Her chest burned.
It was like her scarred skin, right where the heart of Lightlark had marked her, was aflame. That sensation was what woke her as she fell through the sky, wind whipping her wildly through the air.
Grim. Wraith.
She tried to look around, but she couldn’t see anything past the blinding mist.
Wind whipped wildly, tossing her through the air as she plummeted, her skin raw and bleeding. This was it. Her powers were gone. The metal would have muted them anyway. Her limbs flailed as she fought against the inevitable.
A sob scraped against her throat as the clouds cleared, and she managed a look at the ground that was rushing up to meet her.
It was replaced by a wing.
She crashed against the leathery skin, and then against someone—Grim. Wraith had caught them both, and folded into himself, shielding them from the metal that had already marked them everywhere. Cocooning them in his wings that didn’t work any longer, as they fell. Fell.
They crashed like a shooting star, and then, there was only darkness.
She gasped, coughing up water. Her throat burned with salt. Her eyes stung as she fought to open them, as she gripped anything she could—
Only to find herself on land.
Grim was in front of her, holding her hair back as she retched seawater. “What—”
“My power returned just before we hit the ground. I portaled us to the sea for the impact, and then back here.” She turned to see they were on an unfamiliar cliffside. It was freezing, a cold she felt in her bones. A layer of snow frosted everything.
Her chest was still burning. Wraith.
Her knees nearly buckled as she tried to stand, stumbling away from Grim’s help, looking around frantically, only to find Wraith on his side, a
few feet away. She rushed toward him, dragging herself forward, everything sore.
She pressed a palm against him, tears already blurring her vision. “He’s injured, but alive,” Grim murmured. His voice was pained.
His wings. They were torn up and bloody, shredded from the scraps of metal flying through the sky, some still imbedded into his leathery skin.
There was a starlike mark on his neck, where the lightning had struck.
It must have hurt immensely. Still, he had shielded them. Wrapped his wings around them, even as he was falling toward the ground. He had sacrificed himself to save them, without any hesitation.
Tears swept down her cheeks. This was her fault. It was her fault they were even in the storm in the first place. She should have listened to Grim
—should have let him turn them around.
It was all for nothing. The ring was lost. They could search for it, but they’d been so high up . . . it could be anywhere.
She looked to the sky. The storm had moved on. She could barely see it now, though she narrowed her eyes, searching for another pair of wings.
“The creature—”
“Is gone. The storm cleared . . . and with it . . . everything.”
Isla’s knees finally buckled, and the snow was cold against her legs as she buried down into it.
She blinked, and they were back in the stables. Wraith was groaning, breathing in a way that sounded like it hurt.
“Where’s the remaining healing elixir?” she demanded. The vials in the castle were gone, but there had to be more.
“If there’s anything left, it’s with the Wildlings.”
“Get it. Heal him,” she said, knowing he would. They had bonded. She could see the worry clear on his face.
She wanted to stay with the dragon, take each piece of metal out of Wraith’s wings herself—but there was something she needed to do first.
Grim eyed the dozens of tears in her previously impenetrable clothing. The blood that stained it. “Let me help you first,” he said, stepping toward her.
He was going to portal her to her room. Help wrap her injuries. Help her into new clothes.
The room that Oro was currently standing in.
“No,” she said, so loudly, he stilled. “Please—please go with Wraith. I
—I feel so guilty.” It was true. He would be able to feel that guilt now, mixed with undeniable panic. “Portal me to your room, please. I’ll get the starstick, fix myself up and meet you at the Wildling keep.”
She wasn’t breathing as she watched him watch her—studying her closer than she cared for at that moment.
He could ignore her wishes and help her anyway, portal them both right now. It wasn’t like he hadn’t done that before.
Slowly, he reached his hand toward her. His fingers curled around hers.
The stables faded, replaced by his room. She grabbed her starstick, and portaled to her own.
She was immediately engulfed in warmth. She seized, whipping around to see if Grim was there too, if he had changed his mind—but there was only Oro, arms wrapped around her, his heat almost biting against the cold of her skin.
“You’re freezing,” he said into her temple.
Past him, she saw the stormfinch sitting quietly in her cage. Lynx towered behind Oro, eyes wide in worry. Teeth barred in fury.
“What happened?” Oro asked, looking just as concerned as Grim had a few minutes prior. She was covered in cuts and blood; her hair and clothes were still wet.
There wasn’t time to explain. She had to get Oro out of here. She needed to get back to Grim quickly, lest he come and check on her.
“Come back with me. For good.” Oro’s words were firm. Pleading.
She closed her eyes. They still burned from tears and salt water. “I can’t.
You know I can’t.”
His warm hand pressed gently against her cheek, and her shoulders hiked. She opened her eyes to find his staring her down, lit like they held flames.
“I know you think you being here is the only way to save Lightlark, I
know you did it for us, but you cannot be the cost of this. I won’t let you be. There has to be another way, another—”
“There isn’t .” He didn’t understand. “If you kill Grim, I’ll die, and so will all of Nightshade.”
“Killing him isn’t the only way to stop him. You could help us. We could imprison him. No one would have to die.”
“I’m going to die,” she said. “Soon.” And before that, according to the prophecy, she would plunge a blade into either Grim’s or Oro’s heart.
“We’ll find another way.” He didn’t look defeated . . . he looked determined.
Oro wasn’t going to stop fighting for her; she knew that, even though he should. She remembered Enya’s words. Him loving her was dangerous. It made him weak.
Even without the prophecy, she was bad for him. She made him forget his duty. Made him do reckless things like risk his and all his peoples’ lives by traveling across the world to the land of his enemies. The king she had met at the Centennial would never have done that.
She was poisoning him.
She didn’t deserve him, and she was ruining him.
