She takes another sip of her tea, and I watch the way her throat bobs with far too much interest. I know it, and can’t help it, as it’s been years since I’ve been alone with Adira. And even longer since her details were close enough to drink in like this.
“Peter is no longer the anchor. That will have affected his power as well, because even as the Creator, he won’t be able to draw on the island’s magic. Only his own.”
“And he won’t ever be that powerful again,” I growl, thoughts of the Aeternalis’ impish face cleaving through the peace of my magic like iron spikes, “as Willa cannot be killed. She’ll be the anchor for eternity, just as Niko meant her to.”
Adira doesn’t appear assuaged. “Willa knows better than any of us…there are things far worse than death.”
She’s right, but I take comfort in it anyway. For if there is one thing I know about Willa, it’s that she’s a survivor. There isn’t a bone in her body made to bend to someone else’s will. So long as she’s alive, she’ll fight for what’s hers.
Despair floods the space between us, a heady shade of yellow. It is the salt of tears on my tongue and weighted iron against my skin. I don’t know whether it’s my magic or me that reaches first—I only know it is instinctive to take it from Adira. My jaw tightens as her despair filters through me, sinking beneath my ribs.
I shiver involuntarily, as she gazes up at me with wide eyes. “It was all feeling so healed, Sam. The wild, the island…everything was beginning to feel sogood.And now it’s…” Her words trail off like she can’t bring herself to finish the sentence.
Her despair still slithering between my ribs, I clench my teeth and focus on her face, forcing a breath into my lungs. “The fight is never over, Addy. Not in nature, and not for us. It’s only over when we no longer dream of something better.”
A small smile appears at the corner of her mouth and I feel like I’ve won something. Adira is ancient; she has no use for smiles she doesn’t mean.
It disappears a moment later, and I wish I’d tasted it. Memorialized it, somehow, as rare things should be.
“The Everlasting will come for Willa. He has always hated being alone, but neither can he stand anyone who threatens his power.” For a moment, Addy looks far away from here. “It is the chasm of his own soul he has always sought to fill with the magic of others.”
I grimace, running my fingers absently over one of the many scars decorating my body, courtesy of the Everlasting’s punishments. “I will help Willa in any way I can, and so will Tiernan.” I hesitate, wondering how much to say; how much ofmy heart I can reveal before Adira pushes it away. “But who will protect you?”
Her eyes snap to mine, and I swear, a flash of lightning sparks behind her irises.
“Pan will come for you, too, Addy. You know he’s never liked the fealty the wilds of the island have to you.”
“Because even as our Creator, he has never been able to understand it,” she says softly. “He’s never understood that to keep something with you, you must let it go. Allow it to be wild and free.”
For a moment, I want to vehemently disagree. To take her beneath me and prove to her that all I’ve ever wanted was to be captured eternally in her thrall.
I want to shake her, and tell her that she may be the wild, but I am not. I have always made a home in hearts I should not. I don’t want to be let go. I never have.
But before I can say anything, the treehouse shudders. Pictures rattle in their frames and the Nyawa groans beneath us.
And the second star explodes in the sky.
Chapter six
Wendy Darling looks as if she’s seen a ghost, and indeed, I feel as if I’ve seen my own. My mistakes linger along the planes of her face, long buried regrets simmering in her chestnut brown eyes. All my years trapped in Letum, I imagined it would hurt to see Wendy again, but there is no pain. As I glare down at her, I only feel the same fervent determination that’s driven me for the past year.
When I was injured and bleeding, when I was angry and vengeful. When I thought the loneliness would open a wound in my chest as deep as the one I’d given the Aeternalis, a wound from which I’d never recover.
Through it all, I persevered. And now, I’m close enough to grasp everything I’ve worked for.
“No cheery hello or offer of tea?” I push the door open wider with an arrogant grin. “Where are those fine English manners you used to cling to so desperately?”
Wendy stares up at me, her mouth agape in shock, every bit of color drained from her cheeks.
“I wonder…which world have you been hiding in that’s stripped you of them?” I hum, slinking past into the dingy brownstone without touching her. Even stripped of magic, my old habits persist. “It certainly wasn’t this one, as you’d be long dead.”
Wendy doesn’t move, her small frame frozen in the threshold as she watches me look around her home with interest. Every available surface has been overloaded with books and manuscripts and maps, the suffocating space made to feel even more so by the various scientific instruments stuffed onto shelves and lined along the windowsills.
Something near rage sparks in my chest as I run my fingers over the titles stacked three deep on the nearest bookshelf, noting the stark difference between her home in this world and Willa’s. One speaks to comfort, and one to the barest edge of survival.
“I see the plague has done little to hinder your personal collection.” I keep my voice light though my chest feels heavy.
Wendy has always had a penchant for cloaking herself in knowledge, using it as both a buffer and an instrument of connection. The familiarity of it all makes me head swim. It feels as if I’ve lived four life times since the last time I saw her, and yet, somehow things like this—her books and her tendencies—remain mired in time.
