If the augur wanted blood, she would gladly give it to him.
Lynx glowered at her as she crept past him to the wardrobe in the middle of the night.
Clad in her dagger-filled pants; boots; a long-sleeved, thick fabric wrapped around her hands and forearms; a hood over her head; and a scarf draped over the bottom of her face, she portaled away with her starstick.
It took a few tries to find a larger town, complete with a market, roads that twisted and converged in no decipherable pattern, and plenty of shadowy rooftops from which she could watch.
She could likely kill anyone, but she wouldn’t harm innocents. No; if she was going to kill someone, they would deserve it.
Though the curses were gone and Nightshades could go out after dusk, it seemed centuries of habit weren’t broken in mere months. Or perhaps they were worried about being caught in a storm. The streets were quiet.
She leapt across rooftop after rooftop, listening. Studying.
It took a few hours before she discovered its underbelly—a shard of city that had thinner alleys, establishments with basement levels carved into the ground, and bars that didn’t ever seem to close. This would be the spot. She watched, fascinated, for a few nights, discovering people’s routines. A large, bowlegged man went to the same brothel every other night, like clockwork. Just beforehand, he would visit the bar next door for courage. Every morning, just before dawn, he emptied the contents of this stomach in the
streets before wobbling home.
Another man—slender and tall with spikes on the back of his boots— lingered by the door of the brothel for hours without ever stepping foot
inside. At first, Isla figured he was shy, but when a woman stormed out to demand he leave, she learned he had been banned.
The man didn’t leave after that night. He just got better at lurking in the shadows. Isla had her sights on him, but—though making the women of the brothel uncomfortable was certainly deplorable—he hadn’t yet done anything worth his life. He would, though. She was sure of it. She just needed to wait.
It happened two days later. Isla was sprawled across a rooftop that had a view all the way to the harbor, when a scream split through the night.
The sound made her think of the hundreds of innocents—of the ruin she’d inflicted. How they must have screamed, hoping someone would save them. How she had been responsible . . .
She was on her feet in moments, leaping across rooftops, bolting toward the sound. It was coming from an alley that ended in a point: three buildings that had sagged together over time, fighting each other for foundation.
There was the slender man—choking a woman who looked no older than she was.
She landed behind him in a crouch. She took her thinnest knife from its place against her thigh and slid it right into his back.
The man cursed and dropped the woman immediately. She fell to the floor, gasping, clutching her throat with shaking fingers. The man made to turn around—presumably to hit her—but his efforts simply pushed him
more firmly onto her blade.
Isla had never stabbed someone through the ribs . . . through their back.
There wasn’t anything honorable in it. But, then again, a man choking a woman in an alleyway didn’t deserve an honorable death.
He whirled and grabbed her other wrist, perhaps meaning to break it, but the snake she wore there as a bracelet over her metal ones struck out, piercing his vein with its jaws. Without power, she needed to take precautions.
Isla sighed. “Now that’s going to be painful,” she told him. “Right into the bloodstream.” She shook her head ruefully. “Stabbing your heart would be merciful.”
She drew her blade sharply from his back and kicked him to the ground, far from the woman he had nearly killed. He vomited as he flipped over.
His face was turning a peculiar shade of blue. He began spasming. The poison was already working.
She hardly recognized her own voice. “I’ve grown tired of being merciful.”
The woman flinched when Isla reached out to her.
“It’s okay,” Isla said, her voice gentler now. “I’ve been where you are.” She met the woman’s eyes, thinking back to all the times she had faced near certain death.
“Thank you.” The woman accepted her hand, allowing Isla to help her to her feet and escort her back to the town’s main street, leaving the man to choke on his own bile.
By the time she returned, he was dead. The alley was quiet. There was no one to witness how she carved his heart right out of his chest. It was bloody work, cutting through the ribcage; his organs were still warm.
The augur wanted a fresh heart? He was going to get it.
Just like Eta had said, the augur lived deep in the forest behind a thin waterfall, guarding the mouth of a cave like a door. It didn’t take long to find it, on Lynx’s back. Without so much as a word, she threw the sack with the heart in it through the curtain of water and waited.
