I whirl on Adira. “Could wenotannounce to every person we come across that I’m actively avoiding life? I’m trying to convince them I’m a good ruler, not a lunatic who can’t handle her own thoughts.”
“I believe the kingdom’s monthly request to build a monument to your deeds is proof enough what kind of ruler they believe you to be,” Adira replies succinctly.
It’s true that the island has celebrated my rise to queen with nothing but excitement. They’ve offered parades and palaces and songs, and yet none of it has assuaged the small shadow that lives in my chest. A seed of fear, of shame, that they will all see through the Queen of Dreams to the broken girl beneath. Like all of this is a ruse, and eventually, everyone will come to know who I truly am—a selfish coward who spent her life running and deserves none of this splendor.
“And besides,” Adira continues sharply, drawing me from my thoughts. “Who says I was talking about you?”
I furrow my brow. “Weren’t you?”
Adira shrugs in neither confirmation or denial, her expression as serene as ever. As close as I’ve become with the Princess of the Wilds over the past few months, there are still times I wish I could read her thoughts as easily as she reads mine.
“Be careful what you wish for,” she answers my unspoken thought with a wicked grin, her gray eyes churning like a squallat sea. “My head is a terrifying place to be on the best days, and your wishes have the uncanny habit of coming true.”
Not all of them,I think ruefully. But I only motion to one of the many tunnels that veer from the heart of the Hollow City. “Are you coming with me?”
Adira wrinkles her nose and shakes her head, declining my offer just as I expect her to. “The pixies have discovered a new creature in the south tunnels, so I offered my help in coaxing it to the surface. Will Tiernan be joining you today?”
“He’s in Caelum with Sam.”
I don’t add Tiernan’s displeasure at myorderinghim to accompany Sam this morning, nor that he wouldn’t need to if I stopped pawning the day-to-day duties of the kingdom off on them both in order to disappear beneath the Hollows every day.
“So you’re going alone?” Adira asks, her lips thinning in concern. The wild rush of her magic fills the space between us, and I hurriedly clear my mind. The last thing I need is Adira delving beneath the light thoughts at the surface to the far more dire ones that exist below.
“I’ll be fine. Tiernan worries too much.”
I paste on a false smile as her stormy gaze roves over me in assessment, her frown deepening. I tug at the hem of my cloak in discomfort, knowing exactly what she sees. A body I’d treated kindly in the few months I was happy, thinned out once again. Harsh angles and hard muscles, any softness having dwindled away along with my hope.
I brace for Adira’s admonishment, but she only says, “Be careful of ghosts, Willa. They will haunt the present with the past if you allow it.”
I don’t ask if she means the ghosts of the Hollows, or the ghosts of my heart. I only nod and bid her farewell.
Adira isn’t disapproving of the way I’ve spent my time and energy the past few months, but she doesn’t understand it. Andit isn’t just her—Tiernan and Sam have both tried many times to convince me to blink away the destruction that exists in the never-ending stone maze beneath the island and be done with it. Paint it clean, imagine it pure.
Start over.
I haven’t been able to explain that wishing away the ruin caused by the Strayed feels like a betrayal to those broken by them.
The Eternal Children had festered beneath the earth for far too long, and the evidence of their monstrous habits goes on for miles beneath the surface. Pixies and humans and sirens alike, strung up in chambers that were once homes, all in varying states of torture and decomposition. The sight of it is enough to turn even the steadiest of stomachs, as is knowing they’d been unable to die during the worst of it.
For over two centuries, the Strayed’s victims endured unimaginable agony.
For me, restoring the Hollows has been like repeatedly reliving my own torture in the Amelioration camps. Each body I find—and there have been thousands—shatters my heart open anew. I see myself in their broken forms; I feel their hopelessness as my own with each breath of the rotted air. It is what has kept me returning, day after day. To recognize their suffering in a way mine never was, and to honor the bravery of their endurance.
To be their witness. To let their stories live on in my memory for the rest of eternity.
With Sam essentially running the kingdom, I spend my days descending into the tunnels hours before sunrise and staying tucked beneath the earth long after sunset. I paint the Strayed’s victims in my mind, whole and healed, so they can be returned to any remaining family. I paint the chambers of their pain with newfound hope, washing away their blood and suffering,readying it for the new life. I memorialize their suffering; I envy their deaths.
I inundate myself in their misery instead of coping with my own.
The tunnel veers to the left and plunges downward before opening to one of the thousands of chambers carved into the rock. I take a deep breath and step inside, bathing the small room in the soft light of my lantern.
My heartbeat skitters up into my throat as I take in the scene before me. I should be accustomed to the horrors of the Strayed by now—should be able to view this as little more than a job—but each time, rage barrels through me until I see nothing but red, a furiously frothing wave that mingles with my magic until I can hardly think beyond it.
This time is no different. Magic burgeons from the pool behind my heart so forcefully, I sway on my feet. Because on the opposite wall, hangs a pixie pinned to the rock by iron stakes. They pierce through the delicate bones of her hands and feet, splaying her limbs wide at odd angles. Crusted blood spatters the walls and collects in dried pools throughout the small chamber. A jagged wound rents through her abdomen, torn apart and half empty, like it’s been feasted on by scavengers, something I can only hope happenedaftershe was finally able to die.
I swallow roughly, sliding my attention to her wings. Blackened and curled.
The Strayed burned them. Like she was nothing more than an errant insect to tease and torture.
