Twenty days of the Centennial remained. And Isla didn’t think the island would make it ten.
Terra wouldn’t make it five.
After all Oro and Isla’s searching across the island for the heart, they had failed.
Isla had made countless mistakes in the last eighty days. She had trusted the wrong people. She had made the wrong plans. She had followed the wrong leads. She had blindly chased power when she should have done everything to protect the people who loved her.
But she refused to give up. Not this time. Not when Celeste would have demanded she didn’t.
Isla banged on Oro’s door three days after their last journey to Moon Isle, her knuckles still raw from the cold of the Vinderland expanse, even after she had repeatedly smeared Wildling elixir over the broken skin.
At the feathered tree, Isla had seen the light go out of his eyes—she had watched him fold back into himself, ready to become the same king she had met that first night. More closed off and guarded than his own cursed island. When the heart hadn’t been where it was supposed to be, part of him had vanished, the same way Lightlark would if they failed. This time, perhaps forever.
Oro opened the door just as her fist was coming down in its wide swoop. He caught her arm before it could crash into his chest. He held her wrist and looked down at her, confused.
Isla pushed past him into his room, and he let her.
“This isn’t over,” she said, nostrils flaring and voice cracking in half as if she was still trying to convince herself of the fact.
Oro stared at her. He said nothing.
She took a step toward him. “I refuse,” she said, shaking her head. “I refuse to believe this is how it ends.” She jabbed a finger in his chest. “You are the king of Lightlark, the most powerful person in all of the realms.” He raised an eyebrow, seeming surprised that she was speaking about him in any manner that didn’t include the words wretched and insufferable. “There has to be another way. Another ending.”
Her finger was still against his chest, and he looked down at it before looking at her. “What do you suggest?” he asked.
Such a simple question . . . but one he had never asked.
Even in her search for the bondbreaker, she had been following Celeste’s plan.
For the first time, Isla made her very own.
“We start from the beginning,” she said firmly, turning, taking in his room. “From the most basic truth, the root of all of this.” She bit her lip, thinking. Thinking about the first thing he had told her, the basis for their entire search. A question she had asked before, that he hadn’t answered. She turned to him. “How did you find out about the heart?”
He frowned. “I read about it.”
“Where?”
“In a book.”
“What book?”
“An old one. One I found in a hidden library.”
The world went quiet. All of Isla’s senses began to fade.
Hidden library. Just like Celeste had said.
Why hadn’t she listened to her friend?
She tried her best to mask her surprise, her knee-wobbling relief, and her crushing guilt as she said, very quietly, “What library?”
Oro did not hesitate as he walked across the room and opened the door of his balcony. He pulled the door all the way back until it pressed against his room’s largest wall and turned the handle again—this time, pushing forward, against the solid stone.
It opened.
Isla followed him into a room tall as a tower, wide as the king’s chambers. Filled to the brim with books and enchanted objects.
A library.
Isla barely breathed, barely moved, hoping her treacherous heart, beating far too loudly in her chest, wouldn’t give her away. All she saw were books. The bondbreaker must have been well hidden. Not that it mattered now.
Celeste was on the brink of death. Isla couldn’t use it with her in that state. And, even if she could, the bondbreaker wouldn’t save Terra. Only an excess of power would. Only the power promised to the person who broke all the curses would.
Oro walked to one of the shelves assuredly, as if he had done so countless times before. He plucked a book from the rest and opened it.
Markings had been etched across the page in swirling ink, an ancient language she didn’t understand.
“You can read this?” Isla asked.
Oro nodded.
“Read everything,” she said. “Everything about the heart. Please.”
He agreed. But instead of looking down at the page, he looked at her. “Before I do, there’s something you should know, Wildling.” He was serious, no amusement or meanness in his expression.
Her stomach sank on instinct. Ready to be disappointed.
“I would have informed you at the beginning. But after what Grim told you . . . I was waiting for him to reveal the information himself.” She swallowed. Tell her what? What could be so important? “I’m guessing he never did.”
Isla just stared at him. Waiting.
“My ancestor, Horus Rey, and Grim’s, Cronan Malvere, created the island.”
She nodded. She knew that.
“And so did yours.”
