Isla told Grim everything about the skyres. About the augur’s words. About her dwindling timeline. About the feather she spoke through. At first, the
words came out slowly, but then, in a relieved rush. She was grateful to be burning at least some of the secrets between them.
The entire time, Grim just sat there, almost unnaturally still, as if forcing himself to be silent to let her finish.
Then, he said, simply, “No.” “No?”
He shook his head. “No. Your soul will not be the price to pay.” “Then what will?” she demanded. “Who will?”
He was silent.
“I’m going to keep using them,” she said firmly. “This—this guilt. This blood on my hands. It will never be erased. But any sacrifice I have to make to do more good than bad . . . to make sure everyone doesn’t die with
me . . . I’m going to do it. It’s my choice.”
His eyes blazed into hers. They stared each other down.
Grim didn’t agree with her . . . but she knew he wouldn’t dare take away her choice. Not again. Begrudgingly, he nodded.
Grim looked away. For a few moments, there was silence, as he leaned over his knees, his hands pressed against them. He looked pensive, deep in thought. Then, he said, “I said I would choose you over the world, every
single time.” He glanced over at her again, and she nodded. “It’s true. I would burn the world for you, in a moment. Without question.” His throat worked. “But that doesn’t mean I want us to live in its ashes.” He sighed, and it seemed to move through his entire body. “I don’t want the world to
die, heart. I’ve been trying to search for solutions. I thought . . . I thought maybe we could have a child.”
She stilled. An heir would resolve his life being tied to his realm.
“The augur’s read of your lifespan clearly makes that impossible,” he said. He was right.
But the idea of having a child with him . . .
“It made me happy,” he said, quietly. “It made me wish for another life. Another universe, where it was just us, just our family. One where we were free from all the responsibilities that bind us.”
“I want that too,” she said, the words a whisper. Her eyes burned, thinking about it. “A life with nothing binding me. It’s what I’ve always wanted.”
He almost smiled. He brushed away a tear that had slipped down her cheek. “We aren’t supposed to want anything,” he said gently. It was true. She had learned that from the time she could learn at all. Rulers were born simply to serve their people. Her life was not her own.
She leaned into him, and he gathered her to his chest. She buried her
face in his shirt, her ear pressed against his heart. She relished in its beating. “Somewhere, out there, nearby, or in another world completely, there
someone who got everything they wanted. It will never be us.” She looked up at him. “But for them . . . for them, I’m happy. I hope they know how lucky they are.”
“I’m not happy for them,” he said. “I envy them.” She smiled. “I envy them too.”
His arms tightened around her. He whispered, right against the crown of her head, “I’m holding everything I’ve ever wanted.”
Isla turned and looked up at him, only to find him studying her.
His eyes were almost glimmering with intensity. “You said before, I don’t know what love is . . . but I do. I know it means us being infinite. It means our fates being tied together regardless of where we are, or whether we live or die.” He trailed his knuckles down her cheek. “I’m not sure of much in this world, Isla, but I am sure of this. My love for you doesn’t
know reason. It doesn’t know limit. It doesn’t know death. In every universe, every timeline, I am yours . . . and you are mine.”
She kissed him as snow began to fall outside the glass window. She held him and thought to herself that this moment was perfect.
It was almost easy to pretend that there weren’t a million problems waiting beyond, like distant arrows aimed at this glass house, ready to shatter it.
The augur eyed her as she stalked toward him, having stepped through his waterfall without an invitation. He was standing at the ready, as if he had been expecting her.
“I wondered when you would show up,” he said. “Where are my hearts?”
Her grin was poisonous. “I’ll feed you the one in your chest, if you’d like.”
Slowly, he smiled, stretching his sickly skin taut, his pointed teeth glittering. “Oh, the prophet would have liked you . . .”
“Speaking of him,” she said. “I’m assuming you have his blood.” He didn’t make a single move that signaled surprise.
“You have more than that . . . don’t you?”
The augur lifted a bony shoulder. “I have his skull. And, of course, blood.”
She imagined stealing their dear prophet’s body might have been what had gotten the augur ousted from the mountain.
They knew where the portal was—but not what to do next. There was a path to find out she hadn’t yet explored, mostly because she had believed it impossible. Now, she was desperate. “The lost pages of the prophet’s book. They speak about how to open and close portals. Right?”
He nodded. “They detail exactly how the prophet got here.” “They were written in his blood?” She needed to confirm.
He nodded again.
“If I put a tracking skyre on his bone . . . would it lead me to it?” He seemed surprised. “You learned how to form it?”
No. She hadn’t. But the book from the winter castle had given her several original markings. It was dangerous—and painful—but she would try each one, until she got it right. “Not yet. But I will.”
The augur regarded her curiously. For a moment, it looked like he was going to say something. Then, he seemed to think better of it and scurried deeper into the cave.
He returned holding an object far smaller than a skull. It gleamed in the limited light. He motioned for her to outstretch her hand, and she did, watching as he dropped it in the center of her palm.
