Nightbane (Lightlark, #2)(2)

It was how he was able to save her. She would have been boiled alive by the core of the island if Oro hadn’t used the bond between them to claim her powers in the Place of Mirrors. That had been the moment her feelings for him were revealed. The fact that he could access her abilities meant she loved him.

Though she didn’t even know what that—love—was.

She had loved her guardians.

She had loved Celeste.

She had, at some point, loved Grim.

The vision. Death and darkness and decay. Was it a threat? A glimpse of the future?

The weight around her neck felt even heavier now. The necklace Grim had gifted her during the Centennial had been impossible to remove, and yes, she had tried. It had a clasp, but so far it had refused to open. It seemed there was no real way to take it off. Only she could feel it. Oro didn’t even know it existed.

Isla wondered if Grim was like that necklace—insistent and refusing to let her go. Would he kill people just to have her?

“I have to tell you something.” She considered keeping it to herself. If it had involved only her, she might have. She had broken the curses. She deserved more time to recover. Her cuts and bruises from the Centennial had disappeared, but some wounds were invisible and took far longer to heal than broken skin and bones. “In the Place of Mirrors . . . there was a vision.”

He frowned. “What did you see?”

“Death,” she said. “He—” She found herself unwilling to speak his name aloud, as if that alone might summon him from the shadows, bring him to life in more than just her mind. “He was surrounded by darkness. There were dead bodies everywhere. The shadows were reaching at me—” She winced. “It looked like . . . war.”

It looked like the end of the world.

Sharper heat swept through the room, the only sign of Oro’s anger. His smooth face remained expressionless. “He won’t stop until he has you.”

Isla shook her head. “I chose you . . . He feels betrayed. He might not even care about me anymore.” Oro didn’t look convinced. She closed her eyes. “Even if he did, do you think he would start a war over me? Risk his own people?”

“I think that is exactly what he would do,” Oro said, his gaze faraway, as if lost in thought. “Isla. You need to start your training, and not just to get into the vault.”

Training. That sounded like far too much effort, she decided, for a person who had to bargain with herself just to leave her room every day. She didn’t use to be like this. Training had been hammered into her like gemstones into a blade’s hilt. It was part of her very essence.

Now, she was just tired, more mentally than physically. All she wanted was time to recover, and why did even thinking that make her feel like the most selfish person on Lightlark?

Luckily, she had an excuse other than her own unwillingness. “You know I can’t.” As king, Oro was the last remaining Origin who could wield each of the remaining Lightlark powers—Skyling, Starling, Moonling, and Sunling. It was supposed to be impossible for anyone other than his line to be born with more than one ability. According to Aurora—whom she had once thought to be her best friend, Celeste—her Wildling and Nightshade gifts were tangled together in a way that made them largely useless unless a Nightshade released them. “My powers—”

“I have a plan for that.”

Of course he did. Her teeth stubbornly locked together. “I don’t have time to train. I have to get back to the Wildlings.”

“They will need you to be at your utmost strength.”

Why was he so set on her training? And why, truly, was she so against it? “It’s a distraction,” she tried. “I can learn later. After they’re taken care of. After we’ve figured out the Nightshade threat, if my vision is even real.”

“You have the power of a Starling ruler now, Isla,” Oro said gently.

When Isla killed Aurora, she had used an ancient relic called the bondmaker to steal all the Starling’s power. The action served as a loophole to fulfill the part of the prophecy that stated a ruler had to die to break the curses. A ruler’s power functioned as the life force of their people. All Starlings would have died along with Aurora, if Isla hadn’t stolen that power.

Now, she was responsible for two realms, when she wasn’t even qualified to rule one.

“Your Wildling and Nightshade powers might have stayed dormant all this time,” he continued, “but this will not. The abilities are too great. If you don’t learn how to control them, they will control you.”

That seemed unlikely. In the last couple of days, she had casually tried to use her Starling powers. To move a quill. To make a burst of energy off her balcony. Nothing. She would have doubted that the bondmaker had even worked if the Starlings weren’t still alive.

“Isla,” Oro said, and the tender way he said her name dulled the defensive edges of her anger and pain, just a little.

“Yes?”

He took a step, then another, until she was bathed in his warmth, even though he was still farther than she would have liked.

Oro studied her from the foot of her bed. “Say you’ll train with me. And mean it.”

“Fine,” she said quickly, just because she knew it was what he wanted to hear. Just because nowadays, she would do anything to stop thoughts about the Centennial and what had happened. “I’ll train with you. I mean it.”