My mouth is suddenly dry, my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth. “You’ll never find it, Dawson.”
He tilts his head in mocking pity. “Oh, I already have. Torturing pixies is one of myfavoritepast times.” Dawson releases a sickening sigh of pleasure. “I think it has something do with how high their screams are. Or maybe how they fight when they smell their wings burning.”
He shakes himself from the memory, setting his gaze back on me with depraved delight. “They hid the last of the morphellia in the deepest tunnels of the Hollows. The ones further down than even a Strayed would venture. Tunnels filled with beasts twisted by magic and darkness.”
Anxiety prickles through me, even as the shadow jerks, lurching toward Dawson.He is empty, but we will devour him anyway.
He laughs. “Do you want to know who was assigned as tonight’s keeper?”
I cannot answer beyond the roar of hunger. I can only stand and listen as Dawson says, “A little pink haired pixie. By the name of Chrysanthemum.”
No.No.
Dawson grins, watching the shadow expand above me—watching as I lose my grip.
“Will this be the moment you lose yourself, love?”
Though his voice is nearly a whisper, it rings like a horrored scream against my ears. Thiswas what the Aeternalis had been planning all along. He needed Niko and I separated for this carefully curated moment—the moment I’d be forced to decide whether to give up the last pieces of my humanity. Forced to use the last bit of the magic I contain to save the island, and give myself over to the hungering shadow for the rest of eternity.
It is what he’s always wanted. Me, empty enough to stay beside him for eternity.
And Niko—Niko would never allow it. He will watch the island, and everyone on it burn, to ash before he’ll give me up.
“Go ahead, Willa Darling,” Dawson says with ghastly relish. “Make a choice, as both are entirely selfish. Saving the island will ruin the man you claim to love more than yourself. And saving yourself…well you already know what that will mean.”
Rage slices through me, but the shadow devours it before it can light my chest. As much as I want to plunge my blade into his throat, I take heart in the knowledge the shadow will do it after my humanity is gone. If it thrives on hate and shame, Dawson will be the perfect feast.
He watches me in anticipation of my indecision. He wants my agony, my pleading.
But I have never been one to beg, and Dawson is wrong about one thing. Niko will not be ruined, for our love is eternal.
The touch of death, of imagination, of fate and destiny, of shadows and light…None of them are powerful enough to alter what exists between you and me.
I gather the words to me, holding them close to my heart. They serve as one last anchor as I prepare to dip into the pool of my magic. After this, it will no longer shimmer with infinite colors. It will be gray, stained by a hunger that will never be satiated. I can only hope that Niko kills me before it begins to feed on the innocent magic of the children I’ve worked so hard to save.
With trembling fingers, I make the first paint stroke. The Hollow City darkens, and for a moment, I think it has dimmed with along with my magic. But the darkness spreads, the roar of the water and the sound of Dawson’s delighted laughter fading into a silence I know all too well.
I lunge, shaking my head desperately. I have to do this.I have to do this.
But it is no use, as the ice of Niko’s death wraps around me and pulls me through the window.
Chapter forty-five
We both tumble through the portal in a tangle of limbs, and it’s all I can do to curl my body around Willa to take the brunt of the impact as we slam to the ground. My bones rattle and the air shoots from my lungs, pain from the fall and the extended use of my magic racing up my nerves like razor blades.
But I have no time to brace against it, because Willa is already on her feet to dive back to the Hollows. Head swimming, I launch myself at her ankles, her scream of fury echoing in the air around us as I pin her beneath me.
She writhes wildly, clawing at my chest and kicking at my shins.
“Let go of me, you festering asshole!” Her scream is untethered—panicked—but I don’t let go. I only hold tighter as she fights against me; as she pounds her small fists against my chest, gnashes at my skin with her teeth.
“Chrys is down there!” Her screams turn to ragged sobs, her grief fracturing through me like pieces of glass as I realize thetruth of it. Chrysanthemum, Marina’s greatest love, did not make it back to the Lunaedon with the rest of the pixies.
“You have to let me go, Niko! Please.Please.”
Her pleads undo me more than her violence, as Willa does not beg.
“The morphellia…all the seeds will be gone and the island will never—”