Minutes later, her own sack was thrown back through—empty—nearly hitting her face. If the action wasn’t already clear, the voice from behind the curtain certainly was. It said—
“More.”
Greedy creature.
Isla returned three times—with three different wicked hearts—and was told the same thing.
More.
How much blood could one being need? What was it even being used for?
There hadn’t been another storm in days, but she could feel the energy in the air, as if the sky was holding its breath. It had slowly shifted into an ominous, darker blue. Grim was busy preparing the tunnels and developing
a system of bells that would warn each town of an incoming tempest as soon as the stormfinch began singing.
Now that they knew there was a portal, he had searched for it himself, on Wraith’s back, unsuccessfully. She knew, because he gave her updates in his scrawled writing on letters he left outside her door, along with flowers, every morning.
She had let them pile up. She didn’t roam the halls anymore, in fear of running into him.
He had defended her. He had believed in her. She told herself she avoided him because he was a distraction from her work to get answers from the augur, but the truth was, she couldn’t face him.
At night, she portaled to the different villages, much to Lynx’s irritation.
She heard things, from the rooftops. Whispers. Loud jeers. It wasn’t long before she heard about herself.
The snake queen, they called her. The Wildling snake. Just like the council that had tried to warn Grim.
A traitor in our midst. A lover of the king of Lightlark, come here to spy.
To destroy. The words filled her with rage—and also with hurt, because what if they were right?
She didn’t want to be a traitor. She didn’t want to pretend. She didn’t want to be all the things they thought she was.
The next time she showed up at the augur’s door, she speared her sword into the soft dirt just in front of the waterfall. He wanted more?
Eight dripping hearts were skewered on her blade. It had taken days of searching for her victims, and only one night to end them all.
Her voice was a low growl. “If you want these, you’ll have to come out and get them.”
Silence. There were only her ragged breath and heartbeat and the waterfall beating against the pool to mark seconds in the night.
Then the curtain of water parted, and the augur stepped through.
Isla stilled. The augur had smooth skin, as pale as the curve of the moon, covered in dark markings as thin and delicate as the weaves of a spiderweb. They glimmered mysteriously, like the ink had been melted straight from a starless night. His eyes were dark crimson voids. He didn’t have a nose—just a hole where it should be, a skull clear of its cartilage. He
was tall and wore the same robes as the prophet-followers, without the hood.
“What do you do with the blood?” It wasn’t her most important question, but the words spilled out of her as she watched him pluck her sword from the ground. He eyed the hearts appraisingly. Hungrily.
“I’ll show you.” He motioned with his chin toward the waterfall.
She had worked days to get to this point, but now she looked at the
entrance to the cave and wondered if she was making a grave mistake—if Eta had tricked her. She had no powers; only daggers and her snake. She had never encountered a being with bloodred eyes before.
As if sensing her hesitance, the augur said, “You’re scared. Good. You should be afraid, Isla Snake-queen. You should be terrified of everything that makes up this wretched land.”
He stepped over the pool separating her from the cave and passed through the waterfall.
She followed him.
Water hit her for a moment, soaking the crown of her head, and then— darkness. The cave was carved from smooth black rock. She walked blindly forward, following the white flash of the augur’s robes and the high-pitched scrape of her heart-laced sword he dragged behind him.
Soon, there was a light, the faint twinkling of sparkling rocks embedded in the ceiling like a cluster of stars. Beneath it sat a shimmering pool.
A pool of blood.
Isla stopped short. Her hand crept toward her throat. One pull of her
necklace and Grim would be there; she knew that. But then he would know she had sought the augur. He might start to listen to those rumors about his traitorous bride.
The augur looked amused. “I do not fear the ruler,” he said, as if knowing the significance of the necklace. “He should fear me, as I know the properties of blood. Blood tells such secrets, doesn’t it?”
His gaze never leaving hers, he slowly removed the first heart from her blade, held it in his hand above the pool—and squeezed.
There was a ring on his thumb adorned with a blade curved like a talon on its underside, and he used it to cut through the tissue. He pressed harder. Harder.
