And in their reverence, one soft phrase floats upward, more magical than any other:
Long live the Queen of Dreams.
Chapter thirty
Children and adults alike leap from balconies, their wild laughter ricocheting through the Hollow City. They float through my night sky, chasing after their dreams with abandon, wonder and hope swirling around them. They gather up purple and blue cosmic dust, smearing it across their cheeks and tossing it up into the air, dancing as it rains back down.
I lean my head back against the wall of the balcony, curling my legs up to my chest. My friends have all left to explore the videntis for themselves, but I stayed back, content to watch the kingdom’s joy from afar.
Truthfully, I’m not confident my legs will hold me after such an intense show of magic. I am wrung out and raw, like everything in me has been scraped out. The exhaustion is far more pervasive than anything I felt after restoring the Hollows; far worse than when I’d accidentally killed the island’s dreams. All magic has a cost—perhaps mine is as simple as an exchange of energy.
Lost in my thoughts, I don’t notice his approach until he says, “Do you think they’ll love you now, little darling?”
Ice drips down my spine, and I turn to find Pan leaning against the stone at the top of the stairwell. His green eyes glow from the shadows, but it is not their eerie inhumanity that sends a wave of nausea barreling up my throat.
The Aeternalis’ appearance is far more gruesome than it was the last time I saw him—even more so than it had been after he’d been shot in the head.
The laceration at his chest gapes open as usual to reveal the organs behind his ribs, but now, it isn’t the only wound. Every bit of Pan’s skin is carpeted in scabs, all in varying processes of healing. Some leak yellowed pus, while others are still raw, bleeding freely onto the stone floor. Chunks of his golden hair have been ripped from his scalp, the white of his skull visible between mats of the remaining strands. Parts of cartilage have been shaved from his nose, and the bones of one of his arms are splayed at unnatural angles.
By all accounts, the Aeternalis appears as though his skin has been savagely peeled from his body, to the extent his immortal healing hasn’t been able to keep up.
Pan gestures mildly to his appearance. “This is what love gets you. Keelhauled by your own kin.”
“Keelhauled?” I repeat in vague horror, gaping at him.
Peter hobbles closer, and lowers himself gingerly onto the blanket beside me. Blood seeps into the woven cotton, but he doesn’t appear to notice. He has eyes only for me, as he explains, “A particularly brutal method of torture in which one is tied up and dragged from bow to stern. You must survive the drowning, the broken bones…” He sighs dramatically, swiping a chocolate éclair from the nearest plate with his good arm. “…though the worst is probably being cut open across the barnacles.”
Pan takes an enthusiastic bite, finish through a mouthful, “An uncivilized method of punishment, but I’d expect nothing better from a filthy pirate.”
Niko.
As angry as I am at him, a vicious part of me croons in approval that he’d repaid even a fraction of the Aeternalis’ cruelty. The mutilated bodies of pixies and sirens and dryads and humans flash through my mind, and for a wild moment, I wish I’d been the one to do it.
“Tell me something, Peter. Why is it that the most power-hungry are so often unable to take even a fraction of what they so willingly bestow on others?”
The Aeternalis finishes the éclair with a lick of his fingers, and sets his eerie gaze on me. There is no sign of his shadow tonight, and I wonder again how he is so adept at hiding it, when I cannot seem to do the same. “Because we were made for more, Willa. We build empires on their backs using their pain as the mortar and their blood as the paint.”
“You keep talking to me like we’re the same, just because our magic is similar. But for most of my life, I was not a queen or an unhinged dictator. I’ve been the one stepped on and bled out and used.Thatis who I will always empathize with. That is where my loyalty lies. Not with the people preaching about the greater good…but the people sacrificed in the name of it.”
He hums softly, before motioning to where the kingdom still frolics through the videntis. “It is a most beautiful gift you’ve given them. A show of magic I don’t think even I could have fathomed.”
I glance at him warily, uncertain what to do with the compliment. He gazes back, and despite his horrific appearance, for a moment, I understand how he lured so many to serve at his feet. The way he looks at me makes me feel like anythingis possible—like he not only sees me, but everything I will be capable of.
But I have spent two centuries reading people well enough to keep myself safe from them, and despite his semblance of sincerity, I feel something foul simmering beneath the surface—feel it in the way I would sense a storm coming. A slight charge in the air, a tingle on my skin.
“So beautiful.” His purr prickles along the surface of my skin as he leans in closer. “They do not deserve it. Your gift, nor the mercy you bestow.”
I suck in a sharp breath. “After everything the people of this island have been through, a night of hope is the least I can do.”
“Do you think it’ll be enough?” Pan cocks his head, his gaze sliding over me in curious assessment. “For them to see past the horrors you possess?”
The question sinks into my stomach like a stone. I don’t reply; only lift my chin and stare back at him blankly. He’s searching for my insecurities, for a weakness in my armor to drive his sword through.
“That is why you did this, isn’t it? To beg for forgiveness for stealing their dreams?” Hetskswith disappointment. “It will never be enough. They will take and take for as long as you’ll allow it, and the love you earn will only exist so long as you provide for them.”
My breath freezes in my chest, and I stare at the Aeternalis, feeling as aptly stripped as if I stand naked before him. Because isn’t that a sum of my entire existence? People taking until I am empty and then leaving because of the desolation; sifting through my pieces to pilfer the good and abandoning me to live with the jagged remains.
Pan’s expression is almost pitying. “It is the most terrible and wonderful thing about children. They have no appreciation for your sacrifices. They only demand more of them.”
