I don’t wake her, more of her horrors will come to life and she’ll be forced to relive them all.
My death swirls above her as she sobs and trembles, tracing the outline of her nightgown. I feel its urgency in the frantic movements, a mirror of my own. Whatever happened between them on that beach must have been significant, because I’ve never seen my death so enamored. Have never seen it wanting togiveinstead of take. To heal rather than destroy.
Pulling my gloves tighter over my fingers, I hold my breath and gently shake her shoulder. “Willa Darling,” I whisper softly. “Wake up. It was only a dream.”
Her bones are delicate beneath my hands, so much smaller than I imagined. Perhaps it’s because her presence is so large—so magnetic, it draws the air from every room—I’ve never realized how small she actually is.
I shake her a little harder. “It isn’t real,” I whisper, running my fingers softly up the slope of her throat to cup her jaw. “Come to me now, Darling. I’m what’s true.”
Willa’s eyes snap open, and my heart leaps into my throat as her entire body jerks in terror. Without a moment’s breath, she lunges for me with a snarl, her fingers wrapped around the small gladius she chose from my armory.
I lunge backward before her hands can meet my bare chest, tripping over a chair and flying onto my ass with a painfulthud.
