I laugh. “I mean, after. What is next after every dream has come true? When eternity is endless?”
A fear I never had the freedom to feel. One that no longer has to be my own, for in everything, Niko is with me, always.
He only smiles. “We live, Darling. To live…thatis the next adventure, the next dream. For you are the first dream of my heart, and it has become the seed from which all others are borne. And I assure you—” His voice is a wicked promise. “—they are endless.”
He kisses me with abandon, his touch a torch to my heart. And I am the burned ruins beneath him, the destruction from which new life grows. Iridescent magic flows from my skin as we come together, a dichotomy written in the stars. His death to my creation.
And later that night, as we dance with our family beneath the ward to a thousand other worlds, the dreams of a million children skating across the Letum sky before dipping into the heart of the island, I hope I will always remember every beautiful moment, and cherish the pain of all the moments before—as they led me here.
For not every story is meant for a happy ending, but they are all meant to teach us something. And though my fairy tale was never destined to be one of light, I pray to the second star it serves as a reminder to us all:
Creation can only begin in the darkness.
And it does so now, as somewhere deep in the heart of the land of death and dreams—a morphellia vine blooms.
Epilogue
A year, or perhaps a thousand of them, later
“By the star, Willa, will you slow down?” I huff, my breaths coming in ragged puffs as I race down the beach after her. Her midnight blue skirts stream behind her as her bare feet fly down the sand, her hair a shimmering flag of gold and caramel. “I am far too old for footraces.”
Her laughter rings in the air, and then through my chest like the headiest of spirits. While it is no longer rare, it is just as precious, and I drink it like a fiend.
“Keep up, Your Decrepit Highness!” she shouts over her shoulder. “I promise it’ll be worth it!”
I roll my eyes and quicken my pace. Not to find out what surprise she holds, but to pin her to the ground and punish her for another of her ridiculous nicknames.
Your Decrepit Highness,the winter wind laughs around my head, before whisking off toward the city to sing the name repeatedly, I’m sure.
“Do I need to conjure a wheelchair to cart around your old bones?” she teases, her sing-song voice drifting back to me.
I decide immediately her punishment will be slow.Languorous.I lick my lips, nearly able to taste the sweet nectar of the pleasured moans she’ll sing, when I crest the hill and lose hold of every thought entirely. Every word I’ve ever possessed slips from my grasp, leaving me breathless and stunned.
Willa’s eyes glow with happiness as she watches the way I freeze—the way my death stalls in the air, like it, too, has been shocked into submission.
For there, bobbing on the horizon, is a ship.
Myship.
The lines of the Indomnitus have been imprinted in my dreams for so long, I would recognize the magnificent shape of her anywhere. The obsidian hull, the serpentine curves. The carved details of the figurehead and railings. The sensuous movement of the black sails billowing softly in the wind, ready to set sail.
“Is that—is that what I think it is?”
Willa bites her lip, trapping her nervous smile. “I’m sorry it took me so long. It was in so many pieces, andsofar down…it was hard to figure out what to imagine to recover them.”
My incredulous gaze moves from the ship to her. “Wait—that’s…you mean to say, thatis myactualship?”
She nods, wringing her hands in front of her. “Sam helped me get everything right. I didn’t want to mess up any of the details that make her so beautiful, and despite how terrible his paintings are, he’s actually got a good eye for that sort of thing.”
“I don’t—” Emotion overwhelms me. It stings my eyes, and floods my chest, robbing me of anything sensible. I bound myself to her for eternity with no regrets, and still, she’s found a way to give me back the freedom I lost.
I am humbled by how well she knows my heart; humbled by the way she blesses me with the generosity of hers, day after day. I know well the price she has paid for her softness; the sacrifices it took to find regain that gentleness—and I will never take the things she’s tithed for granted.
“Do you like it?” she asks, bouncing on the balls of her feet.
“Do I like it?” I shake my head, a disbelieving laugh huffing from my lips. “Darling, it is…” I swallow roughly. “You dreamed for me when I could not, wove together desires of the heart, to give me something I never imagined was possible.”
Willa smiles broadly, clapping her hands together excitedly. A moment later, the most ridiculous hat I’ve ever seen appears between her fingers, complete with a flourishing peacock feather sprouting from the embroidered band. She sets it on my head with a mischievous wiggle of her brows.
