“It’s nothing,” I assure her with a dismissive wave of my hand. “I just got a little angry when I saw what the Strayed had done to her.” Marina follows my gaze to the dead pixie. “It made me a little sloppy, I guess.”
Marina doesn’t appear convinced.
“It won’t happen again,” I assure her, wondering if it’s the truth.
Her hands begin to move, but I don’t see her words, as at that moment, something in the air pulls taut.
I gasp aloud as my heart pulls just as tight, stealing the air from my lungs as the island’s magic begins roiling through me like a storm on the horizon. It presses against my skin, hammers against my skull,awake.
Marina starts toward me, her brow knitted in concern, but I wave her off with a frantic shake of my head.
“I—I have to go. Can you…” I motion vaguely to the dead pixie.
Marina nods, but I’m already tearing through the tunnel, back toward the bustling center of the Hollows.
In my months as the anchor, I’ve felt the island’s heart beating alongside my own. Its pain and its hungers, its beauty and its power. I feel the lifeblood of almost every resident, the space they hold in the island’s magic. But this—this is different.
I race up the never-ending stairs toward the surface. My legs scream in exertion, but I hardly feel it.
Because there’s only one person powerful enough to resound through the island’s magic like an earthquake. The only person whose presence is so profoundly woven into my magic, my blood, my dreams, that I could summon him without ever meaning to.
Niko.
The Carrion King ishome.
I’m ready to scratch out of both the carriage and my own skin by the time I reach the lagoon. The wheels have yet to roll to a full stop when I burst through the door, taking off through the thick trees toward the beach. Feet bare, hair a mess, I race toward thepulsing presence at the edge of the lagoon—powerful, magnetic, terrifying.
My heart hammers against my ribs, my skin heated and tight. My emotions are too intense to untangle any individual one. Fear, shame, excitement, longing, all threaded around one thought:
He’s home.
But when I emerge from the forest, toes sinking into the warm black sand, I’m left only with hollow disappointment and a tight spool of dread. For it isn’t Niko who stands on the beach.
The stranger’s back is turned, his posture relaxed as he gazes out at the waters of the lagoon to the sirens lazing on the cragged rocks beyond. He is tall and thin, clothed only in a simple pair of white linen pants that billow softly at his ankles in the breeze, and a leather scabbard slung low around his hips. His feet and chest are both bare, his messy golden hair glowing in the midday sun. An aura of something similar radiates from his tanned skin, a vibrant light appearing to emanate from within his muscular form.
I blink, wondering how hard I hit my head when I fell. People don’tglow.
As if sensing my presence, the man suddenly turns to me, a mischievous smile tugging at the corner of his full mouth. His face is somehow both youthful and ancient, the combination untenable. And yet there is something magnetic about it, something simultaneously repulsive and intriguing.
He tilts his head, his grass-green eyes oddly bright. His features are faintly elven—the slight angle at the corner of his eyes and the softly pointed tips of his ears—and when he speaks, his voice is like the edge of a laugh.
“I’ve been waiting for you.”
The words themselves aren’t ominous, and neither is his tone. But horror envelops me just the same as my gaze drops to hisbare chest. To where the skin is flayed, peeled back from the bone to reveal blood and organs and the golden glow of magic behind the steady pump of his heart. Though the wound does not bleed, neither is it healed. It is ragged and deep, an angry slash that is all too familiar.
And when I take in the sand behind him and find no shadow, a slimy awareness crawls up my spine as I understand who the man—boy—truly is.
The Aeternalis’ watches me greedily, and I steel my spine as he croons, “For thousands of years, Willa Darling, I’ve waited for you.”
Chapter three
The island’s magic thrashes in my blood, imbuing my own with its restlessness as it reaches toward the Aeternalis. To destroy him? Or to welcome him home?
Because all of this—the island, my magic—it was once his.
He is the Creator, the only being whose dreams have ever been powerful enough to change the very shape of the universe. And indeed, there is something about him that draws not only me closer buteverythingcloser. Like every atom in the kingdom leans instinctually toward him.
The Aeternalis takes a small step, seeming to note when I measure it warily.
