Two and a half centuries ago, I found Marina broken and bleeding on a beach at the far side of the mountains. I’d only just returned to Somnya, the years away carving manhood into my features and a righteous fervor into my heart. It was still possible, then, to die by something other than my hand, and by the amount of crimson blood curdled on the sand around her, it was a miracle she hadn’t yet succumbed.
I’d gone for my sword immediately, not as an act of mercy, but of vengeance. In my childhood, Marina had been a remote and terrifying figure of authority in the chaotic hierarchy of the Strayed. A powerful pixie in her own right, wielding her clever magic, she’d been the Aeternalis’ spymaster and hand of justice. I’d never believed in fate, but staring down at the female who’d been the cause of so much of my torment over the years—carrying out Pan’s every punishment without ever questioning the morality—certainly felt like the star above had gifted me a chance at regaining a small amount of equilibrium.
A chance to spill blood that had spilled mine. To break someone who had broken me.
I stared down at her, sobbing in the sand. Pale gold hair matted with her own gore; wings, once revered for their beauty, now severed and ruined beside her; the smooth skin of her back split open and seeping—and Ihesitated.
I’d taken an innumerable number of lives by that point. It should have been easy to gorge myself on hers. But instead, my hand loosened on my weapon, and I kneeled beside her, the foolish tenderness that would eventually damn the entirekingdom bleeding from the softness in my soul I’d never been able to tame, even when the Aeternalis had demanded it.
Back then, I still believed I could save everyone while retaining a heart. I hadn’t been so filled with death and rot, that I could no longer feel anything beyond the pain of it. And when Marina gazed at her severed wings and sobbed, the sound so mournful, her ruined body trembled with it—I’dfelther sorrow in my bones.
I didn’t kill her. I carried her back to the Indomnitus, and slowly nursed her back to health. She’s been unfailingly loyal ever since.
It’s why she won’t refuse me now. Since I saved her, she’s lived her life in penance that will never be fully paid. There is never enough kindness, never enough good acts to make up for the atrocities she was privy to. She doesn’t talk about those years she lived with the Aeternalis, but I know she loved him. And she’ll never forgive herself for it.
Asking her to go back to the place of so much of her trauma, even shrouded in invisibility, is unforgivable. It’s why I needed Sam to leave—I can’t bear his look of disapproval.
What’s happening, Niko?she signs gently.
“My brother knows.” I thrust my fingers through my hair, the seams of my gloves snagging uncomfortably in the strands. “Dawson saw me collapse at the lagoon. He knows I can’t stop them. That I’ll destroy myself before I ever get close to killing them all.”
Her eyes widen, the blue of them as vibrant as the midnight flowers along the beach.And Willa?
I nod, icy rage spilling through my veins as my ribbons spear violently around me. “He knows who she is. And that if he comes with full force, there’s nothing I can do to keep him from taking her.”
There’s no need to explain the rest. What it will cost not only Letum, but the mainland as well, if Dawson gets his hands on Willa.
Marina knows it all. The agony written in the lines of my body, the sharply edged indecision and self-hatred.
What do you need me to do?
“Sneak into the Hollows and determine how far along their plans are. If they’re organizing an attack, I need to know when and where. And I need to somehow have Willa’s magic ready in time.”
Marina tilts her head, and dread threads through me before she even signs her next question. Dread that has nothing to do with Letum.
Does she know the cost?
There’s no judgment on Marina’s face; no condemnation for the truths I’ve told or the ones I’ve withheld. She knows the worst of my failings. The ones that not only damned the entire kingdom but buried whatever heart and soul I had left after my years with the Strayed beneath layers of decay.
“No,” I finally answer.
Are you going to tell her?
The old Niko would have. The boy who wanted love so desperately, he’d wrap his heart around the nearest thing and squeeze until he was sure it couldn’t wriggle from his grasp. But I’ve learned the hard way—if you squeeze anything too hard, it disintegrates to dust, leaving you with nothing.
The only thing solid enough to endure my hold is the kingdom. My love for Letum is what I cling to when the pain becomes too much, and though I may be the anchor for the magic of the kingdom, my people are mine—the pillar I hold onto against the tidal waves of agony.
The truth of Willa’s power is that it isn’t like the others. It stems from creation, from a primal void that no longer exists,and because of it, the island will be inevitably drawn to it. To admit to her that the more she masters and wields her magic, the tighter the island’s hold on her will become until it’s an eternal chain binding her to it, would be a betrayal to my kingdom. And I’d rather die than repeat the same mistakes I made with Wendy.
Damning my people for a woman who I never even allowed to know the truth of me.
I let a breath leak through my teeth. “No. I won’t be telling her until it’s too late for her to do anything to stop it.”
Marina’s face doesn’t change at my admission. She doesn’t appear irate at my manipulation of an innocent woman, but neither is she accepting of it. She only leans back in her chair, examining me until I shift uncomfortably beneath her assessment.
Is that so she can’t leave the island? Or so she can’t leave you?
The question washes through me like ice water. Marina has an uncanny way of seeing beneath the armor of my skin to the depths beneath, and I’ve always appreciated her penchant for honesty, a rarity as king. Why then, does her question now make me so angry, I feel like shattering every fucking window in the Pixie?