A tooth.
“Write the skyre on this, with your blood. Follow it closely.” She nodded.
“Oh, and Isla?”
“Yes?”
He reached out, just as something dripped from her face. Crimson stained his finger, and he licked it away.
Her own hand rushed to her lips . . . only to find them coated in blood.
She was bleeding from her nose. From the corner of her mouth.
The augur tutted. “The price of the skyres,” he said. “I can already taste them in your blood . . . souring it.” He frowned. “It will get worse, the more you make.” He eyed the tooth in her palm. She curled her fingers around it.
“Such guilt you wear,” he said, licking his lips. “I taste it so sharply.
You want so badly to be the hero in this destiny.”
She remembered what the prophet-followers had said. That she was destined to either save the world . . . or destroy it.
The augur seemed to know it too.
“You are made from both light and dark, and so much more. You don’t even know it. But you will. Soon.” He sighed. “The traitor. She’s been uncovered. She’s rising.”
“Traitors,” Isla said, confused by his words. “My guardians.”
He looked surprised. His crusted lips nearly cracked and bled from how wide he smiled. “No . . . you don’t know. The traitor . . . she’s closer than you realize.”
“What do you mean?” she demanded, her fist tightening around the tooth.
But the auger only laughed. He turned and walked deeper into the cave, the blood in his pool rippling as he passed it by. His laugh echoed, until it, like him, disappeared.
Grim found her on Lynx’s back, halfway to the castle. Wraith had recovered enough to fly. He landed, his wings shuddering slightly with the impact, but
when he saw Isla, he smiled.
She rushed to him, and he bent his head low to brush it against hers, sending her flying back, against Lynx, who grumbled.
He too, however, looked pleased to see Wraith flying again.
She turned to Grim, and her smile slowly shrank. “What is it?” “Another gravesite has been ransacked. Worse than before.”
The augur’s words were fresh on her mind as she said, “Take us there.” He did. They landed in front of a gravesite.
Isla’s mouth went dry. She didn’t dare say a word.
The graves hadn’t just been desecrated . . . they had been raided.
“The bones are gone,” Astria said. She had been waiting in the clearing. The holes were empty. Barren.
She could almost hear the augur’s pealing laughter echoing through her skull. “Terra and Poppy. Are they still imprisoned?” she asked Grim.
He nodded.
“Take me to them.”
The prison was on an island off the coast of Nightshade. Large waves crashed against its exterior. One side had windows, the other did not. Guilt stabbed her through the stomach, knowing this is where she had sent her guardians.
They were led in front of her, still restrained. The prison itself had been built thousands of years before, from glimmering shademade metal. No power could be used inside, so they had been brought outside, to her.
Poppy looked afraid. Terra looked murderous.
Isla had sworn to herself she wouldn’t use Oro’s power, but she had to know. She had to be sure. She closed her eyes. Reached for the connection.
Part of her wondered if it wouldn’t be there. Part of her hoped it wouldn’t.
But, clear as a beam of sunlight, she felt it in her bones. She grabbed onto it.
“Tell me again,” she said slowly. “Tell me again all that you did not do.”
Terra looked ready to gut her, but she said, “We did not destroy the nightbane. We did not desecrate any graves. And,” her voice was clear as day, “we did not kill your parents.”
Poppy repeated the words.
Isla waited to feel the bitter taste of a lie on her tongue. She readied to feel it like poison in her veins.
It did not come.
They were telling the truth.
Isla didn’t know what to believe—what to feel. Her sanity was unwinding within her. Everything she had believed to be true was a lie. She had locked up her guardians, and they had been innocent. She no longer trusted her own judgment.
It was the middle of the night when she turned slowly in the sheets, next to Grim. His wide chest was bare, illuminated by a sliver of moonlight peeking through the curtain they had rushed to close when Grim had grabbed her on her way out of the bath.
She carefully moved his arm from her waist and left the bed. Her steps were quiet, careful, but Grim awoke anyway. “Hearteater?” he asked quietly, his voice thick with sleep.
“I’ll be right back,” she told him, and headed into the bathroom. She waited until his breaths slowed again.
Then, she portaled to her island.
Grim knew she was using skyres . . . but he didn’t need to see the pain it took to create them.
The tooth glimmered in the moonlight.
She spread out the pages before her—four full skyres she had managed to get from the book, and the half of the tracking skyre. They were supposed to fit together somehow.
Her tests would be run on another object—a piece of bark she had peeled from a nearby tree.
Her eyes closed. She breathed deeply. Then, she dipped the feather’s tip into her vein, until it gathered her blood like ink. She winced against the slight burn, but that wasn’t the hard part, no.
The moment she began to create the shape upon the bark, the edges of the skyre forming, her veins began to heat.
Please be right, she thought, remembering what the blacksmith had said about making markings incorrectly. There was a price.
As her shape closed, she paid it.
