Because Niko is gone. His infernal beauty, his delicious words, his obsessivelove—all of it is gone.
Because of me.
My anguish rises, threatening to sweep me beneath its dark thrall. The writhing mass of shadows bursts forth from where they lay behind my magic, crashing over me in an icy wave until the only thing I can feel is their rage.Myrage.
Hot, corrosive.
It eats at my bones and slides through my veins until I no longer feel human. I am only a dark thing, a void of fury thatachesfor destruction; that demands an answer for everyinjustice the universe has committed against me. It has taken everything, and now, I will take it back.
And because the shadows are safer than grief, I sink into them. Allow them to stain my vision, and sweep through the glowing pool of my magic.
I let them color the painting I begin in my mind, and wrap around me in a thick, viscous cloud.
Let it all go. Destroy everything before it can destroy you.
Lose yourself in me.
“Willa!”
Sam’s deep voice comes from somewhere far away—somewhere above, where I left any part of me thatfeels. I crawl back toward it slowly, and when I blink my eyes, the looming façade of the Lunaedon filters back into view. Everything burning inside me drains away as quickly as it had risen, leaving me empty and weak.
My legs wobble beneath me, and I tumble sideways into Sam’s waiting arms. His body is a sturdy mass, steady and warm. I clutch roughly at his shirt with a desperate whimper, the silk hot in my clammy fists.
“Hey now.” His deep voice rumbles over me, its sonance as soothing and calm as the tendrils of magic he sweeps over me. “What’s the matter?”
His magic slowly cools the fire still burning at the surface of my skin and the one raging in the depths of my magic. The heat and pressure of my grief recedes, and tears spring to my eyes as icy breath finally fills my lungs.
“It’s Niko,” I gulp, his name sending a fresh wave of panic surging in my stomach. I haven’t spoken it aloud in almost a year, and yet it rolls along my parched tongue like cool water. Did I ever truly appreciate the feel of speaking his name—savor it in the way rare, fleeting things should be savored?
“I think—I think he might be…” My throat closes, like allowing the sentiment free will make it true. I swallow it down before it becomes irreversible, and say instead, “Pan is alive.”
To Sam’s credit, he absorbs this news far better than I did—with a slow blink of his long lashes and the slight tightening of his mouth. He stares at me for a long moment, his warm brown eyes searching my face for the truth of what I just claimed.
Finally, he clears his throat and asks, “How?”
I dare to glance at him through a blur of tears. “Me.”
My muscles tighten as I brace for Sam’s disdain—a reckoning I’ve been waiting for since I banished his best friend and king to another world. But just like it hadn’t come then, it doesn’t come now. He only tilts his head, his tongue swiping over his bottom lip thoughtfully.
“Niko killed the Aeternalis in the heart of the island…that’s where his bones remained for centuries, so that none of the Strayed could steal them,” he murmurs, his eyes widening in realization as they meet mine. “And your magic…it was connected to the heart when you brought everyone back last year. It…it must have brought him back as well.”
Sam curses beneath his breath. “Nothing is ever as it seems in Letum…” he says with a shake of his head. “Not even death, I guess.”
I swipe at my sopping nose miserably, not caring about the whys of the magic. Only the cost; the ruin I’ve brought my entire life that follows me even now that I’m powerful. I’d mistakenly thought power meant freedom, but I am just as trapped beneath my self-loathing as I’ve always been.
Letting go of Sam, I sink to the ground and hug my legs to my chest. To my surprise, he sits down beside me. Slinging an arm over my shoulder, he pulls me close. Reflexively, I burrow into his warmth, a relieved sigh that has nothing to do with his magic escaping my lips.
Sam’s presence is solid, while mine feels like wisps of smoke that will dissipate into nothing at any moment. I mirror my breathing to match the regular rhythm of his until I no longer feel like I’m suffocating.
“This isn’t your fault, Willa,” Sam says into the quiet. “I imagine it’d be nearly impossible to draw a stark line in such powerful magic. And you’re so new to the feel of any of it. You couldn’t have known.”
But the truth is, in those desperate moments when the silence of Niko’s heart was all I could hear—when the absence of him was all I could feel—I hadn’t even tried to corral the magic. I’dwantedto destroy the world if it meant I got back what was mine.
Niko loved me for my villainous heart, and he paid for it with his life.
My lower lip wobbles, and I hate that more tears gather along my lashes; hate that despite everything I’ve told myself the past few months, there remained a tender part of me that clung to the belief I’d see Niko’s arrogant smile again someday. And not because I believed in fate or dreams or magic, but because I believed inhim.
But perhaps it had always been more of a dream than a belief; a desperate delusion to hold onto when the world felt unsteady.
