Nightbane (Lightlark, #2)(15)
“There’s no time,” another, louder voice said. “The drek attack is just the beginning. This happens now.”
At first, Isla’s mind had gone straight to Cleo, but now she wondered if the rebels were behind this, the ones Azul had mentioned at dinner. Did they think she was responsible for the dreks? Is that why they were hurting her? Isla opened her mouth, to say anything, but her throat was raw. Nothing came out.
She had no weapons. She was already covered in blood, the skin of her stomach scraped clean. Salt stuck in the wounds. If her hands weren’t tied together behind her back, she could have reached for her invisible necklace, clutched the stone, and watched Grim turn all of them to ash.
Should you ever need me, touch this. And I will come for you, he had said when he had given it to her.
The fact that she was even considering it worried her.
Isla should have listened to Oro from the beginning. Her life was not her own.
Were none of them Starling? Why would they want her to die, when it would mean the death of so many others? She heaved again.
“Don’t move,” someone commanded as some in the group inched forward. She watched them approach and counted her last moments down in her mind.
Cold hands gripped her raw skin—
The world exploded.
At their touch, energy rippled out of Isla like the consequence of throwing a stone in a still pond. Power burst in every direction, sending everyone around her soaring. She heard the crunch of bones as some were catapulted against the stone walls. Screams. She saw the red of the masks mixed with blood.
Someone had been thrown directly into a stalactite, pierced right through their skull.
“I didn’t—” Her voice was barely a rasp. She hadn’t tried to hurt them, even though they’d clearly intended to hurt her.
She didn’t wait to see if they recovered. The energy had torn through her restraints. Isla ran.
The tunnels were dark and musty; she heard the crash of the sea somewhere nearby. There were multiple directions, but she made a choice and kept going, eventually on an incline. She needed to reach the surface. The rebels—were they right behind her? She didn’t stop to listen. Sharp stones stabbed her bare feet until everything began to go numb. Her clothes were drenched in blood, fabric stuck against her wounds.
Just when she wondered if she would be trapped forever beneath Lightlark, there was a path so vertical, she had to climb it on her hands and knees. A wooden door, barely the size of a cupboard, was at the top.
She burst through, into an abandoned shop, covered in cobwebs, dust, and broken glass. Some of it cut her feet as she ran through the door, right into one of the forgotten corners of the agora. The harbor was to her left. She saw the broken ships, some on their sides, some no more than a pile of wood.
Down. She needed to go down to the heart of the market. For a moment, her fingers inched toward her necklace, her mind going there again.
The rebels could be chasing her. Grim would end them all in a moment.
A shiver snaked down her spine. That was the problem.
What was wrong with her?
Isla dropped her hand and raced down the narrow stone road, past shops long closed.
It was late, and the streets were empty, except for a patrolling Sunling guard. When he saw her, his eyes went wide in alarm, and Isla wondered if she should be afraid. Could he be working with the group that had taken her? Some of them had been Sunling, after all.
Before she could worry too long, the guard swept off his golden cloak and draped it over her shoulders. Only then did Isla realize she was in her soaking nightclothes, her body nearly completely visible beneath them.
The cloak was warm, and Isla sank to the ground wrapped inside it while panic spilled around her as more Sunling guards were called. Someone shouted to alert the king.
She knew Oro had received the news when a tidal wave of heat raged across the island.
When Oro had found Isla, shaking and raw skinned, he had looked like he wanted to bring the entire island down. The very ground beneath their feet had shaken as he had said, very calmly, “Who did this to you?”
By the time he had ripped the abandoned house to pieces, the rebels were gone. He had ordered his guards to search the tunnels, and they had found hundreds of passages that no one officially knew existed.
Now, in the throne room, everyone was quiet with fear. Isla had never seen Oro so angry. The only person who dared even look at her was Soren.
“Treason has been committed,” Oro said, his eyes pure fire. His voice thundered through the room. He was standing in front of his throne, addressing a hall filled with all the nobles and representatives across the island. Azul stood down the steps, to his side.
Isla was next to him. Her skin had been scraped away; parts of her stomach had needed Wildling elixir to piece back together. The salt water had made the pain unbearable. Every sweep of the fabric of her dress even now was torture, but Isla wanted to stand here, in front of them, as a demonstration of strength.
“A ruler was attacked. Let it be known that anyone who is found associated with this group of rebels will be strung across the cliffs in the Bay of Teeth.” It was a torturous death, according to Azul. Sea creatures as large as entire parts of the castle lived there, in waters so deep it was rumored no one had ever seen their bottom. “Any ill will toward the Wildling realm stops now. A Wildling broke your curses. This Wildling is the reason Lightlark still stands. You will treat her and her realm with respect, or you will find another place to live.”