An unassailable truth. A shameful confession. A powerful invocation.
Wendy’s lower lip wobbles, and another tear spills down her cheeks. My mouth twists in disgust at the sight of it, my stomach churning.
“Iam the King of Carrion, Lord of Death…and I am the only one who will ever be powerful enough to grant hers. Do you understand me?”
Though my gaze is no longer a fathomless onyx, Wendy cowers beneath it just the same.
“Iam Willa Darling’s only weakness.”
“Can we not just throw ourselves off a building?” I ask mildly an hour later. Wendy and I stand on the docks of a decrepit harbor a few miles south of the city. “That worked well enough for Willa, and though I don’t relish the fall, weareon a time crunch.”
Wendy exhales sharply, the annoyance wafting from her palpable. “My magic is not what it used to be, Niko, and I don’t think I’ll be able to guide us both to the star without the help of pixie dust.” She levels me with succinct stare. “Unless you’d like to risk falling to your death, the wards at sea are far more pliant. The fabric between worlds is always thinner on the horizon.”
I hum, my eyes roving over the small speedboat rocking gently against the wood planks of the dock. “Perhaps it isn’t your magic that’s weak, but your imagination.”
She glares at me sidelong, and I know I’ve hit a nerve. Though Wendy inherited the Darling ability to open the wards—along with apparent immortality—she possesses no magic beyond that. She has never been powerful like Willa or Peter, the lines of her mind far too inflexible to nurture something as wild as magic.
“Get in,” she mutters, hands clenched at her sides like she’s keeping herself from decking me.
“This is yours?” I raise a doubtful brow. “I’ve never taken you for much of a sailor, Wen, nor an adventurer.”
Her lips flatten into a thin line. “Well, maybe neither of us knew each other as well as we thought.”
A smile tugs at my mouth, but it contains no humor as I cock my head. “Or perhaps I still know you perfectly well, and you needed to be ready to slip through a ward at a moment’s notice. If your hired guards failed, and I found you, was that your plan? Simply jump into another world?”
Her mouth pulls further into a frown.
“Which one, I wonder?” I muse, as she stomps away to untie the ropes. “Certainly not Letum. You’ve never had a mind for dreams. Only the concrete. The observable.”
“There’s nothing wrong with striving to understand the world around us,” she scolds, loosening the last knot and jumping into the boat. “You’ve always been so pretentious about magic and dreams and the mysteries of the world, but you’ve never been humble enough to admit thateverythingwas a mystery at some point in history. Until science—observation and theory—decoded it.”
I climb down after her, trying to ignore the soft lapping of the water. After all these years, the sound of it still feels like a cruel taunt—a reminder of the freedom stolen from me.
“And what is at the root of science but a wondering, dreaming mind?” I ask.
Wendy glares over her shoulder, but she doesn’t reply, either because I’ve rendered her speechless, or she doesn’t wish to get her throat slit again. Instead, she starts the engine. It sputters to life, before settling into a soft hum as she maneuvers the craft away from the tiny dock and out onto the open sea.
The boat cuts through the dark water. A lump of emotion lodges itself in my throat as the shore disappears from view. It is only us and endless ocean; only the purr of the engine and the rhythm of the waves and the beat of our hearts.
Neither of us venture to break the silence, the past and present layered so thickly, it feels like an impassible steel wall. The last time I’d been on a boat with Wendy, I was filled with the hope of possibility. I’d imagined magnificent seas and glowing horizons and a life beyond the pain that followed me in Somnya.
After everything had gone to shit, I never allowed myself to dream of being on the sea again. There was no future for me if there was going to be a future for the rest of the world, and I was in agony enough without dwelling on dreams that were never tobe mine. But here I am, centuries later, listening to the familiar cadence of waves. And instead of riding them to the ends of the earth, I’m choosing to return to the land of my pain.
Again.
There is a stark difference between then and now—there is nothing light inside me at all. There is death and blood and a tangle of thorns, all things that cannot be stolen or extinguished. Things that are permanent.
“Nik, have you considered what you’ll do if it’s too late?” Wendy says softly, her voice startling me from my thoughts. “What if—what if Willa’s already dead and he’s the anchor? You can’tkill him again. Look at the destruction you caused.”
There is no reply that will soothe Wendy’s worry—not my plans for the Aeternalis, and certainly, not my plans for Willa Darling. So, I don’t reply. I only gaze up at the sky expanding over us, to the star I’ve prayed to my entire life—when I was a lonely child, unable to reach out and be touched. When I was a teenager, raised in blood and violence. When I was a man returning home, and when I was a king on my knees for the woman who set my dead heart aflame.
“It’s nearly sunrise, Wen,” I tell her softly. “Keep the course. Straight on ‘til morning.”
Chapter nine
Idon’t know if it’s the docks or me that sway as I stare out at the Indomnitus, my mind racing. The winter wind howls, carrying harrowed signs of heartbreak through the city streets before sweeping them out to sea.
Magic simmers behind my heart, and the mass of anger—of shadows—creeps between my ribs. Both reach toward the Aeternalis in a terrifying synchronicity, to join him or ruin him, I can’t be sure.
