Isla didn’t stick around to see Grim’s rage, but she felt it, the castle trembling around her. She raced to their room.
A town was destroyed. And they thought she was responsible.
That was why Grim hadn’t wanted her to come, why his eyes had lingered at the dirt on her body.
Did he think she did it too?
Did he suspect that if she showed up at the town, they would point to her and scream? Like she was a villain who had returned to finish them off?
No. It wasn’t her.
Just as she denied it, a sliver of doubt spiraled through the back of her mind like a blade. She had dreamed of destroying the village. She had woken up later than usual, covered in more dirt than expected. The skyre had been made incorrectly. She thought of the auger and blacksmith’s warnings, the price of using the markings.
Had she attacked the village unknowingly?
Had the monster that had been growing within her taken over while she slept?
No. Tears swept down her face. No.
She shouldn’t have taken the bracelets off. She shouldn’t have trusted herself, even with the skyre. Especially with the skyre.
Isla needed to see the ruins. Maybe she would remember. Maybe it would be clear that she’d had nothing to do with it.
She knew the general direction of the village, but it took one of her father’s maps and five tries to get it right with her starstick. By the time she
landed, encased in shadows, Grim was already there with his soldiers, searching through the rubble.
Her knees nearly buckled. It looked so much like the village she had destroyed.
A baby wailed. A woman cried out for a daughter she still couldn’t find.
Her hands were bloody from desperately digging through rubble.
Instead of ash, there was dirt. Everywhere. It was as if the ground had swallowed the town, had dragged the bodies beneath. A few lifeless hands were sticking up through the ground, in a final call for help.
Someone grabbed her hand and she gasped, realizing she had lost hold on her shadows. “Hearteater,” a voice said. Grim.
He wrapped them in his own shadows, shielding them from the world. “I didn’t do this,” Isla said. She couldn’t have. That was what she told
herself. She shook her head. Tears rolled down her cheeks. “I swear it.”
“I believe you,” he said instantly, before pulling her into his arms. Her cheek against his chest, his hand cupped the back of her head.
Grim trusted her. Immediately.
As he held her, hand smoothing down her spine, she couldn’t help thinking that he shouldn’t.
She’s done it before.
Astria’s words had gutted her with more efficiency than any blade could. She couldn’t even be mad at her cousin, because she was right. Isla had unintentionally killed hundreds in the past.
Who was to say this wasn’t her either?
She knew the facts. Nightshades had seen her. Who was she to question their testimony?
She barely slept, afraid that if she did, her body might act on its own,
relive its nightmares again and again. Grim’s arm around her now felt more like a precaution.
“If I leave in the middle of the night . . . follow me,” she told him before bed one night, and he just nodded. That was the furthest she could go in acknowledging that the attack might have been her. Grim’s eyes were clear of any judgment.
Kill anyone you want, heart, he had said before. I will never judge you.
His words had once been a balm, a sigh of relief that someone could see the worst in her without flinching.
Now, she wondered if it had been permission for the worst part of her to roam free.
Follow the snakes. The words echoed through her head as she attempted to draw the skyres, paying the price with every try until she finally got it.
She didn’t feel any rush of triumph when the skyre gleamed upon the tooth.
Follow the snakes.
She remembered the augur’s laugh when he realized she hadn’t figured it out, she didn’t know who the traitor was.
When you learn the truth of yourself, your path will be clear, he had said. She thought of the sculpture on his wall. Her, wrapped in serpents.
She thought of her dreams, of drowning in scales.
She thought of seeing the snakes in her mind, crawling through the halls, leading her to a mirror. To her reflection.
Skyred tooth in pocket, she visited Wren and watched as every snake on the tree turned toward her. She stilled as they inched up her legs to wrap around her chest and arms, as if summoned.
Follow the snakes. She had. And they had all led to her.
Grim was sitting on his throne when she entered the room. He looked exhausted. Still, the shadows at his feet puddled when he saw her.
He was in front of her in an instant. “What is it, Hearteater?” He studied the snakes still curled around her body, hissing. “What if it was me?”
“It wasn’t.” He seemed certain.
She shook her head. “What if I’m what everyone says I am? What if I’m a traitor? What if I’m a monster? What if I end up being your downfall?”
Grim’s look was fierce and fearsome as he caught her chin in his palm. He tilted her face toward his. “Then I will defend you until my last breath.”
Her voice trembled. “You can’t mean that.” “I do.”
“You shouldn’t,” she said. “It’s madness. It’s . . .” The floor began to tremble.
