“You don’t need to apologize, Addy. You know I’ve never minded you in my thoughts.”
The truth is, she is always there regardless of her magic, but I have enough good sense to keep this to myself.
She nods, but her magic retreats from my mind anyway, leaving a hollow feeling behind. She sits up straighter, like the small action serves to pull her out of the past and ground her back to the present. “Willa sent you, didn’t she?”
“Yes,” I admit, swishing the tea leaves around the bottom of my mug. “She wants me to ask you to read the Aeternalis’ mind.” I watch Adira’s hand stiffen, resisting the urge to envelop it in my own. To feel her soft palm against my calloused one and remember how it was to have someone I could comfort with my body and not my magic. “That isn’t why I’ve come, though.”
A line appears between Adira’s brows. “Why then?”
I lift my gaze from the tea to hers, and am nearly lost in it. “To ask you not to.”
Her mouth pops open, but no words come. And despite the gravity of our situation, I allow myself a moment to enjoy hersurprise. Addy has been alive longer than most people can even fathom—she is rarely surprised, and far more rarely is she surprised byme,whose mind she knows better than anyone’s.
“Why?”
I run my tongue over my lip, debating whether to tell her the true reason: because I care about her more than I care about anything else. More than my loyalty, more than my character, and a hell of a lot more than the island. But that would mean crossing the line in the sand that’s turned more into a canyon with every passing year. The line Adira drew without remorse and without explanation.
I settle on a base version of the truth. “Because there are some minds you cannot recover from, and I imagine his is like the Crocodile…if you dive into it, there is a chance you will not come back out the same. If you make it out at all.”
Her eyes narrow, and I shift beneath her assessing gaze. She’s never needed her magic to read my thoughts.
“The Aeternalis has Niko’s pistol. Willa wants to see inside his mind for the safety of the kingdom, but I think she also wants confirmation of whether or not Niko is really gone. And I think that confirmation might be too much for her right now.”
Willa’s emotions on the balcony had been a wash of icy blues and morose grays, the abiding cold of grief lodged behind her ribs tangling with the guilt churning in her stomach. Emotions familiar to me having been trapped in a dying world for so long. It was what I sensed beneath them that unnerved me.
Like so many of us, the way Willa sees herself is skewed. When I told her I saw her for who she truly is, it wasn’t because I was trying to make her feel better—it’d simply been the truth. I seeeveryonefor who they are beneath the masks they wear, because emotions can’t lie.
But what simmered beneath her grief hadn’t been an emotion—it was a void of them.
A flicker, a shadow. Something ancient and heavy I’ve felt only once before:
In the shadow that trails behind the Aeternalis himself.
“I have stayed by her side just as Niko wished. And I will continue to do everything my queen asks of me, but not at the expense of herself. The guilt of this, Addy…it will crush her.”
“You think…you think she’s right? That Niko is dead?” Adira says in a horrified whisper, anguish coloring the air around her. “Oh Sam…”
She makes to reach for me, but at my flinch, thinks better of it. It is not that I don’t want her touch—it’s that I don’t want it likethis.Out of duty or pity. I want her willing as she once was; pliant and warm and eager.
“I don’t know yet whether he’s dead. I only have what Willa told me and what I know of my friend.”
Adira presses her lips together, her gaze raking over the room before finally landing back on me in question.
Knowing what she asks, I nod. An odd feeling of excitement drifts through my chest as Addy inches toward my side of the couch. Settling herself so that her knee barely grazes mine, she lifts her hands, her fingers cradling either side of my face. It’s been so long since she willingly waded into the depths of me, and a twisted part of me has been desperate for it.
As much as everyone fears Adira’s power, there is something addicting about being exactly as I am. With nowhere to hide my darkest thoughts, the most intimate parts of myself displayed beneath the spotlight of her attention. As her magic threads into my mind, heat tightens at the base of my spine, and I shift against the sudden tension in my trousers.
If she notices, she thankfully ignores it. Only closes her eyes and brushes against my thoughts once more, wading into everything Willa told me about what happened on the beach. Ishift again, balling my hands into fists atop my thighs, if only to keep myself from urging her further. Deeper.
With the Princess of the Wilds, I’ve learned none of it is ever deep enough.
As quickly as she entered, Adira untangles her magic from my mind, slipping from my thoughts as my face slips from her hands. An acute desolation follows, but I force myself not to dwell on it as Addy opens her eyes.
“There is much the Aeternalis isn’t saying,” she says with a shiver. “He has always woven his words with cunning. He speaks of her calling him here, but he doesn’t say why he stayed on the mainland all this time or why he’s just now revealing himself.” Her eyes glint. “I’d be willing to bet it was because he was too weak to open the wards.”
I mull over her words. “If he was too weak to open the wards, there’s no way he bested Niko.”
Addy’s mouth tightens. “Perhaps not,” she admits. “Niko is both resourceful and vicious. And though the mainland has never been congruent to magic, death thrives anywhere.”
