“As Adira’s power deals with the mind, and that’s where yours originates, I believe she’ll provide insight into how to harness it. Also, she’s gathered some information I need.”
“But she hates you,” Willa points out doubtfully. “Why would she help someone she hates?” Despite her dubious tone, there’s an eagerness beneath it. She’s excited to find out more about her magic.
I give her a small smile. “Because there are things she hates more than me. Particularly the Strayed. And they'll only hit harder after the events on the beach.”
Willa shivers at the memory, running her fingers over her arms. She wears another simple black dress, this one with capped sleeves and buttons made of obsidian, again choosing to forgo gloves, to my infernal irritation. She’s loosely braided her hair down her back, secured at the bottom with a thin ribbon. For a wild moment, I consider reaching across the table and tugging it out, if only to see the way the bronze and gold highlights shimmer as the tresses tumble around her face.
“To get me to open the wards?” She chews at her bottom lip.
I lean back, crossing my arms and deliberating how much to tell her. What will draw her in, and what will cause her to flee again.
Finally, I say, “The Strayed have grown restless in the centuries since the Aeternalis’s death, and they’re angry at the cage my power has kept them in. It is my belief the Strayed don’t want you to open the wards at all…but desire the opposite.”
The room suddenly feels ice cold, despite the crackle of fire in the hearth. “They want to use your magic to overthrow me, and ensure the island remains in stasis forever.”
“And if I don’t help them?”
“They’ll torture you for eternity,” I reply solemnly. “Until you no longer remember who you are. Or that you even had power. The wards will remain impassible, and the magic of the island will continue to fester.”
Willa shakes her head. “Why, though? Why wouldn’t they want the kingdom’s magic to be healthy again?”
Sam leans forward. “Because if the magic of the island is restored to what it once was, the Strayed will grow up. And the Aeternalis ingrained in them for centuries that growing old is worse than death.”
“I thought you stayed young forever here,” she says slowly, certainly thinking back to the twisted lore floating around the mainland.
“Not forever,” Tiernan answers, his voice tinged with a sadness I understand far too well. “You were in the Crocodile…you felt how time traveled differently there. It slowed, while the world around it raced. The entire island used to hold that same magic, but now it’s been warped and twisted. Thickening in some places and freezing entirely in others. Letum was never meant to be permanent—only a stop. A dream in a lifetime of cruel realities. Everyone grows up eventually.” His mouth twists, and his words sound far too wizened for the youth of his face. “Or, they’re supposed to.”
Willa’s fork hangs comically in midair, her breakfast entirely abandoned as she considers what this means. “And there’s no restoring them—the Strayed?”
Marina’s gaze sharpens ruthlessly, her fingers flying as she says,Anything good in them has been dead for far too long. There is only decomposition and death. Nothing from which to nurture or grow a new soul. Carrion.
The truth of my name: not the King of Carrion because of my power, but because of the kingdom I’ve been forced to rule over—a land of decay and death. Of putrid rot and scorched earth,where nothing new can grow, and anything that tries is shredded by scavengers.
“Why don’t you kill them all, then?” she says, her voice once more edged in the steel borne of her fight for survival. A steel that has no mercy.
“I’m only one person,” I reply lightly. “The Strayed number in the thousands. And you’ve seen the limitations of my power.”
Willa shrugs this off, as if I hadn’t been entirely useless for hours after our last meeting with the Strayed. “You’re the king and this kingdom is huge. Why don’t you raise an army or something? You don’t have to be the only one to fight them.”
A weighted silence descends over the table. Willa looks to Tiernan, to Marina, and finally to Sam. None of them meet her gaze. And while I appreciate their restraint—a restraint forged in iron after everything we’ve been through together—there is no avoiding Willa knowing of this particular shame.
“So long as I am the anchor to the island, I am the only with the power to grant death.”
My ribbons slither from where they were curled at Willa’s feet, the mere mention of their magic drawing them back to me. My muscles lock as they slide over my skin, agony roiling through me like corrosive acid. Bile surges up my throat, and I clench my teeth together to keep from groaning, inwardly scolding myself for letting them go, even for a moment. For reveling in relief when I deserve none.
I deserve the punishment of never-ending pain. Death was in my heart when the island granted me power, and it’s still there now. In almost two centuries, it has not relented. There is no blood, no soul, residing in my heart. There is only inky black sludge.
“I know that,” Willa says uncertainly. “But couldn’t—"
Willa’s words trail off, her eyes widening fractionally at the darkness she must see in mine. Not the color of a night sky—or a color at all—but the absence of light entirely.
“No one else in the kingdom can take a life, Willa. No matter how hard they try. I am the only one who can kill. It is my gift, and my curse.”
Chapter twenty-three
“Are those faeries?” I ask, gesturing to a particularly boisterous cluster of the small lights sparkling between the tree boughs of the forest.
Niko’s hardly looked at me for the duration of the ride, and he doesn’t now. “Not truly, no.” His eyes are hidden by a few stray curls that have tumbled down to frame his face, and his long fingers—encased once more in his thick leather gloves—dig into the tops of his thighs like claws. “They’re will-o-wisps.”
