I reach for my magic. I don’t paint any sort of picture—I just gather handfuls of my power and thrust it from my chest. It shimmers outside of me, its glow lighting the smoke in odd colors. I throw it into the chaos, willing it to search for its counter. Willing it to wind through the destruction to find Niko.
“Where are you, you necrotic bastard!?” I shout furiously.
A cloak wraps around my body, and I’m yanked backward against a solid wall of muscle.
“Star above, I’ve missed that wicked mouth,” Niko purrs.
He tucks me into his arms, and pulls us both into the sea below, his laughter still ringing in my ears.
***
The swim is grueling, the icy sea crashing against us like it’s determined to drag us to the depths. By the time we reach the shore, we’re both gasping and exhausted. Dragging ourselves up the beach is nearly as taxing as the swim, my limbs shaking beneath me as I crawl through the black sand. Salt grits between my teeth, and my stomach wrenches as I cough up sea water and smoke.
Niko collapses on his back beside me, his death splayed listlessly over his chest. He winces as his own coughs wrack his body, and his fingers spasm at his sides.
I want to go to him—to offer him something to feel other than pain. But my fear of losing him still coats my skin just as surely as the wet sand, so instead, I shout, “What the fuck was that?!”
He blinks up at the second star, each breath rattling through him. “I needed to get something.”
“A cloak? How was that important enough to risk your life?” I spit back, my words icy and sharp. But I don’t soften them, because if I do, everything that lies beneath will come spilling through. The anguish of seeing him lifeless on the ground; the empty hollow where the beat of his heart should have been. “You can’t fuckingdothat, Niko!”
My voice breaks beneath my grief, and I struggle to hold onto the anger as it is so much easier than my sorrow. “You aren’t immortal anymore. You can’t treat yourself like you’re some expendable thing. Do you understand me? You aren’t expendable! Not to me!” I shake my head, my tone softening. “To me, you are vital.”
Niko nods. “I’m sorry,” he says roughly. A ribbon slithers toward me, wrapping around my hand. Holding me, because he is in too much pain to do it himself.
I crawl to his side and lay beside him, draping my arm over his heart. Easing my panic and my anger and my fear with its beat.
After a few long minutes, Niko’s breathing returns to normal. He twists, reaching into the pocket of the cloak he wrapped me in, before extending his closed fist to me in offering.
Eyeing him warily, I push myself up to sitting. My limbs feel like they’re made of jelly, aching and tight, but when I see what Niko’s dropped into my hand, they go entirely numb.
My breath stalls in my lungs as I gaze down at the small silver bracelet, my anxiety and anger giving way to shock. “How did you—"
The words die in my throat, unable to reorder the emotions roiling through me into anything comprehensible.
Niko rolls to his side with a pained groan and pushes himself up. His death lies beside him in a tangled heap, as exhausted as he is. Black sand coats his back and chest, and his hair falls into his eyes as he plucks the bracelet from my palm with shaking fingers. A muscle feathers in his jaw as he bends to fasten it around my wrist, like it takes all his remaining energy to complete the small task.
All at once, the ball of emotion in my throat splits wide open, spilling over me a torrent so powerful, I nearly gasp. Niko’s ship—his freedom, his love, his home—was under attack, and instead of saving it, he’d chosen to use his last moments aboard the Indomnitus protecting something that wasn’t even his.
“I never thought I’d see this again,” I tell him, now looking at him instead of the bracelet. The tremor of his bottom lip, the sincerity in his gaze. “Where did you even find it?”
He shrugs wearily. “Your apartment.”
“You…you found my apartment?”
Despite his exhaustion, Niko cocks a grin at my clear shock. “Despite your belief kings are useless, I have my ways, Darling.”
A small laugh escapes me. I should have known Niko would find the one thing that was mine in the entire expanse of the mainland. He has always been adept at unearthing the truest parts of me, even when I hadn’t wanted him to.
“It was Celie’s.”
“I know,” he replies softly. “I spent a lot of time in your apartment, and this was the only thing that was personal. The only thing that felt like you.”
My heart wrenches, for while I was wandering through the Lunaedon like a ghost in Niko’s home, he’d been haunting mine just the same.
“I took it before she went to the camps. It’s the only thing I’ve ever owned that’s actually mattered to me. I wasn’t wearing it the night I fell.” I bring my wrist to my heart, feeling connected to my sister for the first time in a long while. “Thank you.”
Niko nods, swallowing roughly as his gaze drifts back to the sea. The Indomnitus’ beautiful black sails and majestic masts are now nothing more than a memory. Icy rage flashes across his features, as he watches the burning vestiges of his ship sink slowly beneath the violent waves.
