Oro stepped out into the darkness with ease, a king of day who now walked only through night. Isla wondered if it pained him to be outside his castle, remembering how things looked in the sunlight. Or maybe he was used to it.
Five hundred years was a long time.
She didn’t ask him any of it as she struggled to match his pace.
Isla assumed they were going to the agora, or to one of the isles beyond it. But, before they could reach the valley, he turned sharply to the left.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
Oro walked several steps without saying a word. They continued down the green hills of the Mainland, far away from islanders enjoying their night. Far from any trail.
“Are you going to ignore me?” Part of her wanted to stay silent. It didn’t really matter where he was taking her as long as she got what she wanted from this pairing, right? But his disdain had turned disrespectful.
He kept walking, and she had a good view of his golden cape, floating gently with the nighttime breeze.
She stopped, arms crossed.
The moment she stopped, he did too. His back tensed before he slowly turned around. He opened his mouth, but she beat him to it.
“Just because you asked me to wear this,” she said, motioning toward her too-big shirt and pants fit to ride a horse, “and asked me not to wear this”—she reached up and flicked his crown, the metal singing in response. Her nail sang too, in pain, but she didn’t dare wince—“doesn’t mean I’m not also a ruler of realm. You will treat me with respect, King.” She spat the last word out like it was poison.
Poppy would have dropped dead hearing the way she dared speak to the king of Lightlark. Especially with what her guardian had commanded her to do.
But she had tired of filtering herself, of shoving her emotions down, of telling everyone what they wanted to hear. What had it gotten her?
Cleo now almost certainly wanted to kill her. They hadn’t yet found the bondbreaker. The matches had turned out to be a disaster.
He glared at her. No, he didn’t like her tone or the crown flicking one bit. “We are going to the storm,” he said sharply before turning around and continuing on his way.
The storm?
She had no idea what he meant. But she followed him again, content at least to have gotten a response.
They were walking toward the coast. The one she knew Azul often liked to visit. The air began tasting of salt. Her hair blew back, braid whipping wildly.
In Wildling lands, the wind whispered. It sang songs and passed along gossip and whistled melodies high-pitched as clock chimes. Before Terra and Poppy had it sealed shut, Isla had sometimes kept the loose pane in her room open during the day, hoping to catch bits and pieces of what the wind said.
The wind spoke of heartbreak, from Wildlings who had made the mistake of falling in love. Of hearts, eaten and torn apart by nails sharp as knives. It told her stories that seemed old as the trees themselves, born of seeds that were rumored to come straight from Lightlark.
The Wildling newland had been formed just five hundred years prior, but its foundation was ancient. It was said that after they fled the island and its cursed storm, a hundred Wildlings sacrificed themselves to create their new land, relinquishing their power to the dry, infertile dirt. Flowers bloomed from their blood, forests grew in a matter of weeks, and the newland was born from their bones.
That was what the wind said, anyway. Isla had found it to be quite dramatic.
Sometimes, she would answer it. Confide in it. Trapped in her orb of fogged glass, she spoke her thoughts to the wind.
It never responded. Not once.
But Isla hoped it listened.
They reached yet another steep incline. Her calves began to strain.
She wasn’t sure why the king would take her to this part of the Mainland. What was there even to see? The ocean?
Then, she spotted it. Something had swallowed the coast.
A storm gone still.
Dark clouds like blotches of ink stained the sky above the beach. Silver lightning strikes thick as blades shot out of them and down to the sand, glittering in jittering energy. A ringlet of fire hovered close by, its flames stuck in time. Enormous, deadly spouts leaked from gaps in the clouds, long sheets of water like beams of moonlight tinged in purple.
The sea had been pulled back like a blanket and stacked high—a wave tall as a tower crested but never fell. It was frozen, though not in ice. Even from her height, Isla could see the water running within it, bubbling. Waiting. It had left a long stretch of sea floor uncovered. Sparkling gems and long-lost ancient trinkets coated the sand, alongside shells.
It was the curse on the island, temporarily subdued. The enchanted storm.
Was this what Azul was always visiting?
There were whispers, calling her forward. The storm pulsed with power. She wanted to see it up close.
The cliff closest to the storm was broken into shards. Parts of it had fallen away, leaving two-hundred-foot gaps between half a dozen islands of rock. Some were connected by hastily made bridges, with planks so far apart it seemed easier to fall through than actually reach the next step. They made the bridges to the isles look safe.
