Page 129 of Carrion

The words drag me from my thoughts as cold fury surges up my throat. It doesn’t matter how exhausted I am. A quick death won’t do.

“I alreadyknowthe cost,” I snarl back, baring my teeth. “Far better than someone like you ever will.”

Dawson’s eyes spark, as he drinks in my rage. “Losing Willa forever was a consequence, Niko. It wasn’t the cost,” he says in a sing-song voice.

My breath catches, and my eyes narrow. “What do you mean?”

“The centuries have dulled your mind. Made you sloppy,” Dawson crows with relish. “Did you not wonder why I didn’t fight harder to keep Willa from anchoring herself to the island? Why I brought my kin to your ridiculous palace, rather than into the belly of the Croc?”

Every part of me goes cold, as I stare at my brother. I’d already been on the verge of death when the battle began. Far too gone to examine the motivations of a man who rarely needed a reason for violence.

“The Strayed were merely a distraction. I needed to make it convincing, you see. Enough so that you never guessed my true motivations.” His smile is sharp and humorless. “You and Willa were too tied up in your own game to ever truly examine mine.”

My words are a grit of teeth, a slash of violence. “Tell me.”

Dawson obliges. Not out of the kindness of his heart, but out of his need to drink in more of my pain. To grind salt into the lethal wounds already sliced through me. “Now that she’s tied to the island, every time your little darling uses her magic, she’ll be giving up a little piece of her humanity.”

My blood goes cold in my veins. “That’s a lie,” I snap. “I’ve anchored the island for two hundred years, and I’m just as human now as I was then.”

“That’s because you had nothing to offer, brother. You were only filled with death, and so the island could not drink. But Willa…” Dawson grins, devouring every bit of my reaction. “Willa is so full. Soalive.”

Shock loosens my grip on the sword hilt. Dawson swats the blade from my hand, and it flies to the ground with a clatter.

“You know better than anyone this world gives you nothing for free. It took centuries for Pan to lose his humanity entirely, but something tells me Willa’s descent will be far quicker.”

He licks his lips with fervor. “She toyed with the sacred things of the universe. She reimagined time itself and stole from fate. You know well the possession of death. The theft will not go unanswered.”

Guilt crashes against me, and my lungs refuse to expand and suddenly, I’m drowning on dry land. No matter how I gasp or writhe, there is not enough air. Not enoughanythingto erase Dawson’s words.

He sighs with relish. “I’ll bide my time, provoking her just enough to use her magic. Over and over, piece by piece, until your woman is just as empty as the Aeternalis. And if you’re ever brave enough to show your face in Letum, I promise…you won’t even recognize the twisted thing Willa has become.”

I think of gutting my brother where he stands, from throat to belly, and watching his organs spill out on the dingy sidewalk for daring to threaten what’s mine. But all I manage is, “Why?”

It isn’t Dawson who replies.

“Because I’ve always wanted someone to rule by my side,” a voice says from behind me, one that haunts both my nightmares and daydreams. One I never thought I’d hear again.

I whirl in time to see the Aeternalis step out from behind the brick building. The Everlasting nearly glows in the harsh sunlight. Blonde locks curled in a messy halo around his head, piercing eyes the color of new grass. Young, unblemished skin colored by hours of adventure. Pan’s face is ageless, his features pointed and delicate in the manner of pixies.

He looks the same as he does in every memory—playfully cruel, violently beautiful—but for a large, scabbed wound running from his throat to his groin. The wound I gave him. Willa’s meddling may have brought him back from the dead, butit hadn’t been able to make him entirely whole. His organs are visible through the wound, as is the blood pumping through his veins and the magic glowing behind his heart.

Power that would be flowing through his entire body if we weren’t currently standing in a world with no magic.

“I’ve never liked to be alone, as you well know, Nikolas,” he says, stepping toward me.

Instinctively, I reach for my death. But I find only emptiness, a gaping hole where my power used to reside. How had I never noticed the scraping emptiness of it the last time I’d left the island? Looming beneath the absence of pain?

The Aeternalis laughs, a tinkling melody that slices through the air. “And I think Willa will make the most excellent of playmates.”