Break him, a voice in her mind said. Make sure he never looks for you again. Make him hate you.
Her heart was burning again, breaking, but for entirely different reasons.
Tears fell down her face. She missed him so much. She missed his touch, but also so much more. She missed their conversations before bed. The way he would warm her socks because she always had cold feet. The way she would catch him studying her, as if he always knew this was temporary, that it would end, and he wanted to commit her to memory.
She didn’t breathe as his thumb slowly swept down her jaw, to her lips.
As his calloused skin scraped across her mouth. It continued down her neck, until he reached her necklace.
He dropped his hand as if he had been burned.
His eyes darted to a corner of her room. It seemed in her absence he had noticed the pile of daggers she had taken from her pants. They were still bloodied. She hadn’t cleaned them yet.
For him to be safe, he needed to forget her.
For him to stop looking for her, he needed to hate her.
“I use those to kill people,” she said steadily. He met her eyes. They narrowed, because he knew she was telling the truth. She didn’t drop his gaze. “I put the knife through their hearts . . . and I enjoy it. I roam the
streets at night, looking for people to kill. I smile as the life leaves their eyes.”
He shook his head. Even as his own power was telling him she wasn’t lying, it seemed like he didn’t believe it. “No. You don’t.”
“I do,” she said, stepping into him, getting as close to his face as she dared. “There is so much blood on my hands, they’ll never be clean. I’m the enemy, Oro. Stop looking for me. You won’t like what you find.”
He took a shaking breath. “I don’t recognize you, love.” “You’re not supposed to.”
She grabbed her starstick, then him, and it was done. They were back in his room.
Their room. They had shared it for months. Part of her ached, truly ached, to just crawl back into that bed. Let Oro help her get warm again, let that warmth be a bonfire that lived permanently in her bones, making her feel safe and loved. Go to the beach with him, the one he had promised to
take her to.
She wanted it so badly, it nearly brought her to her knees.
Oro must have seen it on her face. He lit the great hearth in his room, to warm her, then caught her wrist in his hand.
“You don’t have to go back.” He was looking at her neck. At the
necklace that marked her as Grim’s wife. “We can find a way around it. You have a choice.”
She had two necklaces. One, permanently on her neck. Another, she kept in the pocket of the pants she most often wore. The one with the golden rose he had made her.
It nearly killed her, but she reached her hand inside. Gripped the gold.
It pained her to say the next few words. “I know,” she said. “And I made it.”
Isla handed the golden rose necklace back.
In his eyes, she saw unfiltered pain. Gone was the cold, heartless king of Lightlark. No, this one had a heart.
And she had broken it.
She was about to portal away, when the balcony door to his room burst open. Zed walked through. “You’re back, you—”
He spotted her immediately, and he didn’t hesitate. He was fast, faster than them both. In half a second, he had his bow ready, and before her hand reached her starstick, he had three arrows careening toward her.
One pointed at the center of her head. One at the center of her heart.
Another at the center of her stomach.
Oro threw his power out, a Starling shield that blocked the arrows. But not all of them. Not in time.
She looked down and saw one sticking through her stomach.
Oro’s heat filled the room. He roared. “What did you do?” he demanded, and Zed was suddenly chained to the floor by glittering sheets of Starling sparks.
There was no regret in Zed’s face as she fell to her knees. As pain flooded her chest like a wildfire.
“What you wouldn’t,” Zed said.
Oro reached toward her, calling water from the balcony to heal her. He took the arrow out, and she screamed. He worked to close the wound. She couldn’t stay here. She had to go. As soon as it was mostly stitched, she reached for her starstick and said, her words just a gurgled rasp, “I’m marrying him again.” Oro didn’t know the circumstances, but he didn’t need to. All he needed was to hear that she was telling the truth. “I made my choice. It isn’t changing. Don’t seek me out again.”
And then she was gone.
Zed had nearly killed her.
She portaled to the Wildling keep, took one step, then collapsed to the ground. Grim was there in an instant, cradling her in his arms. Yelling orders.
Grim’s shadows were everywhere. “Who did this to you?” he demanded, but she didn’t say a word.
His power raged around them, growing more ruinous as he began to understand her silence. His voice was raw as he said, “Don’t tell me. If it’s anyone you care about, Isla, don’t say a word. Because nothing will stop me from wiping every ember of their existence from this world.”
She knew it was a promise. He had done it before.
Oro would certainly hate her if Grim killed all his closest friends . . . but she couldn’t do that to him. They were the only people he had, especially
now that she had left for good. So she remained silent.
She heard Wren’s voice, but her eyes wouldn’t open. The world felt too heavy, like she was being dragged underwater.
“This is the only full vial left,” she heard Wren say. Grim didn’t hesitate. “Use it.”
“Wraith—” she gasped. The elixir was meant for the dragon. “Please.”
Grim hesitated for a moment before he said, “I’ll restitch her wound myself. Use the vial for my dragon.”
Good. Good.
Commotion. Then, something cold against her skin. Pricking it.
Breaking it. Redoing the stitches that were already there, the ones that had broken because she had left before he could finish. Grim had to know who had made them.
He had to know, and it had to be killing him.
She thrashed in Grim’s arms as he sewed her skin back together. She gasped for air. His snow-cold hands ran down her back. “I know, heart,” he said gently. “I know.”
Zed had wounded her.
She shouldn’t be shocked. She was a traitor. Everyone knew securing Lightlark’s safety meant ending Nightshade.
It was still a surprise, though. The betrayal felt raw, more painful than the wound itself.
She had been too careless. Of course it was a danger going to Lightlark at all, especially without her powers.
She grieved Oro. They could never be together. Not when she saw what she had turned him into. Not when his friends hated her enough to try to kill her. There was no going back from that. She hoped he forgot her. She hoped she never saw him again.
