I don’t look at her, choosing instead to study the skim of my fingers along the wooden railing. My doubts pile up, one on top of the other, until I can hardly remember what my magic felt like before them. How had it felt to dip my fingers into the shimmering pool of possibility before it was stained with doubt and shame?
“Adira, you hated Niko for two centuries because of what he did to this island. Even though he was a friend to you.”
She tilts her head curiously. “Yes.”
“Why then—well…why don’t you hateme?” The question rushes from my mouth, like it’s been pulled out against my will. But I don’t take it back.
Adira’s brows furrow together. “You are quite prickly, Willa, but I see no reason to hate you.”
I chew the inside of my cheek. “I ruined everything that night on the Indomnitus…and I just think maybe…maybe I deserve your hate as much as he did.”
Adira studies me for a long moment. “I think we view the events of that night far differently.”
Indignant heat crawls through me. “How many ways are there to look at it? I killed everyone’s dreams just as surely as Niko did. It’s only a matter of time before Letum turns into another version of the mainland. Hopeless and desolate. The wild will die alongside the island, and all of it will be my fault.” I shake my head, swearing beneath my breath. “You told me Niko and I deserved each other. You were right. We’re both monsters.”
“I’m rarely wrong.” Adira smiles dreamily. “Who better to protect you from a monster than another monster?”
She said the same to me on our first carriage ride together, when the Strayed had been burning the harbor. It unsettles me just as much now as it had then.
“Is that not what you did, Willa? You protected those children from being drained by the Everlasting. You may not have done it the perfect way, but your actions were to save them, not to damn them.”
She reaches for my hand, and for once, I let her take it without flinching away.
“Niko damned the island for his own selfishness.Thatis what I could not forgive, no matter how I love him. But you, Willa…all the scars you’ve earned, all the trauma you’ve endured…it turned you so far away from your true heart. And despite it all, you’ve found your way back to it.”
Adira laces her fingers between mine. “Yours is a heart willing to do whatever it takes to protect what belongs to it.”
I want to shy away from her words, even as they ring true. The heart she speaks of beat in my chest for most of my childhood, as I worked tirelessly to save Celie and my father. It bled for theirpain and beat for their happiness. After their deaths, I locked it away for two centuries, terrified of what it would mean to allow it space to beat again.
And then I’d met the King of Carrion who’d pried it from my chest and held it in his hands. It is the most beautiful, and most terrible, thing he’s done to me. My shadow lurches at the thought of Niko, its rage that we left him alive filtering through me like a noxious cloud.
Adira’s eyes snap to the movement, and for a horrifying moment, I fear she’s noticed its unnatural movement. But to my relief, a member of the Silva Lucai approaches from the nearest bridge, stealing the princess’ attention.
“My lady.”
“Good morning, Ebere.” Adira smiles in acknowledgement, beckoning the warrior forward. “How did the night fare?”
Ebere’s long legs carry her across the bridge in no time at all. Like the rest of the Silva Lucai, she exudes an effortless power both in her beauty and her strength. In the year I’ve spent getting to know the warriors of the Grove, I’ve found both peace and anguish in their company. Watching them is like watching what could have been—would the plague have taken Celie so easily if she’d grown up in a world that didn’t try to make women smaller?
What would she have been if she’d been raised in the Grove where women, no matter what form they choose to take, are celebrated for their ideas instead of belittled?
“The night was well in our soul, my lady,” Ebere replies, leaning casually on her long spear as one would lean on a cane. “However, it is our soul that worries me come the morning sun.”
Her words send a jolt of dread through me. “Something’s wrong with the Nyawa?”
Ebere inclines her head, but I am already rounding on Adira.
“How long has this been happening?”
She levels me with a serene stare. “It is just a few diseased leaves, Willa. There’s no need to worry. I’m confident we will be able to nurse her back to health.”
Adira doesn’t answer the unspoken question swirling between us: is this my fault, too? I’d tried to save the Grove just as I’d tried to save the children, and buried hundreds of Strayed at the roots of the sacred tree. When death returned to Letum, I thought the threat of them somehow poisoning the Nyawa had abated. But perhaps they still fester even in death.
Have I ruined the Grove the way I’ve ruined the island?
“Adira…”
She stops me with a quick shake of her head, and curls a placating hand over my shoulder. “You are the sovereign of the island, but I am the keeper of the wild. Do not bear burdens you have no claim to.”