The king took a step toward one.
“No,” she said simply.
Oro turned to look at her.
“No?” he asked, as if he must have misheard her.
She didn’t meet his eyes but could have guessed he was looking down at her with something like disgust.
The king sighed. She saw a flash of movement, like he had pressed his fingers to his temple in frustration. “It is steady. But if for some reason you did fall, I would obviously save you.”
Isla turned and pinned him with a glare. “Save me? Like you did the first day?”
Oro stiffened. Then he returned her look and said, “Yes, like I saved you the first day.”
She barked out a laugh. “I hit the water! And you left me in a puddle on the balcony, like discarded trash, without even bothering to wait and see if I woke up!”
He scoffed. “You might have hit the water before I got to you, but you also had a head injury that you would not have woken up from if I hadn’t healed you.”
Isla remembered the pounding of her head, how there hadn’t been any blood. She straightened. “You just admitted you didn’t get to me until it was practically too late, so the only way I’m crossing this bridge is if you’re tightly by my side. So, if I fall, you fall.”
Oro looked at her as if he might just shove her over the side himself. “Fine,” he said through his teeth, and roughly took her arm in his.
Before Isla could hesitate, he dragged them both onto the bridge.
Isla didn’t breathe. Wind blew up through the cracks, sending chills up her legs. They had suddenly gone as stiff as the thin planks of wood shifting wildly beneath them.
“Quickly,” she whispered, closing her eyes. She stepped one foot in front of the other, trying not to think about how it had felt to plunge, plunge, plunge into the sea from the balcony. How her breath had been ripped from her chest. How she had—
“You can open your eyes now,” he said, dropping her arm like it had burned him. And Isla had never been so grateful to feel solid ground.
She did as he said and looked around. They had reached a shard of mountain that was narrow at the top but joined the rest of the hill toward the bottom. If she slipped from here, she would only plummet about a hundred feet before ending up in some crack of the cliff. She winced. Not that that sounded much better than simply falling off the side of the island.
The storm seemed close enough to touch, curled toward them in its frozen dance. The whispers she had been able to hear at the cliff were louder now. Insistent, almost.
Oro had stopped at a gaping hole a few feet away, perfectly round like a well. In the near darkness, Isla couldn’t see a bottom. It went all the way through the mountain, for all she knew.
“I’ll go first,” Oro said from her side. “Then you.”
He made to take a step forward, into the black hole, and she gripped his elbow. Go first? They were jumping inside?
“Will something . . . break my fall?”
“Obviously.”
She peered into the hole and squinted. It was as dark as the backs of her eyelids. If she couldn’t see anything, that meant the fall would be long. The drop could be deadly.
“Are you . . . sure?”
Oro sighed. “Fear of heights. Fear of falling. Fear of bridges. Should we make a list of your fears, Wildling?”
Isla glared at him. Instead of pointing out that those all likely classified as one single fear, not three, she nodded toward the hole. “Go ahead, King.”
He held her gaze as he stepped forward and fell completely away.
Isla tensed. It was her turn now.
She didn’t move an inch.
Oro could fly—no drop would be deadly. He had a million ways to survive a fall. Isla had none.
All she had were his words, promising she would be fine. Her life relied on his honesty. Something he seemed to pride himself on, if his demonstration was any indication.
Still. If she died this way, technically he wouldn’t be breaking the rules . . .
Was this an easy way to get rid of her?
Were all the other rulers, except for Celeste and Grim, in on it?
Seconds ticked by. The whispers from the storm became louder. More insistent.
She was afraid. Though Terra had trained her not to fear death, she did.
But it wasn’t what she feared most.
Her greatest fear was the one she faced in Celeste’s trial—not living. Being trapped for eternity in a room without having done everything she dreamed of.
They were so close to finding the bondbreaker. Whether she liked it or not, Oro had become an integral part of their plan. He was the key to getting into the Sun Isle library.
Before losing her nerve, she took a deep breath.
And jumped.
It was like tumbling between worlds, worse, so much worse than falling from the cliff or portaling. The hole was just big enough for a body, and there was barely any air, nothing but the musky walls, and the smell of mold, and her screams, her voice scratching painfully against the back of her throat, her eyes shut so tightly that her head pounded, ached—
Isla was swallowed up.
Before she could process the cold, the freezing water biting into her like a thousand mouths, two strong arms pulled her out, onto cool stone. She pushed him away with as much force as she could manage and gripped the ground, hair a wet fan around her head as she alternated between panting and coughing up water.
