I don’t have the words to explain how every burden feels like mine, all of them tangled up in the veins of my heart, in the darkness of my shadow.
“Ebere, please show Willa to one of the treehouses on the west side. I will attend to the Nyawa.”
Ebere bows her head. “Of course, my lady.”
“Stay as long as you need, Your Majesty,” Adira says to me. “Consider what you have given to the island, and what you still can. Do not ruminate on the things you believe you’ve taken away.”
A lump forms in my throat, but I force a nod.
“And Willa?”
“Those who have no doubts…who never question themselves and allow no one else to either…they are not meant for power. Your doubts make you human. They keep you tied to empathy. To humanity.” Adira’s gray gaze begins to churn. “But only so long as you do not allow yourself to drown in them.”
I nod, and turn to follow Ebere.
Over the next few days, I bury myself in the day to day movements of the Grove. I train with the Silva Lucai until my muscles burn and my sword arm shakes with exertion. In the evenings, I have tea with Adira on the porch of her treehouse, listening to her tales of Letum that span over a millennia. She speaks of the land of dreams and death with a hypnotizing rhythm, and I cannot get enough of how things were when the island was new. When it held the same possibility threaded through my magic—anything a person dreamt of could be theirs.
The thought sticks with me, as I wander through the maze of wooden bridges. Up to the highest level of the city, where it is easier to attribute the tightness in my chest to the thin air instead of my constant dread. Each breath stings my lungs, clearing away the muddied film I’ve been buried in.
For so long, the only dream I held was one of death. But mine is a magic of creation. I cannot keep clinging to the promise of an end when I have been given the gift of a beginning.
My shadow is quiet as I gaze out at the island—the emerald leaves of the Grove, the silhouette of the Lunaedon far in the distance, the violet sea. All of it so full of life, sparkling with the ethereal glamor I’d been drawn to the moment I emerged from the lagoon.
Despite the enormity of my mistake, the dreamlike quality of Letum hasn’t dimmed.
Every day the island takes more from you.
Niko had meant the words as a curse, but as I look out at my island, they feel more like a blessing. Because despite the heartbreak, this kingdom has given me so much—power, agency, peace.
Iwantto give back.
What if I could somehow gift the kingdom what I never meant to steal? Dreams come in so many forms. Maybe I have tried the wrong ones.
The idea lights in my brain like a will-o-wisp, its glow lingering long after I’ve retired to bed. And when I wake the morning of Dreaming’s Eve, the wood of the treehouse warm beneath my feet, I know exactly what I’m going to do.
Chapter twenty-eight
Alantern sways near the mainmast, its soft glow the only light as I climb onto the deck of the Indomnitus. Though the ship no longer rests in the Crocodile, there is an aura of despair settled over it just the same. It stuffs itself into my lungs the moment my boots hit the planks, noxious and heavy, like the Indomnitus is not the vessel of possibility it once was, but a harbinger of death. A beautiful tomb.
Dread tightens my stomach as I pad through the dark toward the captain’s quarters. I don’t take the time to discern whether it is my own, focusing instead on the familiar sound of my steps on the wood. While I’ve never had the restless heart of Niko, this ship is the first place I felt what it meant to be home. The sway of it beneath me, the soft clap of the waves below—things I thought forever lost—open up a nostalgic longing in me. Warm and rich, like sugar and woodsmoke.
Though it isn’t late, the sun having only set an hour earlier, the captain’s rooms are dark. I raise my hand to knock before thinking better of it, and pushing my way in. The door isunlocked, and though I know the Aeternalis is still licking his wounds from being keelhauled, the fact that Niko hasn’t put up any sort of protective barrier doesn’t bode well for his state of mind.
The door swings shut behind me as I step inside, swallowing the remaining light from the deck. The moment I cross the threshold, I’m inundated by Niko’s agony. It is sharp and deep, like the lash of a crop opening skin. It is bitter on my tongue, washing over my vision in shades of pure obsidian—the same abiding shade as his ribbons.
Sucking in a breath, my magic curls outward in soothing tendrils. I sense Niko’s presence in a far corner, the enigmatic finality of his power as familiar to me as my own. Squinting into the darkness, I reach forward blindly with my hands to keep from running headfirst into furniture as I follow the path toward his radiating misery.
“Ottoman,” the king barks out a millisecond before I trip over it, and break my neck.
“Star above, Niko,” I mutter, my shin smarting as I blink owlishly into the dark. “Would it kill you to light a candle?”
“Yes,” he sulks, “as that would ruin the dramatic mood of my wallowing.”
His words are slow and slurred. It’s clear he’s been deep in his cups for a long while. With an irritated sigh, I fish a lighter out of the pocket of my cloak and flick it to life. The light of the tiny flame is enough for me to fumble my way toward Niko’s desk, though not enough to prevent me from banging the exact same spot on my shin into a blasted chair.
With a harried sigh, I light the oil lamp.
Niko curses loudly, and when I turn, it’s to find he’s thrown a ribbon melodramatically over his face. “You’re searing my eyeballs, Samuel!”
