It only grows until I am choking on regret. Until Adira’s words of so long ago—you make me weak—fade into nothingness. I only hear her words of today, the only words that matter.I love you.
What the fuck am I doing?
I have loved Adira for so long, it is in the shape of my very being. I have respected her every wish for the simple chance to give her every moment of reprieve, of safety, of happiness she deserves. I never dreamed I’d be worthy of the same. And instead of getting down on my knees to thank her for loving me so well, I fucking spurned her for it.
Whether I have drowned in the emotions of others, or been inundated in a flood of my own, there has always ever been one feeling I recognized: my love of her.
I turn on my heel, whether to fall at her feet and beg forgiveness, or damn it all to hell and kiss her senseless, it doesn’t even matter. It only matters I get to her.
I’ve only taken one step when the ground shudders beneath my feet.
Once, softly. Then again. A deep tremble that resounds beneath the undergrowth, through my boots and up my legs. The leaves of the canopy rustle wildly and the trunks groan. The air grows heavy, a sense of dread pressing in against me. So thick, it feels like it’ll bury me in the earth.
For a brief moment, the Grove is silent but for the creaking of the wooden bridges swinging high above.
The ground gives another great shudder, and like the yawning maw of a beast, gapes open in a violent explosion of earth and roots.
The reverberation throws me from my feet, my spine colliding with a hard trunk. A groan is yanked from my chest as my scarred skin drags over the rough bark, reigniting the fire of every wound. But the pain is nothing to fear spiking through me as I scrabble upward, hand already on my sword.
As I gaze out at the destruction, there is no question the dread I feel is entirely my own. A physical thing that stuffs itself between my ribs to mingle with the horror settling over me.
Because climbing from the depths of the hole are the Strayed. The same ones Willa buried here over a year ago. For a moment, I’m frozen inside my shock, for it cannot be. Death returned to the island with the queen’s anchoring. I saw it with my own eyes in all the victims trapped beneath the Hollows, and in the deaths of those around me at Dreaming’s Eve.
How then, are the Strayed still alive?
Perhaps alive isn’t the right word. They move; they snarl. Their eerie laughter rents through the air like a poison spreading. But their small bodies are rotted like they’ve been touched by one of Niko’s ribbons. Skin sloughs from their bones in large swathes; maggots spill from their open bellies; gelatinous eyes dangle from sockets, while others are missing entirely.
The smell of decay and death wafts from them, but it isn’t what sends bile barreling up my throat.
It’s that every one of the undead crawls in a ragged sort of unison toward the Nyawa.
Straight toward Adira.
Chapter forty-eight
The warmth of the wistful feeling expanding in my chest contrasts against the cold glass pane of the window. Despite the chill, I press my forehead against it, staring down at the grounds of the Lunaedon. The palace has always had an air of emptiness about it—the expansive green grass, and my small, makeshift family, the only living things inside the magically enforced borders.
I became accustomed to the quiet haunting of its dark beauty over the centuries, but today, as I press my fingers into the towering glass of my throne room to watch both pixies and humans milling about, I’m acutely aware of howaliveeverything feels.
Like the years before were wraithlike and hollow, and only now, with resilient laughter rolling through the air, has my castle become what it was meant to be: a home. A monument not only to death, but to life.
I’d had it built at my worst moment, imbued it with my terrible magic and expected no one to ever dare come near. And thenWilla came blazing through the wards of my palace and the wards of my heart, and brought vitality to all of it.
Marina flickers into view beside me, and I nearly come out of my own skin as my death flares out around me in surprise.
“By the star, Rina!” I admonish, gripping my chest dramatically. “A warning would be nice.”
She doesn’t smile, merely motions to the windows behind me.Everyone is settled in. Carpenters from Caelum have helped erect temporary shelters for those who prefer to sleep closer to nature, and the kitchens have fed all those who need it for the night.
“Wonderful,” I reply distantly, far more concerned about the pixie standing before me than the ones outside.
Marina’s eyes are red-rimmed and puffy, her hair having slipped from its normally neat bun to hang around her face in bedraggled tendrils. She disappeared after learning of Chrys’ terrible fate, and every time after if Willa or I try to speak of it.
But over the years, Rina had come back to me every time I’d snapped at her in a rage of pain, so despite her resistance, I try again. Even though it’s likely to send her running once more. “Is there…is there, perhaps, another reason you’ve come?”
To scare the shit out of you,she deadpans.Obviously.
I roll my eyes. “You’ve accomplished your goal admirably and nearly gotten yourself rotted in the process. Well done.”
