Oro made an orange rose sprout from his palm. He reached over and put it in Isla’s hair. “Your turn.”
Isla sat and stared at her own hand for several minutes, without any results.
They were sitting at the edge of a stream. The sound of water rushing over rocks was a balm rubbing against some quiet corner of her mind. The stream was framed by hill faces on either side, some parts jutting out more than others, creating a curved, somewhat narrow river, making it impossible to see exactly where it led. Thin waterfalls fell off some of the cliffs, sheer and frayed like curtains of hair.
Isla had always wondered what it might feel like to swim here but had always feared Terra and Poppy seeing her wet clothing or hair and not being able to explain it. Visiting the stream at night might have been an option—her guardians at least gave her privacy when she was supposed to be sleeping—but then she would have been at the mercy of a forest draped in darkness that she had learned the hard way had no mercy at all.
The woods had not hurt her when she walked through it this time. No, the nature had leaned down toward her, as if the trees had wished to whisper their secrets into her ears.
“Close your eyes,” Oro said. “Let your mind go still. Find nature in the world around you. Form a connection to it. Siphon that energy exactly where you want it. Think of the rose, blooming in your hand.”
She followed his directions, but her heart was beating too fast. Her lids fell closed far too easily. She wasn’t sleeping more than a handful of hours a night, and she was starting to feel it.
“Breathe, Isla,” Oro said.
She breathed and started the process again, focusing her thoughts. When her eyes opened, she found the smallest of flowers blooming in her palm.
Before she could smile, the rose shriveled up and died, as if poisoned.
She was the poison. For she was born not just with the power to give life . . . but also to take it away. “I cannot be Wildling without Nightshade,” she said, her voice brittle. “I will always be death. I will always be darkness.”
“You decide what you are, Isla,” Oro said. “No one else.”
It might have been a comforting thought, if Isla didn’t immediately think that she would only have herself to blame for her own mistakes, should she make them.
No one else.
Tears streamed down her cheeks, shocking her.
Oro was instantly inches away. “What is it?” he asked, fire already flaming in his palms, as if he was ready to reduce anything that made her upset to ash.
What was wrong? Why was she crying? All she knew was that now that it had started, she couldn’t stop. A sob scraped the back of her throat.
Oro always demanded the truth. She gave it to him.
“I . . . I don’t want to rule. I don’t want my life tied to thousands of others. I don’t want to have all this responsibility.” She shook her head. “And I know that makes me selfish and awful, and I have no right to be so upset, but I am. I want a life, Oro. Worse than all that is I don’t deserve any of this power. I am no one.”
“You are not no one,” he said steadily. “You are Isla Crown, and you are the most powerful person in all the realms.”
She choked out a laugh that sounded more like a sob. “I am a poison,” she said. “I have almost no control of these powers. They are wasted on me.” She shook her head. “Take them. You take them, Oro. I’m serious. Use them. Steal them, with the bond. You open the vault.”
Oro frowned. His anger seemed to burn through his previous hesitance at giving compliments, because he said, “Love, you seem to be under some delusion that you are anything less than extraordinary. Who did that to you? Your guardians? Did they make you feel like nothing you did would ever be good enough? Or was it him?” Grim. The woods heated with his anger. “Tell me, Isla. Did someone else break the curses? Am I mistaken?”
She clenched her teeth. Tears swept down her jaw, getting lost in her hair.
“Damn the vault,” he said. “Damn the powers. You had nothing, and you broke the curses. You are the key. You see that, don’t you? We were broken before you came. With you, we were saved. You are not a poison, Isla,” he said, his voice filled with intensity. “You were the cure.”
Isla shook her head. “I shouldn’t have won,” she said. “It should have been someone else.”
Oro cursed. He knelt before her and gently took her face in his hands. “Is this what’s been worrying you? Is this why you haven’t been sleeping?” He had noticed, then. Ever since she’d had the second memory, she had tried her best to hold off on deep sleep. She rested only a handful of hours a night, not long enough for her to slip into another memory. So far, it had worked.
She didn’t respond, and he studied her expression. Sighed. “I wish you could see yourself the way I do. You would never doubt yourself again.”
Isla closed her eyes.
What if she tried to believe him? What if she put the negative thoughts to rest once and for all?
