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Mine is made of iron claws and barbed wire. It’ll make him bleed long before it lets go.
Not my equal, but my perfect balance. And what have I done my whole life but burn?
“I drugged and kidnapped her. Forced her to open the wards at knifepoint. I sent her to a world where Pan would never find her.
“Wendy was only my friend, and I damned the entire kingdom for her. What do you think I’d do for you?”
I’ve never been chosen.
I want it all if it means he’ll never give me up. Not for the sake of the whole fucking world.
“Take anything you want, Your Majesty.”
Her small breasts
There is no question, no fallacy, to the way I want Willa. I want her enough to leave me breathless; enough to forsake every vow,
every world, without care for the cost. I want her beneath me, beside me, for as long as I live.
“Death does not share.”
“It means…your pleasure is mine,” I growl, the sound more animal than human.
That you’re mine?
“A king kneels before no one, Willa. Not his enemies, not his subjects.” I release my knees, sliding over her body, as I fall to the ground before her. “But I will get on my knees for you. Every fucking day.”
“Look at everything I’d burn to the ground for you.”
“Eyes forward, Willa.”
and it dives relentlessly into my skull. A rhythmic chant of mine, mine, mine.
lush
“Let them see your power, Darling. Let them see the way you command the Carrion King, the way you revel in my death.”
“I told you…your pleasure is mine,”
adytum
He sees it as a weakness, as a terrible moment he’ll never atone for, but I see it for what it is—strength of heart.
“This is decidedly not the bed I was promised,” he remarks sulkily, burying his face in my hair.
“Sometimes words aren’t written to be happy. Tragedy can be just as beautiful.”
And how fitting, for him to etch beauty onto his skin eternally, when he embodies art itself. His clothes, his demeanor—even his magic. Niko is living, breathing art.
I don’t know which is worse: never having someone who loved you or having it and losing it.
Fear that I want to stay in Letum, so long as Niko wants me here. If he is an anchor, I want to be anchored too.
When you are stained in violence, you feel too filthy to deserve home.
It tugs at the recesses of my mind, some memory long buried by two centuries.
“According to Niko, I should use my magic sparingly. At least until I have a better hold on it.” Sam glances at me sidelong, the corner of his mouth turned down in a curious frown. “Niko said that?”
“Using it is like this painting…the possibility feels so overwhelming—so enormous—that it’s hard to grasp one thing without being torn away by another. I need to paint it…to block in the shapes and then go back in with the details.”
Dread begins to spiral through my stomach, tentacles that writhe and pierce through my earlier happiness.
“You have been my only breath of life in centuries of death. You’ve left me forever undone. No matter the rush of dreams or sprawl of the stars or the span of time, I will always be on my knees in benediction and gratitude…to you, Willa.”
Because the wards were never a path to travel, or a gate to be opened and closed at will. I am the star, so I am the ward.
Intangible; too wild, too ethereal, to ever hold. It now blooms inside me, fed by the pump of my heart. Once, I’d despised the sound of it. The never-ending tick, tick, tick, thumping against my chest eternally. I’d felt betrayed by its beat, betrayed by the universe for its inability to just give up.
“The island needs an anchor. A magic that will give it life instead of death. Go before you’re as trapped here as I am. Eternally. Irrevocably.”
Freedom is all I’ve wanted for so long. But on top of this tower in the land of dreams with starlight pouring through my veins, staring at this lethally beautiful man—I can’t remember why.
“I have run for so long, Niko, and I’m…I’m tired.” Hot tears well in my eyes, and I hate those, too. “I’ve been running away from anything that could touch me, tie me down, because I feared what it would cost. But here with you, my fear has been replaced by power.”
“It is,” I reply fiercely. “Because this time, I have you.”
“I don’t want you to send me away to protect me. I want you to be exactly what you are…cruel and selfish and obsessive. You won’t ever let me sacrifice all of myself for this kingdom, because you won’t let anyone have what is yours.”
“If you stay, I will lie and kill.” His vow is a hot caress over my throat. “Hurt and maim, trick and scheme, to keep you with me until the end of my days. I will sacrifice all morals, betray all honor, to keep you in your power. You are my only altar, my only religion. I pray to you, Willa, and you alone.” The space between us pulls tight with tension as he breathes the next words. “Is that truly what you want?”
That I stayed. That I want him for who he is, not who the world thinks he should be. I want the dark, the painful, the messy. Everything.
“I have lived lifetimes, and nothing in this universe or the next feels like you. Like us.”
“Like sacrilege,”
He’s laying his heart in my hands and trusting me not to slice it wide open.
I give him what he needs; what I’ve always needed. Not power, or hope, or peace—but home.
Home was never a trap. It is the purest form of freedom.
“Do you see the way I fit inside you, Darling? How perfectly your body grips mine?”
“You’re mine, Willa. Your vicious, your savage, your fight. All of it belongs to me.”
“As I belong to you. Wholly.”
