Or perhaps it’s me that freezes, like lightning halted mid-streak across the sky.
Because it is not the Aeternalis crouched beside the shore of the expansive lake—not the Aeternalis’ elegant fingers that reach toward the island’s lifeblood with an air of ownership.
It’s Niko.
Chapter fifteen
Time has done nothing to soften the edges of the Carrion King’s beauty. All contrasting shadows and light, the way he watches me from the water’s edge feels like an attack. And when he smiles, vicious and arrogant as ever, it is a dagger lodged between my ribs that has exquisite pain piercing through the numbness I’ve been buried in since the moment he left.
The air between us sparks with electricity as his ribbons unravel from their place at his throat, the black silk devouring the light of the will-o-wisps winking in the empty sockets of the skull island. The shadow at my back flickers in rage, watching as Niko’s death skates toward me to dance happily at my feet. Though they don’t touch me, my heartbeat slows and the tightness in my muscles unfurls, like my body has been waiting all this time for their presence.
I can’t seem to breathe. Can’t seem to do anything but stare and stare.
The Carrion King isn’t dead. He’shome.
“I know simple manners have never been your forte, but it’s considered rude to gape at someone without speaking,” Niko drawls with a lazy grin.
Words are buried far too deep beneath my shock, and the sound of his voice when I was so sure I’d never hear it again, only compounds it.
He tilts his head, obsidian eyes running from my head to my toes in that obsessive way of his. My skin warms wherever his gaze touches, my head swimming. I’m terrified to move—like one wrong breath will fracture this moment, revealing it to be only a dream conjured by my sorrow and desperation.
“Have I rendered you speechless? Shall I prepare myself for swooning next?”
A ribbon softly brushes against my cheek. The icy sting of pain is a catalyst, and suddenly, everything I’ve felt in our time apart—the anger, the guilt, the dread, the longing—explodes in my chest. I close the space between us in two large strides, and strike the Carrion King across the cheek as hard as I can.
Niko’s head snaps sideways, his ribbons spearing into the air around us. His jaw tightens, and as he’s reaching to touch the rapidly blooming welt—or perhaps, to give me a bruise to match—I throw myself into his arms.
There is no thought beyond the need to feel the beat of his heart beside mine; the need to feel the life pulsing through him with my own hands.
Niko catches me without even rocking back on his heels, burying his face in my hair as I bury mine in his chest. The shadow that’s loomed behind me since I killed the island’s dreams seems to disappear entirely as I breathe Niko in. The tears I haven’t been able to cry begin to drip silently down my cheeks, and I savor how they fall, because it means he’s really here.He’s alive.
“Hello, Darling,” he whispers into my hair, his own breathing uneven and ragged. He holds me tighter, digging his fingers into my skin, like he’s been as starved for me as I have for him.
“I thought you were dead,” I whisper back, my voice little more than a ragged sob. “I thought Pan killed you, and that I was the one—that it was my fault.”
Niko brushes sticky strands of my hair from my face, before trailing his large hands down my spine. “Do you have so little faith in me?” The question is a quiet laugh, the sound of it a deep rumble that vibrates between our bodies.
“To survive?”
“To find my way home.”
I take a deep breath, daring to finally look at him fully. He is beauty and darkness, both a nightmare and a dream. I drink in the fathomless depths of his eyes, made darker by the makeup smudged around them; I devour the fan of his long lashes over his cheek, and the small scar dissecting his upper lip; I savor the golden hoop decorating one side of his nose, and the diamond stud in the other.
The sight of him is pure pleasure, a gift I don’t deserve but revel in nonetheless. His face blurs as more tears gather along my lashes.
“I didn’t—” The rest of the sentiment lodges thickly in my throat along with my shame.I didn’t think you’d want to come home.I clear my throat, trying again. “The Aeternalis…he as much as told me you were dead.”
Niko’s death pierces up toward the ceiling the moment I speak the name. And though his expression is just as lethal as his ribbons, the intensity with which he searches my face leaves me breathless. I resist the urge to squirm beneath his gaze, wondering what he glimpses beneath my skin. Does he see the sorrow, the failure? Does he know I’ve destroyed the dreams of his kingdom just as surely as he destroyed the mainland’s?
“Peter has always had an overactive imagination,” he growls. “It would take far more than a poorly aimed bullet to kill me.”
He draws the tips of his fingers over my cheekbones and down to my lips, his eyes tracing his touch like he’s memorizing me anew.
“The sunlight suits you,” he says quietly.
“No, it doesn’t.” The words are out of my mouth before I consider them. They catch Niko’s attention, lifting it from my mouth to my eyes.
“Is that your way of fishing for a compliment?” He arches a brow. “Quite unseemly for the Queen of Dreams. The sun may suit you, Darling, but false humility certainly doesn’t.” I shiver as a ribbon crawls up my calf and slides over my thigh like silk. “Anyone can see the way your skin glows.”