When her breathing slowed, she looked up through her curtain of hair and saw Oro standing there, completely dry. He was frowning. “Took you long enough.”
She was on her feet at once, in front of him in less than a second. Her hands fisted and pulled back and struck—
But she was soaking wet, and her head was spinning, and he was too fast.
Oro gripped both of her wrists tightly. “This was all a test, wasn’t it?” she yelled. Her back teeth clattered together. “You wanted to see if I could trust you.”
The untrusting king, the paranoid ruler who always thought everyone was after his power. It was hypocrisy. He wanted her to trust him—when he trusted no one.
Oro stilled. And that was answer enough.
“I knew it.” She fought against his grip, but his giant hands might as well have been chains, wrapped more than fully around her wrists. If only she had brought a sword, a dagger, something other than her knife-tipped earrings, which wouldn’t do nearly as much damage as she wanted—
Isla spat at his feet and hoped that told him what she thought of him.
Oro’s frown deepened. “Listen closely, Wildling. I don’t care if you like me. But if we’re going to work together, you need to trust me.”
She bared her teeth at him. “How am I supposed to trust you if you haven’t even told me what you’re looking for?”
He considered her for a moment. Dropped her hands.
Then he said something that sent her rearing back in surprise.
“Are you going to divulge what I tell you to Grim?”
What? Why would he ask her that? Did he think she and the Nightshade were working together?
The Nightshade was constantly seeking her out. It was an easy conclusion to make, she supposed.
Isla wondered if perhaps that was the reason Grim made such a show of wanting to be near her. Was it for others to think they had allied?
“No.’
He seemed to believe her, because the next thing he said was “I’m looking for Lightlark’s heart.”
Isla raised an eyebrow. “Its what?”
“Its source of power. Its life-force.”
She tilted her head at him. “Isn’t that . . . you?”
Oro gave her a strange look. “No. I’m the island’s conduit, if anything. My connection to Lightlark, through blood, binds me to it. Through that bond, I can funnel power.”
“But if you die, Lightlark dies.”
“If its power cannot be funneled or is unbalanced, the island will crumble. Not because I am its heart, but because everything we have built, everything we are, relies on the power I channel.”
“Oh. So . . . it has an actual heart?”
“Yes,” he said. “But it doesn’t look like the type you eat.” Interesting.
“Then what does it look like?”
The king shook his head. Already annoyed. It seemed to Isla that he only had an allotted amount of patience and number of words for her, and she had already run out of both. “I don’t know. Every time it blooms, it looks different.”
Blooms? She had so many more questions. Why he was looking for the heart. How it even fit into the prophecy. How he thought she could help him find it.
But before she could say another word, Oro was speaking again. “Yes, Wildling. This was a test of trust. But we did come here for a reason.”
For the first time, Isla looked around at where she had landed.
An oasis at the center of the mountain. Impossible. Beyond the stream she had fallen into stood hundreds of plants, growing right out of the cave floor, as if the rock was fertile.
The cave was freezing. She still shook from the cold of the water dripping down her face, her clothes soaked tightly against her skin. It was a wonder anything grew down here without sunlight or soil, let alone hundreds of different species. It didn’t make any sense. This cave had to be infused with Wildling enchantment.
“What is this place?”
He frowned down at her dripping clothing. It pleased her knowing she likely looked terrible, the long, oversize fabric swallowing her up, her hair in wild strands stuck to her cheeks. He made a move as if to dry her using his powers, then didn’t. Good. She didn’t need his warmth. “Wildlings built a garden in the center of a mountain, to protect all of the island’s flora. This cave harbors plants from every isle on Lightlark.”
Something in her chest tightened. So many Wildling plants had died since she was born, thanks to her powerlessness. She had believed them to be lost forever. But perhaps they still lived on, here.
“The heart of Lightlark blooms every hundred years, attached to a living thing. A plant. If you could identify which types of plants something like the heart might be drawn to, they could guide our search. We could go to where they originate on the island.” So that was why he needed her.
This, she could do. She had never seen most of these Lightlark species, but growing up raised by Wildlings meant she knew how they worked. What to look for.
She bent down, studying the plants closest to her. “For the heart to blossom regularly, it needs to feed off life on the island. It needs a willing, nurturing host.”
