Most people were saved. The rest had succumbed to their wounds. Isla walked to her room slowly, Oro at her side. The moon trailed them both through the windows as they made their way up the castle stairs.
She leaned against her door when they reached her room. “Cleo called them dreks. Have you heard of them before?”
“No. Moonlings have always prized their histories and historians. She might have read about them.” He was studying her again. She had caught him doing it, every few minutes, since the attack. It was as if he needed to constantly reassure himself that she was uninjured.
“I’m fine,” she said gently. She looked down at herself and winced. She was covered in blood, after helping the healers. It wasn’t hers.
“I know,” he said, but his brow didn’t straighten. Worry was etched into each of his features, and not just for her, she knew.
“You did everything you could,” she said, reaching up to touch his face, because she was known for giving far more grace to others than to herself. Her fingers were covered in blood—she dropped her hand before it reached his cheek. “Those creatures . . .”
Oro closed his eyes. She would bet he was replaying the events in his mind. When he opened them, she saw guilt in his expression. He blamed himself for every single death.
She wanted to take that pain. She wanted to think of anything that could make him feel better.
Before she could say anything else, he brushed his lips to the crown of her head and said, “Goodnight, Isla.”
RISING UP
It was the middle of the night when the balcony doors to Isla’s room burst open. The ocean rose like a hand, and it dragged her out of bed.
She gasped in shock, salt water scorching her throat and nose and lungs. Her shirt scrunched up, her stomach raked against the stone terrace, and she had enough good sense to cling to the balcony pillars, but the sea was too strong. It pulled her hundreds of feet down, straight to its depths.
She choked on lungsful of water, sure she was going to die, until her vision went dark.
When it returned, she was on her knees, hearing the word, “Now,” and then the water was being pulled back out of her as quickly as it had been inhaled, salt scraping against her throat.
The high ceiling was stone. Stalactites hung from the top, sharp as icicles. She was underground. No one would hear her screams. Her eyes still burned from the sea, but she blinked frantically past the sting, looking for a way out. Shadows glinted all around, and suddenly her captors came into focus. They were wearing masks—monstrous red masks that hid their faces completely.
Her kidnapper and the one who had revived her were clearly Moonling; they had to be, to use the sea to their advantage as they had. The rest were not.
Isla spotted the blue hair of Skyling. The gold and red tresses of Sunling. No Starlings she could see. Their clothes were all the same shade: beige. A color that had not officially been claimed by any of the realms.
“Are you sure?” She could just make out the words of a muffled voice. “Perhaps if we waited—”
“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.