As soon as they stepped foot on Moon Isle the next night, the dark-blue bird found them. It harped loudly, and Isla pointed her arrow at it. “Make another sound and you’re stew,” she said meanly. Wondering if she was speaking directly to the ruler of Moonling herself. She should shoot Cleo’s bird right in the chest for what she had done to Celeste.
It squawked once more, then flew away, far from the sharp tip of her arrow.
“On edge?” Oro asked. He didn’t have any weapons on him. And Isla supposed that was strategic. The ex-Wildlings couldn’t know the king of Lightlark considered them a threat.
Most of all, it was a message to Cleo. Wherever she was on Moon Isle, whether or not she was using the dark-blue bird as her spy, she would know they were on her land again. Oro entering her isle so many times unarmed sent the greatest message of all.
The Centennial was a game. And Oro was still its most powerful player.
Isla tried not to think of the white-haired ruler as they made their way across the snow to the final location. Instead, she thought of the heart.
Would it bloom as beautiful as a primrose?
Would it be as cold as the heart of the king of Lightlark?
So close.
They were so very close.
She turned to Oro and found him watching her. His expression was resolute, hard as the slabs of ice at their sides. He nodded once, as if able to read her thoughts.
One more place. Then it’s all over.
Vinderland territory sat far beyond the reaches of Cleo’s snow kingdom. At its northeast corner sat a stretch of land so treacherously cold it was almost uninhabitable. Isla relied on the warmth blooming from Oro like a shield. He extended it so that it engulfed her fully, and she barely felt the frost on her nose.
Ice, sharp like teeth, stuck out from the ground at an angle, a cluster of swords. Isla held the hilt of hers tightly, eyes alert. Studying everything. They entered a forest of dead trees, skeletons covered in snow.
They came in a wave.
One moment there was silence. The next, the night split apart in screams as bodies leaped from trees, right into their path. Others had been hidden behind trunks, and they showed themselves now, arrows pointed at their necks.
But Isla was ready.
She smiled, just a little. And unleashed.
Three of her arrows flew at once, each finding their targets. Bodies fell from the high branches. She ducked, barely missing a flying blade, then turned, her sword now in her fist. She gutted the man in front of her who had a dagger to her heart, turned and did the same to a towering woman who had a rusty hatchet aimed at her temple.
Throwing stars from her pocket flew from her other hand, into the neck of a man half a moment away from burying his blade in Oro’s back. They landed in a perfect line across his throat like a macabre necklace.
Oro’s fire hissed and roared as he took out five people at once, their metal weapons dropping into the snow with barely a sound. He froze one against a tree. Another, he sent hurtling back with a burst of Starling energy.
Isla whipped around, fast as a twirling top, her blade finding flesh and slicing through it as easily as Wildling teeth sinking into a heart’s soft tissue. Her metal clinked against other metal before she hit the weapon away and cut down the one who wielded it. She did the same to another. And another.
With a grunt, she was knocked onto her back. The ground was coated in ice, and she gasped but felt no relief, her lungs turned to stone.
A man towered over her. His teeth were sharp as blades—cut into weapons. Tools to eat with, she realized.
He reached a hand toward her neck. To break it. To make a clean kill so that the flesh would be unmarred by injury, suitable to feast upon.
Isla watched, frozen. She lifted a shaking hand from the ground, gasping, willing her body to get over the shock of the impact—
And a blade went right through the man’s chest. He made a gurgling sound, then choked on his own blood before falling over onto the snow.
Oro stood there, holding a sword.
But he hadn’t been armed . . . or so she had thought. She watched in wonder as the silver sword disappeared in a burst of sparks. He had created it from Starling energy. She hadn’t known a thing like that could be done.
When her breath returned, she stood, looking around at bodies that never would again.
Dead. They were all dead.
“There are more,” Oro said quickly. “Who will come to investigate. Let’s go.”
Isla took his hand, still gasping at air. He heated her through their touch, and they ran, Oro pulling her so quickly he was nearly flying, only stopping the moment it came into view.
A tree of white feathers, blooming from the ice.
Of course. The perfect host for the heart. A secluded tree, frozen in time. It could be hidden in its feathers or even among its roots.
She stepped forward. Once. Twice. Then she ran.
Finally. After everything . . .
There it was. Their salvation. Her chance at being the ruler and friend the people she loved deserved.
She heard Oro right behind her. His heat grew, relieved that it was all over. The months of searching.
The centuries of suffering.
Isla reached the tree and began searching its branches. The feathers were soft as snow. They danced quietly in the wind, rustling together, tiny bits of feather falling.
When she didn’t find anything in its brush, she looked down at the roots. The ice allowed her to see their every inch, thick and twisted into braids.
“Isla.”
She studied the tree again. And again.
“It has to be here,” she said, hands going through the feathers furiously now. Desperately.
She fell roughly to her knees to get a closer look below, biting down the pangs of pain that nearly blinded her vision. She pressed her hands against the ice and searched closer, studied every knot.
But there was nothing intertwined in its roots.
“It’s not here,” Oro said. His voice was as hollow as his eyes had looked that first night at dinner.
They had been wrong.
Or they had been right, and Cleo had gotten there first. Perhaps Cleo had sent her bird to mock them when they had first stepped on the isle.
Isla stilled. If Cleo had the heart . . .
She heard Celeste’s warnings and doubts—the ones she had ignored—echo through her mind as she pressed her head to the ice and cried.