She frowned. “What—”
Isla was flung back as the castle’s foundation lurched. Only Grim’s shadows kept her from crashing against the wall.
There was a moment of stillness, of silence.
Then the castle began to shake in earnest, as if it was being slowly pushed off its cliff. Another storm—a big one.
The doors slammed open as Astria rushed inside, her two blades in her hands. It was the first time Isla had seen her since she had accused her of destroying the village.
“There’s an army at our steps,” she said, out of breath, her eyes narrowing at Isla. “They—they look like ours.”
“What do you mean they look like ours?” Grim bellowed. “They are ours,” she said.
That didn’t make sense. Was this a coup? But Grim’s entire army wouldn’t dare rise against him. His death would mean death to the mall.
No. This was something else.
Windows began shattering from above, in the highest corners of the chamber, one by one, glass raining down, fracturing against the marble.
Branches and rocks like blades skewered from every direction. Guards up on the balcony were sucked out of the room.
Grim reached for Isla, seeming to anticipate something she couldn’t; but just before his fingers met hers, the ground below her feet split open like a broken stitch.
And she was swallowed up.
Isla was dragged through the ground, a tunnel forming below her feet. If it wasn’t for the Starling shield that she made around herself and her snakes, they would have all been shredded along the rock. She fought against the
invisible hold, clawed at the walls with her power, but whatever this was, it was stronger.
Just when she managed to overpower it, she was deposited into a room. She was deep underground. It was dark save for fireflies, stuck against the cavernous ceiling.
In front of her stood a woman. She had long dark hair, large eyes, and tan skin. There were vines wrapped around her arms and legs. Her clothes
were nothing more than a tapestry of woven branches, flowers, grass, and leaves.
“You’re Wildling,” Isla said, thinking back to the vines and branches that had crashed through the castle. “You’re the Wildling that attacked the village.” Her resemblance to Isla was uncanny. She now understood why, from a distance, the witnesses had believed it to be her.
But Astria had spoken about a Nightshade army. That was impossible.
Were the Wildling people planning a coup behind her back, with this woman at the helm?
“You don’t recognize me, do you?” the woman asked. She was speaking softly, but her voice seemed to echo, resonant in a way Isla had never heard.
She didn’t. And though Isla had barely been a ruler to her people, she knew them all. “No. Should I?”
The woman looked sad. “No. I suppose you shouldn’t.”
Isla felt around for her powers. They were right there, just like her blades, waiting for her to take them.
But this woman had attacked a village. She had ambushed Grim’s castle. She apparently had an army. She had captured Isla for a reason. Before she escaped, Isla needed answers.
“What do you want?” Isla demanded.
The woman smiled. “To make this world anew.”
Whatever she’d been expecting to come out of the woman’s mouth wasn’t this. “What do you mean? What do you want with the Nightshades?”
“Simple,” she replied. “I want to kill every last one of them.”
Isla’s vision narrowed to a tunnel. Whoever this was, she was done listening to her. Fast as lightning, Isla’s fingers curled around a blade at her thigh, and she threw it right into the woman’s chest before she could blink. Isla watched the metal pierce her heart.
The Wildling looked down. She didn’t collapse, didn’t bleed, didn’t die. All she did was frown, and Isla watched in terror as her knife slowly inched out of the woman’s chest and dropped to the floor, clean.
Impossible. Isla gathered all her power—energy, fire, ice, vines, shadows—and unleashed it onto the woman. The Wildling was punctured in a hundred different places at once. One arm was sliced clean off.
Isla was panting, waiting for the woman to drop dead. Waiting to feel the curl in her bones at yet another kill.
But it never came.
Isla watched in horror as all the gaps in her body filled again, without a single drop of blood. As her arm was remade, before her eyes, the arteries and skin growing like bark and vines.
“You didn’t let me finish,” the Wildling said, sounding annoyed, as she stood again to her full height. She took a step forward, and Isla backed away, until her spine hit the wall. “I want to kill every last one of
them . . . and use them to build something better. A new world.” “What makes you think you can create a world?” she asked. She smiled. “Because I’ve done it before.”
The snakes around her began to hiss. They started to uncurl. Isla watched as every serpent slowly slithered down her body, one by one . . .
And went to her.
They wrapped around the woman’s arms and chest, just like the etching in the cave. The future the augur had promised.
That was when Isla realized the woman looked like her, more than just from a distance. They shared features. They had the same lips. The same cheekbones. The same exact shade of green eyes.
The Wildling’s smile was wicked. “Now you’re getting it. It’s nice to meet you, Isla. I’m Lark Crown.”
