Her words dissolve into more sobs, even as her body rages in my arms. I lie still above her to bear the brunt of it. The despair thick between us is far more painful than any of her blows. I don’t know whether it’s hers or mine—only that it is viscous and dark, an agony worse than the burning of my nerves.
“LET ME GO!” she screams again, slashing her nails over my cheek as the shadow bursts from her tear ducts.
My death rises between us, absorbing the darkness before it can harm any of the pixies around us. Before it can harmher.
“Goddammit, Willa,” I breathe softly through my teeth. “You’ll have to kill me before I let you go back!”
I don’t know if it’s my words that shock her, or that I shout them. But Willa stills in my arms, her expression agonized as she searches my face to find I’m gravely serious. Her lower lip trembles, and her fingers fist into the fabric of my shirt, like she doesn’t know whether to push me away or pull me closer.
“Niko…”
She says my name like a ragged prayer. Her pain slices through my heart as if it were my own, but I don’t relent. I grip her tighter, branding her with the fear that hasn’t relented since the moment I realized Peter’s true plan. The fear of losing her.
“You know well my selfishness. I swear to the star above, I’ll take both of us straight to hell before I stand by and watch you sacrifice everything you are to this kingdom. Before I let them turn you into their martyr.”
Her mouth twists in a snarl, and I bind a ribbon around her wrist if only to keep her from clawing my face again. “Are you the only one who’s allowed to do that, then?” Her voice is a low challenge. “The only one who’s allowed to love things hard enough to give up everything you have?”
“Yes.”The word is a furious hiss, and Willa’s eyes widen as it lands.
“No!” she yells with a wild shake of her head. “No! This ismykingdom, Niko, and I’m the one who has to—”
“What did I promise you on the roof all those months ago, Willa?” I shout back, before sucking in a breath and quieting my words. “I promised to be your villain. Well, this is what it looks like…it’s messy and its painful and its fuckinghard.But I willneverbe sorry for stopping you from ruining yourself for them.”
Willa’s expression crumples, her fury fracturing into a thousand small pieces of sorrow.
“You told me I’m worth more than the pieces of myself I tithe…” I swallow the heated lump in my throat. “So are you, Darling. There is another way.” I swipe the pad of my thumb softly beneath her eyes, brushing away her tears. “You are the Queen of Dreams. There is always another way because you can make it so.”
My words seem to finally sink beneath her panic, her body going pliant in my arms as the fight drains from her.
“Infinite possibility.Thatis what lives beneath your skin, Willa. A million different existences and times and possibilities, limited only by your own mind. There is another way. You just haven’t thought of it yet.”
When I’m certain she won’t dart through the window back to the Hollow City, I push back onto my heels. As she allows me to help her up, I feel the stares of the kingdom heavy on us both. Willa must sense it, too, as her eyes dart to the multitudes gathered on the palace ground. Fearfully, like she expects thepixies to lunge at her and demand she return to save their lost kin.
My death flares around me in anticipation. I’ll cut down anyone who so much as suggests my queen should have given more. She has shredded herself apart, bled and cried and fought.
She’s given enough.
But when I scan the faces of the refugees, I find no anger. No demand. Only gratitude.
The pixies watch her with something near reverence, their hallowed gazes following her as she climbs to her feet and brushes herself off. I wonder if Willa can see it, or if she is still too blinded by her own self-loathing—haunted by a past that demands she empty herself in order to be worthy.
In this, her and I are the same. There was nothing I could give that would ever be enough to fix my mistakes; nothing to repair the wounds gouged by my own sword. I was blinded by guilt and strangled by shame, unable to see beyond it. Until Willa’s vibrant colors of life sheared through the gray monotony.
Indeed, she looks past the pixies, focused only on the small window.
“It’s gone,” she whispers. “Everything is gone.”
When I’d first hurtled through her portal, I’d been stunned by the state of the Hollow City. In only a few moments, its temples and homes and murals had all become a forgotten relic, reclaimed by the sea.
For so long, I thought that was exactly what I wanted—complete destruction of the stone that held so many of my worst memories.
But I find no justice in the ruination. I see what Willa sees: the loss of possibility. The promise of the future stolen from so many, both in the lives lost and the extinction of the morphellia vines.
The air folds in on itself until the window winks out. And the Hollows is no more than a memory.
Willa’s eyes shutter, disappearing behind the armor she adorns herself in. Then she turns and strides up the grass toward the Lunaedon.
The crowd parts, their whispers of worship trailing behind her. Even the winter wind speaks of her bravery, her sacrifice.
