“You should have come home, Rina,” I say softly. A reminder that the pixies may be her blood, but the Lunaedon is her home. Sam, Tiernan, and I—we’re her family. We know the truth of her heart; the way she punishes herself day after day for her choices so long ago. “Why didn’t you?”
I don’t know.
But I know—know because I’ve felt it myself. When you are stained in violence, you feel too filthy to deservehome.
It was a lesson drilled into us repeatedly under the Aeternalis: home was something to earn, something that could be stolen. And after, when Marina had nearly shredded herself apart trying to make up for the wrongs she committed under Pan, the point had only been reiterated when the pixies banished her.
And though I’m a miserable bastard and terrible company, I’ve tried to give Marina what she’s never had—what shedeserves.A place to come back to, a family who wants her, whoseesher.
“Rina—I’m so sorry.” Sorry I asked her to go back to the Hollows, the place of so many of her worst memories. Sorry that using her magic again has rendered her a stranger to the woman she loves. Sorry for ruining everything I fucking touch.
Marina shakes her head, and when she finally meets my gaze, her eyes are fierce.There’s nothing to be sorry for. If you hadn’t asked me to go, we wouldn’t have been able to save the Grove and the Silva Lucai would have never recovered. The children would have been lost.
“I can be thankful you were there, and still sorry you had to be.”
Marina’s jaw tightens, but after a moment, she nods. I extract a small flask from the inner pocket of my cloak, and hand it to her wordlessly. With a grateful smile, she tips her head back and takes a long drag. She hands it back, and I do the same, appreciating the warm burn of the liquor. My body is still wasted from the power I exhausted at the Grove, the cold of death settled pervasively in my joints once more in the absence of Willa’s warmth. I feel brittle, like one blow will shatter me to pieces.
Spending the past three days tangled in Willa rather than resting certainly hasn’t helped the recovery, but I can’t bring myself to regret it, no matter how terrible the residual tremors. Every touch, every taste, pulls me beneath a heady thrall of emotions. I want to treat her skin like glass; gentle caresses and sweeping fingers until she’s keening with those soft little moans. I want to shatter her completely: dig my nails into those creamy thighs, spread her so wide there is no part of her not bared to me.
I don’t care how I must pay for it today; every bit of the pain is worth it.
I don’t think this is the end,Marina signs, drawing me brutally from my thoughts.He only brought a third of the Strayed with him to the Grove. Your brother is cunning. Those numbers were intentional. He’s planning something.
My ribbons flare savagely in the air at the mention of my brother.
The Aeternalis’ stole us both from an open nursery window during a particularly swampy heat wave in south London. I was too young to remember much from before I came to the island, but Dawson, four years my senior, remembered a lot. Our parents’ faces, the way their hands had felt when they held us, the stories they told to lull us to sleep. Dawson hoarded the memories, not to treasure fondly, but to taunt me with—to remind me over and over that I’d never had anyone to love me.
Even from a young age, my brother thrived on the Aeternalis’ brand of fun. He lived for the cruelty, for the depravity of torturing others for the pleasure of it. He’d been the one to steal Marina's voice. Cut off her tongue, and then severed her vocal cords for good measure. The fact that he’s gottenmorehorrible over the past century and a half since I’ve seen him is a morbidly impressive feat.
“I’m certain you’re right,” I reply with a measure of misery. “Especially now that he knows my…affection,” —my tongue trips over the word— “for Willa.”
I grit my teeth and take another swig of the rum, as my death curls around my wrists. I suck in a sharp breath through my nose, but it does little to ease the feel of flayed skin, of raw nerves.
“I should never have touched her at the Grove. He already discovered one weakness, and I foolishly handed him another.”
Because that’s what Willa is: a decadent, beautiful, vibrant, weakness. A part of my heart living outside my chest, vulnerable now, not only to Dawson, but to my own choices.
“The question now is what he plans to do with them.”
After I killed Pan, I hadn’t wanted to eventhinkabout my brother. Certainly not long enough to determine what his twisted mind was conjuring up in the shadows all these years. Because to think of Dawson, even for a moment, was to dwell on everything dark that was supposed to be light. His twistedversion of family, his malevolent allegiance. The way he’d embedded them both into me with blood and pain.
He resented that while I was granted death, the island gave him nothing. Not one drop of magic beyond his own sociopathic tendencies. Despite his powerlessness, my brother became both resourceful and immeasurably cruel in his centuries with the Eternal Children. The Aeternalis ruled by chaos, but Dawson rules with militant order. Measured and controlled in a way unnatural to the childlike pandemonium of the Strayed.
“The attack on the Grove was a test of Willa’s power,” I muse out loud, even as my ribbons thrash around me, the urge to rot Dawson bit by bit boiling in my veins. Starting with his fucking eyes for daring to look at what ismine.“When he strikes this time, he’ll strike true. And it’ll be for her.”
Maybe Willa can head over to the Hollows and cave the entire thing in?Marina replies with a hopeful smirk.She seems to be pretty good at sucking people into the ground.
The mention of Willa’s magic sluices down my spine like ice water. Marina's brow creases, watching me in the way of hers that feels far too observant. Because the thing about knowing the little pixie so well is that she also knowsme. And all that entails.
What is it?she asks immediately.Are you having second thoughts?
I release an irritated breath and take another swig, before passing it back. She takes it with a solemn look before taking her own swallow. A tentative silence stretches between us, one that prods at my skin. I don’t keep secrets from Sam and Marina. In a lifetime of being torn apart by holding the dark things close, being allowed to be myself around them has been my one tether to my humanity. To sanity.
But I can’t tell her that every moment I spend with Willa is another moment I’m tempted to betray everything we’ve worked for. Every touch of her skin, every sly comment from herdecadent mouth, every piece of herself she hands to me for safe-keeping—all of it makes me want tolivefor the first time in centuries, while simultaneously drowning me in self-loathing.
I want to lie to Willa and save my kingdom. I want to tell her the truth and damn it to ruin. And I hate myself for both.
Niko,Marina signs softly.What was this all for if we’ve learned nothing?