She watched him drain the heart of every drop of blood, the red liquid sputtering from between his fingers until he threw the spent organ behind him, to a corner of the cave. Creatures chittered there, fighting over the pieces. She swallowed the bile building in her throat.
The augur looked over at her as he did the same thing to the second heart. Then the third. He looked amused.
“Your people have done far worse to hearts,” he said, his fist tightening for the fourth time.
“They did it because of a curse,” she responded, forcing herself to watch. “They did not relish it.” She wouldn’t shy from her actions anymore. If this was the price required for the information she needed, so be it. “You still haven’t answered my question.”
“Right. What I do with the blood.” He threw the last of the hearts to the corner, where a mound of insects with a tangle of legs had gathered.
He handed back her bloody sword. She took its hilt with tentative fingers. Then he made his way toward what looked like stone steps leading into the pool. At the top of the first one, he turned toward her. Extended his hand.
The augur raised a brow when she didn’t immediately take it. “You want answers . . . yes?”
Yes.
But she needed to know he could give her the answer she needed. “Can you tell me how long I have to live?”
He nodded.
She swallowed down her disgust and bent to release the snake onto the rock. It slithered and curled, head raised, as if pleading with Isla to reconsider. Still, she stepped forward. Took the augur’s hand. It was spindly; his bones protruded through his skin. His grasp was cold as the
cave itself. Together, they walked down the steps.
Blood. She had seen it before, had felt it on her skin, but not like this. It was thicker than water, noticeably so, and rippled only slightly as she moved through it. First, it was at her knees, then her hips, and then her ribs, and she fought the urge to retch. The scent of metal prickled her nose; there was something else in the air.
“You feel it, don’t you?” The augur said, watching her far too closely. “Power . . . it’s in the blood, you see.”
Blood is power. The past whispered the words, and the memory of her and Oro sank its teeth into her before she could shake it away.
She ripped her hand from the augur’s in the middle of the pool. “How does this help me get answers?”
Quick as a serpent, he struck. Metal glinted in front of her, then disappeared. Her cheek burned in pain. He had cut it with the talon on his thumb. She gasped, nearly tripping back in the pool. Her hand rose to her face, her fingers slick against a small trail of blood.
The augur brought the talon to his lips and slowly licked the blood off it. His eyes seemed to grow even redder as he said, “Interesting.” He began to laugh. “You are the greatest thing that has ever stepped foot into my cave, Isla Thorn-tide.”
Then she was dragged down through the blood.
An invisible grip clutched her ankle, forcing her to the bottom of the pool. She kicked, but her foot didn’t hit anything solid. Her mouth opened with a silent scream, filling with blood.
I shouldn’t have come. She reached toward her necklace—but before she could touch the stone, spectral ties seized both of her wrists too.
She was drowning not just in blood but also in power. It was everywhere, flaying her skin, calling to something deep inside her chest, an incessant knock on a locked door.
Flashes of something, obscuring her vision, intruding on her mind.
Memories. But they weren’t hers. Voices filled her head, so many voices. There were laughs and sighs, but then there was screaming. Everyone was screaming, all she felt was pain, and anguish and—
One moment she was fighting for her life at the bottom of the pool of blood. The next, she was gasping for air, her fingers clawing at her throat.
The snake crawled across her chest, as if trying to wake her. She opened her eyes to find herself on the smooth stone beside the pool. Blood muddled her vision. It filled her ears, cloaked her lips. She turned to the side and retched once. Twice.
When she looked up, blinking away the blood, she saw the augur pacing just a few feet away.
A moment later, she was on her feet. Her blade pressed against the tattooed skin of his neck. “You tried to kill me.”
He looked amused. “I would love to kill you. But, sadly, I cannot.” “Why?”
“I know what was written, and I am but a servant of the book. Your fate is on one of the very last pages. I’m curious to see where your future goes from there.” He smiled, revealing teeth that had been shaved into spikes.
They were still tipped in her blood. “You felt it, didn’t you? The power of your blood, calling to the rest? The strength of it all?”
He spoke of it with such relish, it nearly made her sick. His robe, previously white, was now stained crimson.
