The universe granted me one beautiful thing in a lifetime of desiccation, and I ruined it. So, I close my eyes and submit to the despair.
I survived the year on the mainland by clinging to the mad hope of repairing what I’ve broken. I clung to it with weapons and blood—with lethal obsession and determined intent. It had been a fire that fueled me forward; that kept me warm in the face of defeat.
It has abandoned me now, replaced by the same lesson the universe has drilled into me century after century. How did I ever think I could save when I am only made to destroy?
King of Carrion, through and through.
Chapter twenty-six
Relentless pounding rouses me awake.
My throat burns and my tongue is too large for my mouth, and the pounding grows louder with each passing minute. I let out a pathetic squeak of annoyance, burrowing my face into the down pillow, but no matter how I move, the noise clatters like someone’s taken an iron pipe to the inside of my skull.
I want to lose myself again in the emptiness of unconsciousness, but the ache has drawn me too far into waking. Now, memories stab through me like jolts of electricity.
Niko on his knees, sinful and worshipping. The decadent warmth of his touch. The cool bite of a blade.
Words whispered so softly against my skin, I may have imagined them.Adytum. Adytum.
My heart wrenches and my eyes fly open. I sit straight up, wrestling out of a thick comforting and kicking it furiously to the ground. The movement only exacerbates my aching head.With each painful blink, each dry swallow, the pounding grows louder.
An after-effect of blood loss, perhaps. Or maybe, it’s the sound of my rage ratcheting tighter and hotter through my veins as I take in the room around me.
The rich ebony wood curving above the bed; the lush carpets and velvet sofas; the large desk scattered with intricately drawn maps of worlds I’ve never seen; the violet sparkle of waves beyond the bay of windows to my right.
I’m aboard the Indomnitus.
The last time I woke here, it had been to the slimy feel of Pan’s stare. It is not his grass-green gaze I find now, but the abiding onyx of the ship’s true captain.
“Sleep well?” Niko drawls.
His long body is slung over an armchair he’s pushed up against the side of the bed, his death lazing about his head. He is dressed in the same clothes he wore at the Lunaedon minus the waistcoat, and while the attire had given the impression of sharp collection then, it is the opposite now. His silk shirt gapes open at his collarbones, the fabric beneath his unbuttoned vest as rumpled as the curls sticking up in a wild halo. A bandage is wrapped haphazardly around his left hand, loose and ineffective, like he could barely be bothered to tie it.
His eyes are rimmed with red, and his face appears even paler than usual beneath thick streaks of black and scarlet blood.My blood.As we stare at each other, it occurs to me that for once, the Carrion king’s disarray does not soften his edges. Instead, it prickles beneath my skin like a warning.
It is as if Niko has allowed the armor of his civility to slip, revealing a glimpse of the true creature that lives beneath.
Feral. Cruel. Desperate.
And even now, with my body still echoing with the painhe’scaused, something in me is called to it. I wish to the star above it wasn’t.
I clear my throat, wincing slightly. Then I do it again, if only to use the discomfort as a reminder; a fortification against the effect Niko has on me.
“You got your ship back from Pan.”
Niko’s mask slips a little further at the mention of his enemy, his death spearing into the air like spikes. His reply is little more than a growl. “Yes.”
I swallow again. His eyes follow the movement. “How?”
He drags his gaze from my throat to my eyes. “Death will always claim what belongs to it, Willa.”
Niko had claimed me once, as surely as death claims life. And in the end, it was meaningless. A spark of fury ignites, and then explodes, until I see nothing but red—until I hear nothing but his empty promises.Adytum. Eternal. Love.
He doesn’t flinch when I paint my jeweled gladius in my hand, nor when I launch myself at him. His only reaction is the soft flare of his eyes when I mimic the blade over his throat in a pointed reminder of what he’d done to mine.
“Well,” he says with a humorless chuckle, eyes skating hungrily over me. “I see we’ve upgraded from the cutlery.”
I tense as his ribbons skate up over my arms, ready to fight them off. But even as the pain of them stings my skin, his death makes no move to stop me. It winds around my wrists, pulling tighter. Beckoning me, and my weapon, closer.
