The door disappears, revealing a pale-faced Tiernan, breathing heavily.
“It’s the Hollows,” he gasps, his voice winded, like he’s run the length of the palace. “Rina just sent word. It’s flooding. The pixies are trapped.”
Niko appears at my side, and for a moment, I expect him to bark out orders. But he only looks to me, his expression far more collected than I feel. “What do you want to do, Your Majesty?”
I stare at him, stunned by his deference. While he said he had no interest in ruling the island, I hadn’t entirely believed him. Not until this very moment, when his kingdom is under attack and rather than jumping to action, he is yielding to me.
My mind races through the possibilities. It doesn’t feel right to split up, but neither can I leave the Aeternalis to whatever nefarious plans he’s laid at the foot of the Lunaedon.
“I can get to the Hollows faster.”
Niko lifts his chin in understanding, his death spiraling from him like vengeance given form. “Leave Peter to me.”
He doesn’t move, and I realize he’s waiting for my response. He knows my reticence to let him go, knows the thousand different emotions warring deep in my stomach. The urge to blink us both out of here—to run to a world a thousand stars away and never think of any of this. The urge to bind him to me so I will never have to live without him again.
Niko is no longer anchor to the island, no longer cursed by the stagnation he was when we first met. But in his liberation, he is also no longer immortal.
And though his magic is still a force, he is not infallible.
But Niko’s heart is mine, and they are both so deeply entwined in this island. Stained by its pain, sharpened by its beauty. I can no more untangle my feelings for this place, than I can for the king standing beside me.
So I nod, and say, “I love you. Come back to me.”
He is impossibly beautiful, a dark specter of retribution in the face of the chaos around us. “I will always come back to you. In life and death. In this universe and the next.”
Only a year ago, his words would have terrified me, but now, they anchor themselves in the marrow of my bones just as surely as the island. Because it does not matter what happens in this life—our love was borne of death and dreams. It is transcendental, existing in the seven stars of creation, an infinite magic.
Niko leans in and brushes a soft kiss over my lips, a promise for an eternity of more. “Remember who you are, Darling. You are the Queen of Dreams. Even nightmares bow at your feet.”
And then he’s gone.
I turn to Tiernan. “Are you with me?”
Leashed behind his answering smile is determined fury, one that resounds in the line of his sword as he spins it in his hand. “Always, Your Majesty.”
The shadow created by my connection to the island has been nearly dormant in Niko’s presence. In his absence, it awakens, dragging claws over my lungs as I drip into my magic. I understand now that every drop of power I use digs a deeper hole in my soul. One that will eventually become irreversible. But I have rarely possessed the patience of restraint, and it escapes me entirely now that my kingdom is under threat.
I will endure whatever I must to keep Letum from the Aeternalis; give whatever I have to in order to save the island that saved me—the island that gave me everything.
It’s a realization that settles my blood, that anchors my bones. I spent so long running to avoid more pain, but I know now the agony is what made me strong. A strength I thought I’d lost forever; a strength awoken when I fell into the land of dreams, only to fall again, this time in love with a man who embodies pain itself.
I paint the Hollows as I remember it the night of the festival, before everything had gone to hell. The shimmer of the vines, the delicious smell of food wafting in the air, the magic of laughter and music echoing off the stone. I take Tiernan’s hand and push the magic outside myself.
The moment I open my eyes, I’m nearly swept away by the violent rush of a current. We are on the same balcony where we’d watched Dreaming’s Eve, but now, no music rings through the air: only the harrowing screams of trapped pixies. Water floods from every direction, the wild torrent of debris nearly as high as the ledge of the balcony.
It takes me far too long to understand where it originates. Every window in the Hollows has been shattered. Seawater shoots through the broken glass, careening through every level of the city. The current is uncontrollable, sweeping whatever lies in its path into the whirlpool now spinning in the videntis.
Panic permeates the air, solid enough to touch. Acidic enough to taste. Pixies with sodden wings are thrown into the pit, their cries of fear silenced by the roar of the flood. Others claw up buildings, clinging to signs and ledges and balconies until their fingers bleed, terrified of being swept up in the raging waters.
Without warning, the shadow bursts from my skin. It is the first time in weeks it has dared to show itself, but now, it looms large behind me. It shudders with a deep breath as it drinks in the fear, gets high on the destruction. The void of it scrapes against my skin, the malevolent pit far more harrowing than that of the flooded videntis. It is a black hole, a chasm ripped through the universe that now threatens to devour it.
How had I ever thought it mine when it is so clearly somethingother?
I refuse to give it another moment of my attention, brushing away its touch like an errant insect. With another breath, I push down my panic, my fear, my doubts, until my mind is clear ofeverything but one familiar habit: survive. A primal urge, buried in the movement of my muscles and the build of my bones. One that no longer only extends to me, but to everyone on the island.
I turn to Tiernan. “Can we evacuate to the Lunaedon?”
“If we can somehow get them past the protection magic,” he replies doubtfully, his expression growing darker as he takes in the destruction of the city.