He was right. She had survived the Centennial. She had won. She had defended herself against the rebels. This power was alive, somewhere inside her, and she was going to claim it fully. She wasn’t going to let anyone—or anything—use her like a puppet again. She had saved everyone else. Now, she just needed to save herself.
“Isla,” Oro said.
He was looking down at the hands in her lap.
In them sat a blooming rose. Minutes passed, and it did not die.
For the first time, Isla sneaked out of the Wildling palace through the front door.
She had woken up early. It had been like almost every other morning in her life before the Centennial. Taking a bath. Tying her hair back into a braid. Strapping herself into her light-brown fighting clothes, fabric wrapped around and around her arms. She slipped on simple shoes.
Before she could lose her nerve, she stepped into the forest. Oro was right. She was more capable than she gave herself credit for.
She refused to be the person who believed in herself the least. She refused to keep being her own worst enemy, letting her own mind get in her way. It stopped now.
The weak girl who had been raised here, who had feared the forest, was gone. It was time to bury her for good.
These woods had never felt like home. She had trained around these same trees for years, her own blood had been shed here, but never had she felt any sort of attachment to it.
Until now.
Isla leaned down and took off her shoes. She took a step forward. The moment her bare foot hit the ground, a shock went right through it, up her leg, her spine, into the crown of her head and up toward the sky.
Oro had spoken about forming a link with her power source. A trust. A connection clicked into place. The woods knew her.
There was no wind, yet the trees rustled in greeting. She took another step, and the dirt trembled around her toes, as if power surrounded her. All thoughts drained from her mind.
She placed a hand against the nearest tree, and moss flowed from her fingers, rippling down to the grassy forest floor. The grass grew to a wild height that reached a branch that sprouted bright-purple wisteria. The flowers spiraled down the branch in bunches like bracelets, until the end, where an acorn grew, drooping like an earring. It became so large that it fell, right into Isla’s palm.
This was what it meant to be Wildling.
She took off running. The world stepped to the side to let her through. Trees moved their branches, vines on the ground curled back toward their roots, animals waited for her to pass. A group of birds followed her path, their chirps sounding like encouragement. Flowers sprouted as soon as her feet left the soil, filling her footprints. A blanket of marigolds and roses bloomed in her wake.
She jumped into the air, hand outstretched, and a vine soared to meet it. She swung, careening through the forest, landing in a tree. She didn’t stop, she kept running, and a bridge of branches formed before her, spanning across the top of the woods in a pathway.
It was a flow, a heightened state, a different awareness. She tasted the forest on the tip of her tongue, moss and dew and pine. A warmth traveled through her bones, as if parts of her that had been dormant were now awakening, a flower in her chest finally blooming under the sun. The woods uncurled at her proximity.
The forest was alive—she could see it now as she ran across its back. It was on her side. It would never hurt her again.
It was part of her.
She ran and ran, climbing higher. Nature raced to meet her every need, without her even having to think it. Her focus was complete, she had given all of herself to the woods. In that moment, they were one entity—she could feel it around her, a heartbeat, an ever-changing and flowing force.
It felt like nothing could break that concentration, until she looked down and saw Grim standing far below, watching her.
Isla gasped. Her focus fell, and her pathway along with it. She crashed through the treetops. A branch hit her back, stealing her breath. Her vision swam with shadows. Her head knocked against another branch, and the pain was blinding. She reached for anything to hold on to, but her fingers were sweaty, and she couldn’t get purchase.
The forest would save her, wouldn’t it?
Her connection had given out. She was a stranger, yet again.
No. Her powers would lash out. Surely, they would save her. Her Starling abilities. Wildling. Even Nightshade.
They wouldn’t let her die—
She gasped, watching the ground rush up to meet her.
Just before she hit the forest floor, two strong arms caught her.
Avel was panting over her. Her pale face was flushed red and sweat dripped down her cropped hair. “You fall fast, Ruler,” she said, out of breath.
Isla’s eyes were wide. “You were there?” She had thought she had sneaked out of her quarters successfully.
She was such a fool. One drop, and her people would have been dead. How could she be so careless?
She had felt so in control. So powerful.
Control was fickle, she realized.
“We’re always here,” she said, and Ciel came crashing through the trees to land next to them. His face was flushed too. In that moment, they looked identical.
“Thank you,” she said, though those words would never be enough.
Avel and Ciel took her back to the Wildling palace, and Isla watched the forest floor for any sign of Grim.