Isla made her way through the garden, and, after a while, the king followed her, deeper into the center of the mountain. The floras were fascinating. She saw a tree with leaves every shade of a fire. A small cactus that grew a single, stunning, no doubt poisonous flower. A bush with vines that curled and uncurled like beckoning fingers.
One wall was covered completely in a mess of dark red roses. Isla could have sworn they were humming.
“Are they—”
“They only grow over dead bodies,” he said impatiently. “Or where blood is spilled. It is said they capture the last words of the dead who give them life.”
Oh. “Like the willow strands,” she said quietly. In Wildling, there was a crop of ancient, sacred trees where the memories and voices of the dead were kept. Twirling some of the limp branches around one’s wrist could make them speak.
Did that mean there were bodies buried in the mountain? Or had the Wildlings simply replanted them here?
Only when she reached the back wall of the garden, an hour later, did she speak again.
“Those,” she said, pointing at the uncurling and curling plants. “Something can be hidden in their middle. I’ve seen even birds live in plants like them. We call them purses. They . . . carry things. Without killing them.” She looked pointedly at a plant on the other side, a carnivorous one that looked almost exactly like the purses except for the row of teeth she knew lined its core. She turned again. “And those,” she said, pointing at two trees with thick trunks. “We have something similar called coffiners. They have been known to grow around living things . . . almost like a shield. Or, in some cases, as a prison.” Poppy had told her about a girl she knew who had gotten lost in a forest for weeks. A tree had grown around her in seconds, trapping her in its trunk. It had fed her and given her water but had tried to keep her. It had taken three Wildlings to free her. She shrugged. “It would be a perfect place for the heart to hide while also leeching off a living thing.”
Finally, she pointed at the pond she had landed in.
“Those water lilies have roots,” she said. “It could be stuck to a root like that, at the bottom of the water.”
Oro nodded. Made to turn around.
“So, what now?” she asked.
He worked his jaw, irritated, like every piece of knowledge he shared sliced against his very core. “I will decide on a place to start. One that has the plants you’ve indicated.”
That sounded fine. She smothered a yawn, exhausted. Her eyes searched for a way out of the cave. But there was no other exit. Only the hole, a hundred feet up, visible even from this side of the cave. She frowned. “How—”
He turned to look at her. And there was something wicked in his eyes, something that took great pleasure in the horror that overtook her face.
“Absolutely not. You must have spent too much time under the moon, you lunatic, if you think that I—”
“It’s the only way we get back to the castle before sunrise,” he said.
She opened her mouth, ready to refute that claim, but he interrupted her.
“Trust me, if there was another way, if there was a way to do this without you, we wouldn’t be here.”
Isla waited to feel the sting of his words, but none came. He disliked her just as much as she disliked him. And she was fine with that.
Quickly, before she could warn him what she would do if he dropped her, one arm knocked her legs from under her and the other caught her back. He looked down at her, sighed when he saw her blinking back at him, eyes wide in fear and threats—
Then shot up into the air. He must have angled in such a way as to go through the hole that hadn’t been directly above them, but he certainly did not stop or slow down—he flew fast as a shooting star, a strike of lightning in the opposite direction.
Isla screamed so loudly in his ear, it was a wonder he didn’t simply let her go, especially when her nails dug so deeply into the back of his neck, she was sure they drew blood. Feigning bravery felt impossible. They propelled faster than the wind for just a few moments before everything went weightless.
He was simply . . . walking. Had they reached ground already? She moved to jump out of his grip, but he hissed and his arms gripped tighter, almost painfully so. Only when she opened her eyes did she see that they were still very much in the air, hundreds of feet up. Oro was walking on nothing, an invisible bridge instead of the flimsy one, right toward the cliff. The exposed beach sat far below, rocks poking out of it like shards of glass. She gasped and promptly stuck her face tightly in the space between his neck and shoulder.
Oro laughed meanly, amused by her fear. She whispered words into his ear that made him frown. “It’s almost like you want me to drop you.”
Before she could say something she might regret—and that wouldn’t have much bite, anyway, given how tightly she was clinging to him in terror—Oro took a step that felt much more solid.
Finally, they were back on the Mainland.
The second it was safe to do so, she stumbled out of his arms, relieved to be away from the king. She glared at him. “That was horrible,” she said, lest he have any doubt about her feelings about flying—about being so close to him.
He returned her cold look. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said, baring his teeth, making it sound like a threat.
Then he shot back into the air, toward the castle, leaving her to walk home alone.
