I exiled him with his worst enemy. I’ve spurned and fought him at every turn. I ruined his kingdom and rejected his love.
And yet, when I crawled back to him at my weakest moment, he did not punish me for the wrongs done to him. He stayed by my side, soothing me with his music and chasing away every horrible thing I could imagine.
Anger spikes through me like heated iron. “You should have let me drown in them,” I spit out.
Niko merely tilts his head. “I don’t think we could fit one of your tiger beasts in such small quarters. It was purely a measure of practicality, I assure you.”
“I shouldn’t have come here,” I mutter, scanning the floor again for any sign of my clothes.
He watches me with a gaze that beckons a flush to my skin. “I’d argue you should have come far sooner.”
I don’t look at him—can’tlook at him. Because looking at Niko has always called the deepest parts of myself to the surface, and I am already drowning. Every blink brings with it the image of Sam’s broken body; each breath a reminder of the innocent people who’d taken their last because of me. Innocents who came to celebrate a night of beauty, instead struck down by my ugliness.
“Willa…” Niko begins in a soft voice that has me squeezing my eyes shut against it. I can’t stand his rare kindness; it is a knife between my ribs. If I can block out his face and his voice and his whole goddamn presence, maybe I’ll be able to keep hold of the tiniest bit of myself that remains.
Because right now, it’s slipping from me like grains of sand, no matter how I try to hold on. Stolen by the churning storm of my guilt. I don’t deserve Niko’s care, and I certainly don’t deserve the empathetic way he’s looking at me now.
Like he understands that all the air is gone from the room and it will never return; like he knows I will be choking on my own sins for the rest of eternity.
“I have to go,” I grit out.
The moment Niko steps toward me, my shadow drags its fingers over my shoulders. I dig my nails into the palm of my hand until blood wells beneath them. An attempt to ground myself in the pain; a tether to reality, to keep me from getting lost in the malevolent wants of my darkness once more.
But it’s no use, as all my walls against it were destroyed in the Hollows. The hunger expands, pressing against my bones. The shadow at my back looms ever larger, blotting out the sun with its sinister mass. Darkness rolls thickly over my tongue anddrips from my eyes like hideous tears. It sweeps through the pool of magic behind my heart, saturating the golden light until it is as black as the shadow itself. Until it eradicates every possibility except one: destruction.
Niko reaches for me, and I flinch away from his touch. Panic and dread squeeze me like a vise, as my shadow’s attention turns towardhim.I moan in agony as hunger rakes through me, a ravening, horrible thing. And Niko, with his unending pain and his magnificent power, would be a most sustaining feast.
I am going to hurt him the way I hurt Sam. The silence of Niko’s heartbeat still haunts my dreams to this day, and I am going to be forced to endure it again. And this time, I will only have myself to blame.
My shadow leaps, and I yank it away with a cry of pain. It is both slippery and viscous in my grip, sharp agony threading through me at every point of contact. But I hold on, its screech of fury ringing in my ears, as I try to shove it deep in my chest. It thrashes against my ribs, pounds furiously against my bones, and it’s all I can do to hold still against the pain.
I grind my teeth together, squeezing my eyes shut. The pressure inside me builds and builds, until I’m certain my skin will split; certain, that every horrible part of me will burst forth from the seam and devour everything around me. I have to leave before Niko is caught in the blast.
I take a step toward the door, every bone in my body screaming. Any words of warning are lost in the tempest of my body, so there is nothing to do but run. I’ve escaped so many times before, it is buried into the marrow of my soul. I follow the familiar path of it blindly, with another stumbling step forward.Away. Away. Away.
But Niko knows the heart of me all too well, probably reading my decision to run before I even made it. Fast as lightning, hetakes me by the shoulders and pulls me against his chest, caging me in the embrace of his arms.
I want to sob at the cooling feel of his bare skin against mine; I want to scream at how long I’ve lived without it. But the moment he touches me, my shadow shrieks and thrashes, running its claws down the inside of my lungs. I gasp, black edging my vision at the pain, as the shadow rattles my body like the bars of a cage.
“Let me go!” I cry in horror, writhing in Niko’s grip.
Destroy him before he destroys us,the shadow chants, battering against my bones until I whimper in desperation.
I can’t hold on. I’m not strong enough.
“Let me go! You have to let me go before I—”
Niko only holds me tighter to him, his body the only solidity in the howling sea of rage.
“Let it out, Willa,” he breathes against my hair.
I gulp down air, another resounding clash wracking my body. “I can’t,” I moan, using the last of my feeble energy to wrestle away from him; to try to spare him from the horrors at the depths of my soul.
But Niko’s arms are iron, his heartbeat steady and calm against my ear. He is infallible, just as he’s always been, and suddenly, I understand that he will stand here with me as the darkness erupts. Death does not balk, and neither does he, and I will be left alone for eternity with the memory of how I consumed him.
“I can take it,” Niko says softly.
I shake my head frantically. “No onecan take it,” I hiss, my voice only half my own. Or maybe it is all my own, and I just never understood how deeply my ruin runs. “No one can ever take it!”
