He cuts himself off with a curse of frustration, his ribbons writhing wildly in the air around his head. Sucking in a sharp breath, he tries again, softer. “I am a lot of things…a murderer, a mutineer, a schemer, a thief. But I am not a liar. I would not claim to love all of you, and then demand an apology for being exactly who you are. What kind of man would I be to claim I love your rage, your violence…and then turn around and shame you for the very same thing?”
More tears blur my vision as something in my chest unlocks. A deluge of feeling, a rush of fury and relief so potent, I expect it to pour from my chest.
“It wasn’t,” I whisper, the words an unleashing.
Niko eyes snap to mine. “What?”
“I didn’t send you away because I was angry,” I admit. “You died to escape your pain, Niko…and I—I loved you too much to ask you to stay here and bear it for the rest of eternity.”
His tongue slides over his lower lip, the truth hanging in the air between us like an electric storm—trying to touch it would be a shock to the heart.
“I wanted to spare us both the choice that would eventually come. Suffer for eternity or leave me forever. I know everyone leaves eventually, but with you…I knew I couldn’t survive it again.”
Niko’s mouth parts, anguish washing over him. “I never would have done that. I never would have left your side.”
I gaze up at him, exhaustion washing over me. “You swore we were eternal once, Niko. And I was left alone with your empty promise.”
“Weareeternal,” he replies fiercely. “My dying did nothing to change that. The touch of death, of imagination, of fate and destiny, of shadows and light…None of them are powerful enough to alter what exists between you and me. I will love you no matter what plane of existence I am in. Whether you are living and I am dead, whether we are together or apart. I amyours…eternally. I meant it then, as I mean it now.”
I shiver, as Niko runs his fingers from my jaw to the back of my neck, tangling them in my hair to draw my face closer to his. My entire body heats as he trails that obsidian gaze over me, drinking in every detail, every minute expression—even those I don’t mean to give.
“I didn’t give myself up to death to escape the pain,” he says, his voice a dark whisper. “I did it because I have always chosen you, Willa, even when you wouldn’t choose yourself. I have kept your deepest longing close to my heart when your affection kept you from remembering…and it was never me.” The words fracture, the sorrow on his face a mirror of my own. “It was that power, that magic, roiling through your veins.Thatis what you desired above everything, and I fucking gave it to you. Even if it meant you would hate me for it.”
His fingers pull tighter in my hair as he backs me up against the wall, fitting his hard body against the cradle of mine. A moan rises in my throat, as he leans in to whisper against my lips, “I am no hero. I gave up my kingdom for the simple hope of doing right by you. You are what matters. You are my only moral line. Everything else, including my own life, will always be secondary.”
Niko brushes a kiss over my jaw, so light it is more of a breeze than a touch. “I am not sorry for doing whatever was necessary to keep you in your power. Nor for giving you everything you wanted in this life. So, if you are expecting an apology for doing exactly as I vowed…for being merciless in my goals…you forget yourself, Darling.”
My breath catches as the truth unfurls between us. I’ve spent the last year believing Niko chose the island—chose escaping his pain—instead of me. But he left me for the same reason I banished him—to give me what he thought I wanted.
In the end, it wasn’t selfishness that tore us apart. Everything we’ve ever done has been for each other, and it was in that altruism we lost ourselves.
He holds no anger for my choices because he understands the depths of my heart. And in that vein, I understand his. His determination, his ruthlessness, his obsession. How can I fault him for being exactly who I know him to be? I fell in love withthe man, the king and the monster. One is not complete without the other.
“What Iamsorry for is that I ever made you question the breadth of what I feel for you.” Niko sweeps his lips over mine, until his breath is sweet whisper along my tongue. “So, I beg your mercy, Willa.”
He snakes a hand around my waist, his long fingers splaying over the small of my back to press my hips tighter against his. He dips his head, nuzzling into the sensitive spot behind my ear with a satisfied hum.
“Forgive me, for giving you reason to doubt my heart when you are the source of its beat.” His death shudders in time with his breaths as he drinks me in. “Forgive me for taking far too long to find my way home to you.”
I nearly come undone as his mouth skates lightly over my throat and jaw, until his lips rest against mine once more.
“And forgive me for the most grievous offense of all…” His mouth curves in a wicked smile. “For not getting on my knees before you the moment I returned, so there would be no question what you mean to me. My queen, my countenance. My vengeance. My fury. My heart. You are all of it, Willa.”
He peels the sheet from my hands, his gaze flashing with hunger as it drops to the ground between us. Heat breaks through the numb existence I’ve been mired in since the moment he left, flooding the emptiness. Everything suddenly feels raw and new, and I cling to the last modicum of my fear, like it will save me from being inundated.
“You only came back to steal my kingdom,” I remind him, trying in vain to hold onto my anger and doubt, even as every brush of his lips sends them fleeing my brain.
Niko’s answering laugh is lush and dark. “I don’t give a fuck about ruling the island.”
Perhaps it’s foolish to hope, even fractionally, in a universe as dark as this one. But like the morphellia vines, once deadened and black, it blooms inside me now, a shimmering gold in the deepest night.
“I will raze it to the ground, rot it to dust, sink it into the sea.” When I meet his gaze, I see death. Infallible. Inescapable. Beautiful. “I already told you, Darling…I came back to get what’smine.”
When he finally kisses me, it is not a gentle claiming—it is a possession, an invocation. A reminder of what we are, and a punishment for ever daring to forget.
Niko was never here for the island. He was here forme,because I have been his since the moment I fell into Letum. I’d lost sight of him in the wake of my hurt, in the murkiness of the shadow plaguing me, but as he sweeps his tongue along mine, drinking in everything he’s missed, I remember:
We endure.
