Tiernan raises a knowing brow. “Are we going to pretend I don’t know you snuck out of the Lunaedon to go see her the night the Aeternalis returned?”
When I don’t answer, Tiernan laughs. “Come on, Sammy…the island is healing. I’ve been waiting for the day you move into the Grove permanently.”
At this, I glance at him sidelong. “Men don’t ‘move into the Grove’, Tiernan,” I retort, my neck feeling strangely too large. Like the collar of my shirt has somehow climbed up my neck to strangle me like a python. “And even if they did, Adira’s made her feelings on the matter perfectly clear.”
Tiernan hums noncommittally, watching me yank at my shirt. “For someone who can sense others’ emotions, you’re a daft bastard. It doesn’t take magic to see the way Adira feels about you. My tongue may be mutilated, but my eyeballs work just fine.”
There are a million things I could say to Tiernan—that Adira may care for me, but her feelings aren’t strong enough to change the way of things.
The wild eats the weak, Sam. And you make me weak.
The world shattered the night Niko had slain the Everlasting, but mine—mine was obliterated a month later when Adira spoke those words to me on the balcony of her treehouse. I can’t even claim to have been blindsided, as I’d always been expecting them in some way. In the way one expects a storm to upend a calm day, I never truly trusted the Princess of the Wild’s affection for me.
I was an orphan who cried too often, overcome by the simplest of emotions I had no claim to, with nothing but a few rusty swords to my name. And she…she waseverything.Beautiful. Clever. Powerful.
I’d seen enough during my life on the mainland to know that women like Adira did not stay with men like me for long.
The memories simmer to the surface, mingling with the fear and angst of the children’s nightmares. My ribs constrict and my heartbeat pounds erratically against them, and for a terrible moment, I think I’ll lose hold of my magic; that I’ll slip between the barrier I keep between my own emotions and others’, flimsy as it is, and disappear entirely. For once one feels as another does, it is near impossible to remember what thoughts first belonged there.
“Tiernan—” I gasp, lurching sideways to fist my fingers in the front of his shirt. To hold onto something familiar, something ofhome,before I’m lost.
Before I can explain, a shockwave reverberates through the city.
The docks sway beneath us with such violence, I nearly topple into the raging waves. I’m spared only by Tiernan’s quick reaction of barreling into me so hard we both hit the plankswith a painful thud. The buildings of Caelum groan as the earth shakes beneath us, a deep sound that reverberates through my bones. I scramble upward, following Tiernan’s horrified gaze across the waves.
Only moments before, the masts of the Indomnitus stood proud. Now, they have been swallowed by a roiling void. An abiding shadow, deeper black than even Niko’s ribbons. It blots out the ship and the sun rising behind it, casting Letum in sudden night. The sea rages, brutal waves swelling and crashing hard against the docks. Seawater slicks the wood, and the sharp crack of docked vessels colliding rents through the harbor.
“What the fuck!” Tiernan shouts, his voice lost in the roar of the earth and sea.
Panic squeezes my throat, and I don’t have time to determine whether it is mine. Pure instinct has me launching myself at the sleeping children beside us, shielding as many of them as I can with my body.
The dark shadows where the Indomnitus should be tighten and spin, until they appear as a solid wall. The air sparks, a pause of a moment that seems to last an eternity as the children cry beneath me, their fear seeping into my skin like icy droplets of rain.
The void explodes.
Tendrils of darkness race over the waves, and the world is swallowed whole. There is no air, no light—nothing but an angry noise hissing in my ear, and unimaginable emptiness smothering my magic.
I open my mouth to shout, but the shadows tear my voice from my throat, dragging it into the gaping void. My fingers dig into the slick wooden planks, the little bodies tucked snugly beneath mine the only thing keeping me anchored to which way is up.
As quickly as it began, the storm settles. The shadows dissipate like wisps of smoke, the sea shimmers calmly oncemore in the midday sun. I roll off the children, blinking stupidly at where the Indomnitus floats unharmed in the distance.
Tiernan scrabbles to his feet, blowing tendrils of auburn hair out of his face. “What the fuck wasthat?” he demands, pointing his sword wildly toward the ship.
Letum is so calm, it is like the past few minutes have been some sort of fever dream. Anxiety edges through me, an unsettled, electric green of an emotion. With a start, I realize it belongs to me.
“Sam…” The line between Tiernan’s brows deepens in concern, his eyes trailing over the sleeping children. “Do you think…do you think that was Willa’s magic?” He frowns, his gaze flickering back to the Indomnitus. “The children—they look…peaceful again.”
And indeed, despite the horror of it, the storm of shadows seems to have eased their nightmares. Their bodies are relaxed and peaceful, no longer straining against my hold or fighting against unseen specters. Their whimpers have quieted, their breathing slow and deep. My magic unfurls in warm tendrils, sweeping toward them.
It finds no fears to soothe, no terrors to ease. Only slow and steady heartbeats.
“She did it,” I whisper. “Willa ended their nightmares.”
Chapter fourteen
There is nothing in death, but the shadow isn’t death. Itwants.Aching. Unrelenting.
In my years spent on the run, there were times I’d been starving, the hunger pains in my belly unbearable. This is so much worse.