Her body seized. She began thrashing on the ground, she barely missed biting her tongue. Instead of feeling fire through her veins, she felt as if each one was being plucked out of her body, torn through her skin. Her scream scraped roughly against her throat; it seemed to swallow the world.
The pain—it was too much.
Her powers rose up to the surface, that beast within her lashing out.
Plumes of black smoke barreled through the woods and down the beach, ending in flames that hissed into ice when they met the sea. The forest floor lifted like a carpet and became a field of thorns.
She screamed and screamed, the pain and power it called blinding her, eating all her senses, until it all became too much, and the world fell into darkness.
The noon sun peeked right through the treetops. She squinted against it, then rose, only to find herself covered in dirt.
Pain surged through her, a reminder of last night.
She had messed up the skyre, and it had nearly killed her. The peel of bark sat buried beneath a layer of soot, glimmering with her blood.
She didn’t know if she could do this again, until she got it right. She didn’t know if she would survive it.
Her body was sore. Her power was spent, scraped clean. She nearly fell over as she made to stand. Her head throbbed. She had dreamed of the
village again—the screaming, the darkness, the chaos.
How long had she been asleep?
Isla portaled back to her room and found it empty. She cursed. It was already past noon. Grim would be well into his day already and wondering where she had disappeared to. He would be getting worried. As she changed out of her clothes, she noticed the commotion outside. Soldier boots.
Orders. Panic.
Grim portaled in a moment later, his hardened expression shifting to relief when he saw her.
Then, his gaze dropped to her bare feet, which were covered in dirt. “Where were you?”
“The Wildling newland,” she said, the lie escaping her with surprising ease. Isla wanted to tell him about the island. But there was something
about it belonging to her father—something about him having kept it a secret—that made her hold back. She turned toward the bathroom. “I was experimenting with the skyres. What’s the panic?”
“There’s been an attack. Many people are dead.”
Isla stopped in her tracks. She whipped around. “Another storm?” He shook his head. “No. An attack.”
“What? Where?”
“A town to the northwest,” he said, studying her. “It’s one of our military bases. But civilians died too.”
That didn’t make any sense. Who would attack now? Oro certainly wouldn’t. He didn’t want war and wouldn’t kill Nightshade innocents. The rest of the realms didn’t have the motive or resources.
Poppy and Terra might have done something out of vengeance, she thought. But no—she had already wrongly accused them of murder before. “Why would anyone attack Nightshade? How would they even get
access?” Almost the entire island was surrounded by reefs, making it nearly impossible to reach by boat. Cleo’s fleet could only anchor to the north. She supposed the perpetrators could have flown, but it was a long journey, and
the Skylings were peaceful people. There was no need to start a war between realms, not now.
“We’re not sure. We just have initial reports, we’re working to get more witness accounts.”
Isla nodded. Good. “Are we going to the town?” He looked at her. “Do you want to?”
“Of course I want to.”
She turned to the dresser and began putting on a new set of pants, boots, and a long-sleeved shirt. A bath would have to wait.
As she made to put her hair up, however, Grim said, “You should stay.
Get cleaned up; I will take care of it.”
Isla froze, fingers still against her roots. “You want me to stay?”
“You didn’t sleep last night.” He brushed his lips against her forehead. “Rest, heart. I’ll be back soon.”
Then, before she could protest again, he was gone.
Isla’s eyes narrowed at the door. There was something he wasn’t telling
her.
She slipped into the hall. Keeping to the shadows, she followed him all the way to the throne room, where his legion waited. Just before he entered, Astria stopped him at the doors.
Isla pressed against a wall around the corner, far enough not to be sensed but close enough to listen.
“Yes?” Grim said, even more gruff than usual.
“More witnesses,” her cousin said. “They’re all saying the same thing, ruler.”
“They’re confused. They don’t know what they saw.”
Astria was silent for a few moments before she spoke again. Her voice was resolute. “Is that what you’re going to tell them to say?”
Grim made a sound like a growl.
“They’re reliable witnesses. Previous soldiers. They are certain in their accounts.”
“And what, exactly, are they claiming they saw?” Grim demanded.
“A Wildling, coming up from the ground. Leveling the town with power they have never seen before. Pulling bodies straight into the dirt.
Suffocating them.”
Isla wasn’t breathing. A Wildling attacked a town on Nightshade. A Wildling with power they had never seen before. None of her people had power like that, at least that she knew of. She supposed they could be hiding it, but to what end? They were happy here.
It was the traitor. She was still out there.
“They saw her, ruler,” Astria continued. “Their description matches her exactly. One of the witnesses has seen her in person, at the court. He confirmed it.”
Her.
She meant Isla.
Her blood went cold, then boiled. How could Astria accuse her of such a thing? Did the fact that they were family mean nothing to her?
Grim’s voice was a growl as he said, right in Astria’s face, “Are you accusing my wife of destroying a town?”
Astria did not back down as she said, “She’s done it before.”
