“Go on then, Darling,” Niko urges gently, the lilting sonance of his accent eliciting a warm shiver up my spine. Though his tone is irreverent as ever, I find only grave acceptance in his gaze. “I deserve it.”
He deserves death and more. Our relationship has been defined by pain since the moment we met. I deluded myselfinto believing it could be anything more; believing we could carve something beautiful from the agony. I spent two lifetimes learning you cannot make a home out of a heart—two lifetimes surviving by my instincts to run away from anything that got too close.
But it is those same instincts that betray me any time the Carrion King is near. And without their anchor, I am left floundering.
The blade trembles in my hand as the weight of my despair crests over me.
“You tricked me.” The words are small and I hate the way they crack, like Niko has not only shattered my heart, but my voice as well. “Youusedme.”
His expression fractures just as acutely as my words, and I savor it. Why should I be the only one to live with the wounds of what we’ve done to each other? Why should I be the only one to be gutted by memory? To be tortured by the broken promises of what could have been?
My shadow stirs at my back, its approval sliding over me like hands over my shoulder.We will drink his pain and grow stronger on its essence. For a lord of death’s suffering is surely the ripest.
Niko’s gaze flickers to my shadow, before slowly sliding back to my face. “That wasn’t my intention.”
“Which part?” I snarl, pressing the blade firm enough that onyx blood beads at the tip. “The seducing or the stabbing?”
“The seducing,” he replies, as if this is obvious.
I let a furious breath leak through my teeth. “Am I supposed to be flattered that you didn’t mean to seduce me, but youmeantto slit my throat?”
“I didn’t,” Niko answers quickly. “Slit your throat, that is…Marina did.”
“Well, in that case, all is forgiven!” An absurd laugh scrapes up my throat.
“Willa—”
“No!” I snap furiously. “You should have just stabbed me through the heart, Niko. It would have hurt far less than you getting on your knees and making me think…making me think you still—”
I cut myself off before I do something stupid—like letting my tears fall and showing him how he’s broken me.
“Can you blame me, Willa?” Niko’s words are a dark caress. His eyes rove hungrily over me, his expression near reverent, as if our bodies are entwined in a lover’s embrace rather than an enemy standoff.
“For setting me up to steal the island out from under me? Are you kidding, Niko—”
“—for stealing a taste of you,” he interrupts, “when I have been starved for so long.”
My blade bobs with his rough swallow, and his ribbons tighten around my wrists. Whether to drag me or the blade closer, I’m not sure. I only know that when I try to draw up the rage that has kept me safe for so long—the anger that has burned brighter with every betrayal—it’s nowhere to be found.
And without the heated armor of fury, the devastation crashes over fully over me. It dives into my lungs, presses against my ribs, blinds me in its depths.
I put entire worlds between us so I’d never feel like this again, and I am still back where I started: holding back tears because he is choosing the kingdom over me. He once promised to put me above all else, to worship only me, and I hate him for making me believe it.
“My whole cursed life I have never been chosen. I have been hurt and used up and abandoned. And I thought—” My eyes blur, and I swipe at them with a muttered curse. “I don’t knowwhy, after everything, I thought you were any different. You told me you came back for what’s yours. I should have just believed you.”
My sword hand shakes, and more blood trickles down his throat. It is the same color as the tattoos swirling over his skin, and I think how apt it is to stain his favorite stories in blood, just as he’s stained mine.
“Idid. I came back to save the only beautiful thing in this world from ruin.” Niko’s ribbons draw tighter, snaking around my waist in the same manner his arms had in the moments before he betrayed me. I try to shrug them off, but his expression, so eager, sofractured,freezes me in place. “Willa, the island is—”
He cuts himself off with a curse at the sudden, violent shriek of my shadow. It wrestles against the weight of his death, just like it had when he’d ensnared me in the Crocodile. I groan as it digs its claws into my skin; as it burrows deeper and deeper to escape the touch of Niko’s magic.
Pain radiates through me as it slashes against my heart like the tresses of a whip. The gladius slips from my hand and clatters to the floor.
The King of Carrion watches my struggle with something near horror. His tongue slides over his lower lip, and for a moment, he appears entirely unlike himself. Indecisive. Regretful. His fists curl in his lap and his jaw tightens, like his stillness will be enough to keep the words from pouring out.
With a sharp breath, he yanks his death from me and wraps it around his own wrists. And though my shadow settles in its absence, its hunger still burgeons deep in my belly.
I can hardly see beyond its wants, even as Niko says, “I told you anchoring yourself would take everything from you, but I—I didn’tknowhow true those words would become.”
