“Willie!” Tiernan calls from behind me. I turn to see him waving his sword wildly in the air as he and Sam push their way through the crowd. “Out of the way, you louts,” he shouts, the command clear even with the odd pronunciation of his mutilated tongue. “Star above,move.”
Tiernan has been my constant companion through the last year, appointing himself both my personal guard and drinking buddy without me requesting either. His humor is a steady light when I can find none of my own, and the sight of him now sends a wave of a relief through my chest.
“Thank the star you’re here. We’ve been looking for you everywhere.” His voice is breathless and his cheeks are ruddy, like he’s run all the way from the Lunaedon.
“I was in the Crocodile,” I admit with a shudder, as another mother’s scream rents the night.
“Well, I guess we should just be thankful you didn’t disappear for three weeks.”
Tiernan thwaps a gawking innkeeper with the flat of his sword before shoving past him to stand by my side. Sam’s eyes roll skyward in disapproval.
Tiernan gestures to the children bobbing atop the waves. It’s a small miracle none have sunk beneath them, perhaps an effect of the magic calling to them through their dreams.
“We’ve tried restraining them,” Tiernan says with a shake of his head. “They just start clawing through their own skin, or breaking their fingers to slip out of the ropes. Chrys tried locking a few of them in the basement of the Pixie, but they pounded on the stone until their fists bled.”
His gaze drifts to the silhouette of the Indomnitus, the good humor natural to him guttering out in a wink. “He’ll take so much more than their magic, Willa.”
I curl a hand around Tiernan’s shoulder, the only comfort I know how to offer—something to hold him in place against the current of memory. Tiernan was stolen away to Somnya before he could walk. The things taken from him left scars so gnarled, he was forced to grow up around them, like trunk of a tree twisting around a barbed wire fence.
“I won’t let him,” I reply. “Not again.”
Tiernan gives a tight nod.
A tendril of Sam’s magic brushes against me, its warmth easing the pressures of the whispers following me. Without them, it is easier to breathe—to think beyond their panic and mine.
“We’re at your disposal, my lady,” Sam says with a dip of his head.
The shadows writhe in my chest.
I don’t need to be the island’s hope to save it; I need to be a nightmare, something that comes far more naturally. Anger balloons inside me like a poisonous wave—black, viscous, and suffocating. It thrashes against my ribs, claws against my skin.
Mine.
This island ismine.The Aeternalis and I may have started our lives in the same manner—orphaned and alone—but he ended with an entire world bowing at his feet. He’s never crawled for what he had; never fought like hell to protect what is his, because everything wasalwayshis.
Pan doesn’t know how dangerous desperation can be.
I worry my bottom lip between my teeth, the true breadth of the situation settling on my shoulders like a boulder. The Aeternalis has had thousands of years to hone his magic into a precise weapon, while I’m still fumbling around with mine like an inept toddler. The amount of concentration it would take to paint something detailed enough to change another’s dreams—let alone a hundred of them—would take me hours, even with the magic of the island roiling through my veins.
I cannot beat Pan if I play his game—but I might be able to distract him from it.
It isn’t truly the children he wants, after all. It’s me.
Soon you will realize I’m the only one who truly sees you, Willa.
“Tiernan, find the sirens,” I bark. “Give them whatever they want in exchange for their help swimming the children in the sea to shore. Tell them their queen commands it.”
He blows out a breath. “That is going to cost us.”
“I don’t care. I’ll pay it.”
When Tiernan nods, I turn to Sam. “I need you to keep the rest of the children on the docks.”
“Willa…” he says hesitantly, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “They’re already asleep, so I don’t my magic will incapacitate them.”
“I don’t care if you have to knock them over the head with a shovel, Sam. Keep them on the docks.”
Tiernan eyes me warily, pinning me with a stare that’s far too observant. I shift beneath it, hoping he cannot see beneath my façade of calm to the furiously writhing shadows beneath.
