“You’re lying.”
It’s a hope, a wish—desperate and fleeting. And when Niko laughs, the melodic sound burying itself behind my lungs, it winks out like a snuffed candle.
“You’ve taught me well enough what happens when we’re not honest with each other. I will only tell you the truth from this moment on…no matter how much you may not like it.”
My shadow drags its claws from my shoulders to come around my throat. Niko tracks the movement like he would an enemy, his mouth twisted in a poorly contained snarl.
“So, when I tell you I will shred myself apart to take back what’s been stolen, Willa…believe me.”
My world has shattered so many times before, but never the way it does now—like this time, I’ve shattered with it into pieces finer than dust. And there is no one left to collect the remnants.
Beware the King of Carrion.
My shadow squeezes my throat until I can hardly breathe, its warning ringing in my ears.
He will take everything that is yours. He will leave you with nothing.
As I stare at Niko, my shadow devours my guilt, my sorrow, myhope,until there is nothing but rage burning at the surface of my skin. And I let it scorch through me, because it is better than emptiness. I let it devour the blood in my veins and the magic behind my heart until I am nothing but darkness and vengeance.
He’s done it before. He will do it again. He stole your happiness and now, he will steal your island.
I’ll be damned before I let anyone take what’s mine. Not Pan. Not Niko.Not anyone.
I’ll destroy the entire goddamn universe before I give it up.I will take your guilt. I will take your shame,my shadow whispers.There will be nothing to hold you back from your power.
Niko is perfectly still, death wreathed around him in pestilent swathes, as he watches my shadow wrap me in its embrace. As he watches meleaninto it. Choose it, as he will never choose me.
“Willa—” he says in a low voice. A warning.
But he is the one who should heed the warning.
With a bellow of rage, I let my shadow loose on the Carrion King.
Chapter sixteen
She is the most beautiful, and the most terrible, thing I’ve ever seen.
A beauty that sundered my heart the moment I laid eyes on her again, for somehow, even the vibrancy of my daydreams hadn’t come close to the truth of her. The moment she appeared in the Crocodile, I hadn’t been able to breathe. Hadn’t been able to think.
Hadn’t been able to do anything but reach for her.
I’d wanted to fall to my knees at her feet; to confess every sin, every thought, every desperate longing I’ve had in our time apart. I wanted to tell her the whole goddamn truth, starting with why I’d laid down and died when I promised never to leave her.
But the words all evaporated along my tongue the moment I noticed the dark shadow looming behind her. Feeding off her self-hatred and shame and selfishness, poised at her throat, waiting for the moment she tries to stray too far. I felt the hunger of its stare, like it was daring me to try and sever theirconnection; daring me to name its existence and give it a reason to devour Willa whole.
Malevolent gloating pours from its void as it wraps Willa in its dark embrace. Shadows wash over her skin; pour from her mouth; leak from her tear ducts. Black, but not the abiding shade of my ribbons. It is the muddled grays of misery and torment, brackish and slimy.
The shadow shudders in grotesque pleasure, believing it has won. But the darkness it whispers in Willa’s ear will never pierce deep enough, to the places I’m embedded. For I am in the shape of her bones, in the very colors of her soul, just as she is forever in mine. No matter how the shadow tries, it will never be able to touch that which is immutable.
And as I told Willa—death is covetous. It does not share. Not even with darkness.
In a flash, my ribbons dart toward her, lashing around her wrists like macabre chains. At the first touch of my death, the malignant shadow screams, the sound somehow both a whisper and piercingly loud. I wrap a ribbon around her torso, while another binds her legs, pulling my death taut even as she thrashes in fury.
When she is bound and immobile, the shadow dives into her chest with a terrible shriek. It uses her skin as a shield from my death, and there is no way for me to follow it. To dig it out without doing irreparable damage.
I wind another ribbon gently around Willa’s throat, laughing at the furious way she fights against her binds. She gnashes her teeth with a screech of frustration and I laugh harder, pleased that no matter the ruin between us, Willa will never cede to me.
Her fight is like a breath of fresh air expanding in my lungs. I’d almost forgotten what it felt like to be looked at without fear.
