“You almost died, and my bed is what you want to focus on?”
“Your bed isalwayswhat I want to focus on. Especially when you’re in it with me.”
She rolls her eyes, that smile blooming into open laughter as she settles herself at my side. I don’t miss how careful she is not to move the mattress, nor the way her eyes refuse to stray from mine. I search again for the memory of what happened in the Hollow City, but it is made of disjointed pieces and swathes of nothingness.
The Aeternalis’ appearance had sent the kingdom into a panicked frenzy. And Willa’s shadow—the one Niko was so worried about hurting her—had overtaken her. I’d been determined to save my queen from it, and that is the last thing I remember.
But I can feel pain. I can wiggle my toes even if it hurts so terribly, I think my heart will burst. At the very least, I’m not dead or paralyzed, and that seems like a good place to start.
“You can’t ever do that again, Sam,” Adira snaps fiercely. My eyes drift from where I’d been gazing dreamily at her hair, back to hers. They shine with tears, and I don’t like it. Tears are a powerful magic of their own, and Addy would never waste them on something trivial. “Do you understand me?”
“I—” I have never been good with words—never been good at encapsulating the vast spectrum of how thingsfeel—but they are especially far away now. Buried beneath fire and pain and Addy’s nearness.
But Adira doesn’t appear to need them as she leans in close, her gray eyes churning. I curse the fire burning in my chest, wishing desperately I could feel beyond it to Addy’s anger.
“I have never shamed you for the heart you possess. Star knows, it is the purest thing on this island. But I have watched you give up your own peace for three centuries. Watched you endure pain you have no claim to. Ruinyourself at the feet of others.” Adira lifts her chin. “And I will notdo it a moment longer.”
I stare at her, as the past and present wrap around me in diaphanous layers.The wild eats the weak, and you, Sam…you make me weak.Her words have become a twisted sort of mantra over the years, woven themselves through the spaces between my heart and soul. I’ve never had the courage to ask exactly what she’d meant by them. Was it my magic she deemed weak? Was it the softness of my heart or the thinness of my skin?
“First with Niko, and now Willa…where will it end?” Tears spring anew to her eyes, and though I try to reach for her through the fire once more, I grasp only smoke and desolation. “When will you stop carrying everyone else’s burden? When you’re crushed beneath it entirely? Will it be enough then?”
I lick my lips, wishing to the star above I was well enough to have this conversation on my feet instead of laying uselessly onmy ass. “You don’t get to choose how I love, Addy, nor decide what’s worth the pain.”
Her lower lip trembles, and she traps it between her teeth. “It almost got you killed. And none of us are worth that.”
Us.
I blink at her, the word clanging through me. I wish I could feel what she means; know the taste of it on my tongue. I settle for grappling at the air in search of her hand. My wounds smart when they scrape against her palm, but I don’t mind the pain of it. Not when her skin is so warm beneath mine.
“It is enough, Sam. You’ve done enough.”
I give her a soft smile, and even that hurts. “I am not some martyr punishing myself with pain that isn’t mine…I am just as selfish as everyone else. I take Niko’s pain because it brings me pleasure to ease my oldest friend’s suffering. I take Willa’s because I love Niko and I love the island and they loveher.I take all of it because it makes mehappyto do so.”
I grip her hand tighter, pressing it to my chest. “And I would take every bit of yours that you would allow, because your heartismy heart…why wouldn’t I want to bring it pleasure instead of pain?”
Adira blanches, the color draining from her face as if she’s seen a ghost. And perhaps she has. Perhaps my wounds have driven me half out of my mind, and in my madness, I’ve tilted too far into the past.
“Sam—”
We’ve teetered along a delicate line for so long, and in one fell swoop, I’ve thrown us both off it. And I don’t know if it’s the exhaustion or the wounds or the fire singeing my brain, but I don’t regret it. I’m tired of tiptoeing; of pretending Adira is not my entire soul, even though I am not hers.
Addy gazes at me, something like sorrow edged in the turn of her lips. When she opens her mouth to speak, I wave her off.
“I don’t need you to say anything,” I tell her softly. I don’t need to be coddled simply because I’m injured. The truth lies between us now—that it has been two hundred years and I am as desperate for her as I have ever been. And as pathetic a truth as it is, it feels good to allow it into the open. “I just need you to understand. You know my heart, Addy. You loved it once. Please don’t try to change the way it beats.”
A tear finally falls. I track the way it slides down her cheek and drips from her jaw as she nods, wondering why I cannot feel the familiar ache of her sadness. Newfound determination threads through me. I have never been powerful like Niko or Addy. My worth has always laid in the quieter things; the support I offer.
“Help me up?”
Adira hesitates, until she realizes I’m going to sit up with or without her help. When she ducks beneath my arm, even the light pressure of her body against mine is nearly unbearable. It’s been so long since I’ve held her; so long since I’ve felt the way she molds to me, that a heady bitterness unfurls through me that all I feel is the pain of my injuries, and none of the pleasure of her.
I grit my teeth against the vomit surging up my throat, as the room spins wildly out of control. It is impossible to determine where the pain originates when it feels as though I amallpain. Black edges my vision, and I swallow roughly to keep from being sick all over Adira’s comforter.
When the world finally stills, I steel my spine and turn my head to my reflection in the small dresser mirror.
My heart stutters in my chest.
Every inch of my skin is covered in gaping wounds, my body now a patchwork of snaking lacerations and grotesque scabs. My braids have been shorn off, the many rings once decorating each ear, now torn out and ragged.
