When I glance over my shoulder, it’s to find Wendy still in the doorway, blinking frantically, like if she does it hard enough, she might succeed in blinking away my existence entirely.
“Though from what I’ve gathered,” I continue, “you only arrived a few months ago…in which case, your collection is truly impressive.”
I pluck up a pointed gold instrument and spin it thoughtlessly atop my palm. “You always were so clever. I should have knownyou’d find a world where time moved so slowly, you’d be able to wait out your enemies. Even the eternal ones.”
My accompanying wink sends a vibration of rage through her body, but she still doesn’t speak, her lips mashed together like she’s trapped acid behind them.
“Doesn’t appear as though you missed much though, does it, Wen?” Her eyes widen at the ease with which the nickname rolls off my tongue. “A few hundred years of misery, give or take.”
Wendy doesn’t reply. Instead, she slams the door shut and stomps toward me, plucking the trinket from my hand to place carefully back on the shelf. When she spins back to me, her cheeks have gone pink with fury.
“How did you find me?” she demands.
“I did tell you I would,” I remind her, my voice dangerously low. “And when have you ever known me to break a promise?”
We stare at each other, the air suddenly thick with the past swirling between us. Those tense moments in the Crocodile when her eyes widened in pretty surprise, because she thought I was going to finally kiss her. Instead, I betrayed her by forcing her through a ward.
The irony isn’t lost on me that two hundred years later, the same thing was done to me. It seems that no matter how I scheme, the universe has its own ways of taking what it’s owed.
Wendy runs her tongue over her teeth, like she’s measuring her words before she finally grits out, “How did you even know I was alive?”
“Disappointed?” I arch a brow in challenge, snatching up another trinket and dancing away before she can grab it back. “I assumed all the ridiculous smoke and mirrors concealing your continued survival were for Peter. I’m not sure whether to be flattered or deeply offended you find me just as threatening.”
Her eyes dart nervously toward the window, drawing my grin sharper. “Or perhaps, you find memorethreatening?” I hum,pleased. “I suppose you wouldn’t be wrong as he’s a merely petulant child andI…Iam the King of Death that ended his eternal reign.”
Wendy swallows nervously, glance bouncing from the window to the door.
“If you’re waiting on your hired muscle to burst into the living room and shoot me in the head, I’m afraid you’ll be waiting an awfully long time. I’m nothing if not thorough—” I give her a salacious wink. “—as I’m sure you recall.”
Wendy darts forward, swiping the small contraption from my fingers with a furious chuff. She clutches it to her chest, her glare both heated and wary.
“Would you guess every one of your men sang for me at the end? True loyalty is so hard to come by in every world, isn’t it?” I let out a dry laugh. “I’d know.”
Wendy stiffens. “Howdareyou?” she seethes. “How dare you speak to me of loyalty when your betrayal condemned me to two hundred years alone in strange worlds? When it was your betrayal that condemned thousands of innocents inthisworld to their deaths?”
Her nostrils flare. “And now you show up on my doorstep without so much as an apology, expecting to just…what? Pick up where we left off?”
I turn my gaze to her, and though it is no longer an abiding onyx, it’s enough to make her step back. “I havenointerest in ‘picking up where we left off’ and even less interest in apologizing toyou,of all people.”
Wendy’s mouth gapes open, stricken, and I realize that after all this time, she still understands nothing of me.
“Ilovedyou Niko and you not only betrayed me, you betrayed everything we stood for—”
“You didnot,” I hiss so violently, her words die in her throat. “You loved the idea of the carefree captain who was willing tohelp you with your plans. A boy who never truly existed and, certainly,isn’tme. That you believe you deserve an apology shows you never even knew me, Wendy, let alone loved me. Do not speak of things like hearts and souls like you know anything about them.”
“And I suppose you do?” she scoffs. “You’re the most selfish person I’ve ever met.”
I take two steps toward her. She’s taller than Willa, but unlike her ancestor who’d rather bathe in acid than back down, Wendy cedes a wary step.
“Loveisselfish. That is what you have always failed to understand. You thought it would be nurtured by laying down, while I have always known love only thrives by standing up…by paying for it with blood and bone. I damned the world for you, because I would rather it burn than allow someone I cared for to be hurt. And to this very day, my only regret is that I did it foryou…someone who will never be able to appreciate what that means.”
“Niko—”
I shake my head, mouth twisted in disgust. “I’m not here to rehash the past with you, Wendy. Theonlyreason I’m thankful you were resourceful enough to keep yourself alive all this time is because I have need of your Darling magic.”
Wendy’s eyes shine as she searches my face. Her mouth is parted in shock, and it’s apparent that even now, she believed the ruthlessness she’d glimpsed in me that last night in Somnya was merely a lapse in judgement. It makes me want to take her by the throat and shake her, for how could a woman who prides herself on education choose to remain so willfully ignorant of the true nature of those around her?
Mine. Peter’s.
