Her gaze narrows.You’ll be right behind me?
I nod.
Marina looks as if she wants to argue, but after a pause, she climbs through the portal.
Black edges my vision, and I grip the windowsill to keep myself from collapsing beneath the heft of hunger. It tears through me, ravening and brutal, like it will find the last pieces of myself remaining and consume them entirely.
I hold them tight, protecting the small droplets of shimmering light and color inside a heart full of thorns. The current of water now high enough to rush against my ankles is nothing to the current of darkness raging inside me. A storm of nothingness ravages my chest like a gaping maw, searching for any source of satiation. Thoughts slip from me like silk, disappearing into its chasm.
Only one remains:Niko.
I have to get to back to Niko.
He will hold me together when I cannot hold myself. His death will ease the burden of the shadow, so that I will be able to breathe long enough to remember who I am.
I am not a villain. I do not want what the shadow wants. Its darkness is not mine.
I etch the words into my heart until they sound alongside its beat. I gather up what remains of myself, and turn toward the Lunaedon. Toward Niko. Toward home.
Laughter echoes above the roar of the water, the eerie sound clashing against the rock before careening back in cacophonous layers. It is laughter I’ve heard before, trapped beneath it in the heart of the island. Laughter that wove around the prediction of Niko’s death, viscous and hollow.
Dawson steps into the dim light, his bare feet splashing in the rapidly rising tide.
He appears much the same as he had when we fought in the Crocodile: untidy black hair, suntanned skin, cerulean eyes. But like so many of the other Strayed, Dawson’s servitude to Pan is now carved into his flesh. Where his right hand used to be, is now only a mangled stump. And affixed to it, is a gleaming silver hook.
Dawson waves it with a cheeky smile, the needle-sharp tip glinting. “A tribute to my little brother,” he says. “Do you like it?”
The shadow slides over my skin, at the same time it slithers beneath it. It pries into my flesh, searching for a way to steal the pieces I hold. I am acutely aware of my heart’s beat.Tick, tick, tick.Timeis running out. But if I leap through the window now, unable to use enough magic to close the portal, I risk leading Dawson straight to the pixies.
“I told Nikolas I’d be the one to watch you empty yourself of everything he loved. I dosoenjoy being right.” He smiles wider, the gesture rotten and empty as ever. “Though what big brother doesn’t relish in besting their sibling?”
I sway on my feet, grasping for my rage—forsomethingto anchor me against the ever-expanding hollow in my chest. My fingers twitch, reaching toward Dawson’s throat. And though Iwould like nothing more than to kill him, I cannot risk feeding anything more to the darkness.
I inch backward, a moan gathering in my throat. The shadow prods at my heart and claws through my lungs; it pounds against my skull like the clanging of metal, its wants reverberating through me in a painful melody oh upheaval.
Dawson lets out a wild peal of laughter. “Leaving so soon, Willa Darling? But you’ll miss all the fun.”
“Get fucked, Dawson,” I manage to bite out. Violent chills wrack my body, and it’s all I can do to take one more step.
Hetsks.“If you go to him, he’ll chase that shadow away with his rot. But even he won’t be able to hold it for long.” His sing-song taunt rings over the roar of the water, his eyes sparking with eager malevolence. “Better to lose it now, don’t you think? Then we can have some real fun, kin.”
Nausea surges up my throat. Even if I make it through the window, and manage to close it in time, I have no guarantee Niko will be close enough to save me. Not when he went to face off against the Aeternalis. But one of the small pieces I hold at the center of my heart is the small light of hope—the one still burning even after years of keeping it buried beneath the rubble of trauma and rage.
I grasp it tightly as I turn toward the window. A scream rips through me, as the shadow’s claws shred through my skin and then tighten—digging into muscle and sinew and bone to keep me pinned in place. I thrash, fighting furiously, and Dawson laughs again.
“Tell me, Willa Darling…When you brought all those people back to life last year, your magic only touched that which you imagined, did it not?” He whistles in amusement, glancing around pointedly as dread sinks into my stomach. “All those trapped beneath the earth still died, did they not?”
I go entirely still, but for the flail of my heart in my chest.
“What will the pixies think when they learn their queen’s magic did not save what she’s never seen?” Dawson kicks at the rising water with his toe, watching the resulting splash. “What will they think of her leaving the most precious of them to be reclaimed by the sea?”
He smiles, his teeth near glowing in the dim light.
“No one ever likes to accept the cost. I doubt they’ll accept this one, though who can blame them? When you’ve bled for something for a thousand years, you don’t give it up so easily.”
I stare at Dawson, as the shadow gnaws at my ribs.
“The pixies have always had safeguards against the extinction of the vines. They assign the youngest of them as wardens—the best and brightest of their kind. Day and night, there are always twenty keepers of the seed.” Dawson claps with delight. “After the Aeternalis stole their last bloom, they were forced to hide the seeds somewhere no one else would dare to go.”