She blinked. No. That wasn’t true. Isla placed a hand against the table just to feel something steady. Wildlings weren’t even really accepted on the island anymore . . . they didn’t help create it. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Lark Crown. She made the land we stand upon. The island was named after her.”
Lark Crown. She didn’t know that name.
“You’re lying. If that was true, everyone would know it. It wouldn’t be a secret.”
Oro’s eyes darkened. “I’ve never lied to you,” he said. “And it wasn’t a secret, not for a long while. Until, like much of our knowledge, it was lost to time. Thousands of years went by. Sunlings ruled for so long, who created the island was forgotten. But not by everyone.”
He was serious. And Isla knew he had nothing to gain from a lie like this.
If it was true, why hadn’t Grim told her when they had discussed the creation of the island? She remembered what Oro had said after she had called Grim the most forthcoming ruler.
Not as forthcoming as you think.
Her lips pressed together. No, it was not a lie. Now she understood why Oro had wanted to make a deal with her. Why he hadn’t yet truly betrayed her.
“That’s why you needed me,” she said, her voice very tight. “To find the heart.”
Oro’s expression did not change as he nodded. “It can only be found and unlocked by one of us. Sunling, Wildling, or Nightshade. I assumed . . . with both of us . . .”
Only joined can the curses be undone.
He was simply following the prophecy. An inexplicable part of her shriveled inside.
All Oro’s words had edges, and they cut into her mind. Oro had confirmed, weeks before, that he believed the original offense was someone using the heart of Lightlark to cast the curses. He now claimed only a Sunling, Wildling, or Nightshade could access the heart’s powers.
Which meant one of their realms had spun them.
Not Cleo. That didn’t make any sense . . .
Had Isla’s ancestor used the heart to cast the curses? Or Oro’s brother, King Egan?
Or Grim’s late father?
No. It had to be Cleo.
Isla looked carefully at the book, though she could feel his eyes on her. Studying her reaction to this new information.
“What does the book say?” she asked through her teeth, willing her mind still. Willing herself not to give away a single thing.
Finally, Oro’s eyes left her face. And he began to read.
Two chimes later, Isla and Oro sat hunched over in the library, countless books and frustrated silence spread between them.
The book’s details had been scarce. It spoke of a heart containing pure, unfiltered Sunling, Wildling, and Nightshade ability. Energy greater than their own, the type of power that had only existed thousands of years before.
The heart is hidden until it blooms and becomes a part of Lightlark when it is needed most. That was the translation Oro had offered her.
By the time Isla stood again, her legs had cramped, and she was surprised to see light shining through the very bottom of Oro’s curtains. They had spent hours reading and weren’t any closer to the heart than before.
But Isla hadn’t lost hope.
In fact, she was more hopeful than she had been in a while.
“This is the key to finding it,” she told him, motioning to the books. “I know it is.” Oro offered a nod, but his eyes were more tired than ever. Purple rings and creased edges. When Isla had suggested they rest for a bit before meeting again, he had only refused once. Then, thankfully, he had relented.
Isla walked the halls, quiet as a specter, the castle opening up and dawn’s reddish fingers peeking through long, uncovered windows. She was far from Oro’s quarters. Far from her own.
Celeste appeared as soon as Isla walked into the room where Grim had hidden her. She looked exactly like she had every night that Isla had visited. Still as a statue. Floating peacefully.
Tears stung the corners of her eyes. From the beginning, Celeste had been intent on finding the bondbreaker—a plan to break their curses without killing another ruler. Without needing anyone else except for each other.
For so many weeks, Isla had hunted for it.
Though Celeste couldn’t hear her, Isla’s voice shook as she finally said, “You were right, Cel. About the hidden library.”
She grabbed her friend’s hands, knowing how excited she would be if she was awake. And that was when Isla noticed one of them was curled into a fist. As if she had been fighting, right before the poison had made her go still.
Not fighting, Isla thought, as she carefully pulled her friend’s fingers back.
Sending a message. To Isla.
There was something in Celeste’s fist, something she had managed to grab, to tell Isla who had done this to her. A clue. She finally fully pulled her friend’s pale hand open.
And the diamond ring she had given Azul fell to the floor.