“Your blood spoke to me in many tongues. You wear your fate like a crown of blades. Doesn’t it hurt?”
Her snake hissed, slithering farther up her forearm. Isla frowned. Part of her screamed to slit the auger’s throat, to be done with it. All he was doing was speaking riddles and nonsense. “What?”
“Your blood . . . all that power, stirring beneath your skin. Doesn’t it burn?”
It had. But not anymore. “My bracelets keep it contained.”
At that, he laughed. It pealed through the cave. He shook his head, skin slicing slightly against her dagger. He didn’t seem to care. “You can defang a snake, but the poison remains.”
Perhaps he was right. Perhaps she was lying to herself if she thought the bracelets changed who she was. What she had done. Or her fate.
Enough. She had come for answers and, so far, had gotten nothing.
“How long do I have?” she demanded, digging the blade, made sticky with blood, into the top layer of his pale flesh. More blood joined it.
He sighed. “Yes, your lifespan. You died. Life was given to you, leeched from another.”
She nodded. She knew that. “And?”
The augur frowned. “In your current state . . . you won’t last past the storm season.”
She stumbled back. Her hand trembled as she sheathed her dagger. Grim said it would likely last the entire winter. They were already weeks into it.
“You’re certain?” He nodded.
Thousands dead. All because of her.
No. “I need more time. How do I get it?”
A slow smile formed across the augur’s face. It stretched his pale skin too taut. His pointed teeth glimmered. “You asked several times what I do with all the blood. It helps me with readings. Amplifies my power . . . but also gives me time.” He motioned toward himself. “You can see the price paid. Every method to extend life has one.”
She glanced at the pool of blood. Shuddered. “What are the other methods?”
He pointed toward the markings on his head and neck. “Skyres. The ancient markings.” She hadn’t ever heard of skyres, though she had seen something like the augur’s markings once before on someone. But that person was dead.
“Teach me.”
He shook his head. “I cannot. I do not know myself. The prophet made these skyres, you see . . . he did so in secret. He never allowed anyone to witness the art.”
She studied them carefully. They looked complicated.
The augur sighed. “Find the portal, Isla Stormheart. It has power. Take it. Use it to live. Its fate is tied to yours. Find the portal . . . find your fate.”
“Do you know where it is?” She didn’t want to wait for another storm to find it.
He shook his marking-covered head. “No. The prophet knew its location. He wrote it in pages bound by his blood . . . but they’ve been lost.”
She remembered the torn-out parchment from the book. “Centuries before the curses, a follower of the prophet’s word stole them and set off toward Lightlark.”
Lightlark? The mention of the island made her pause with both curiosity and longing. It was an effort to shift back to the reason she was here.
“Do you know how to close the portal when I find it?”
He shook his head again. “Only the pages know.” That wasn’t useful, if they were as good as lost.
She needed to wait for the next storm, trap it in the ring, and follow it to the portal. If the augur was to be believed, its power could give her life, time. She would take it, then find a way to close it.
The augur licked his thin lips with relish. His tongue dragged along his pointed teeth. “Such blood . . . Use it wisely, Isla Cursecure. Your parents
gave you such gifts.” Her parents. He eyed her bracelets. “Such blood . . . such blood, wasted.”
“How can I make sure it isn’t wasted?” she asked. Her life . . . she wanted it to be worth something. She wanted to have done more good than bad.
“Use it.” The augur smiled. His sharpened teeth glimmered in the limited light. “Learn the truth of who you are . . . and your path will become clear.”
He motioned toward the wall. There, carved into the rock, she saw a drawing. It was a woman with snakes wrapped around and around her arms, her neck, her chest. She looked—
She looked like her.
“What is that?” Isla breathed, reaching out to trace the lines in the stone that looked ancient. Weathered.
“The future,” he said, reverently.
“Is it—is it supposed to be me?” The woman looked fearsome. Wicked.
The augur looked at her curiously, crimson eyes swirling. “Do you want it to be?”
She backed out of the cave, throat tightening.
“Not to worry. You will be back, Isla Heartblade,” he said, his voice echoing through the cave as she tore out of it. “It has been written.”
