Isla didn’t know if Oro heeded his warning. With one rapid motion, Remlar placed one hand against her forehead and another against her heart, and her vision exploded.
Pain tore her in two. Her scream was a guttural rasp; she could hear it even above the ringing in her ears. Tears swept down her cheeks.
She fell to her knees.
Her left hand struck the ground, and darkness erupted from her fingers. It ate through the nature in its path; everything living became cinder. Trees fell and disappeared; the air went gray with swimming shadows.
Her right hand landed, and from it a line of thousands of flowers billowed, rising from the ground in waves, blossoming in rapid succession. Roses, tulips, marigolds—they made a blanket across the forest, color streaming.
The world died and came to life in front of her, and she kept screaming until her voice disappeared in a final croak. It might have been seconds or minutes, but eventually, everything settled, and she stood.
One side of her was total desolation—the other the very definition of fertility.
Oro was in front of her in a moment. “Isla,” he was saying, but it was just a whisper at the end of a tunnel.
She took one step forward. Teetered.
“Look at me, love,” he said.
Love. She held on to the word like an anchor, but the thread between them slipped through her fingers—
Darkness won the war and swallowed her whole.
BEFORE
Isla took the steps two at a time—she really shouldn’t have come. How had she been so foolish?
Terra had always warned about Nightshades. They were the villains in all her stories. The monsters.
She really hadn’t meant to. She had meant to portal somewhere else entirely, but one thought, while her puddle formed—
Here she was, in the most dangerous place in the world. Running from a group of guards, around dark stone corners, in halls that echoed and closed around her in cavernous arches.
Isla turned into a narrow hallway and crashed to her knees. “Come on,” she growled, pressing her starstick firmly against the ground.
No puddle formed.
Isla didn’t want to wonder what would happen if she wasn’t able to travel home. Nightshade lands were thousands of miles away from the Wildling newland . . . It would take months to return by ship, and how would she even pay for passage? She didn’t have any jewels on her. Now that she thought about it, no one in their right mind would agree to take her anywhere, anyway.
If anyone figured out who she was . . . she was dead.
The Centennial was just a year away. The Nightshade ruler was a monster. He had been invited to attend the event for the first time, according to her own invitation.
What would he do to her if he found her? Kill her immediately as the first step in breaking the curses? Imprison her? Torture her?
She swallowed. She had thought of her own room as a prison . . . how foolish she was. There were much worse places to be trapped.
Yells. Steps. The clatter of armor.
Instinct took over. She lunged for a door—and it was unlocked. Before the guards could spot her, she threw herself inside.
Another hallway.
Voices outside. Already. There were several more doors. She tried all of them.
Locked.
Locked.
Locked.
Locked.
The voices were closer. Without thinking, she started pounding on the last door, desperate, frantic—
It opened.
A woman stood there. Her arms were crossed.
“You’re late,” the woman said. “Put this on and join the rest.”
Isla had no idea who the woman thought she was, or who the rest were, but she knew luck when she saw it.
The woman all but shoved her into a different room. And Isla was so grateful, so afraid for the guards to find her, that she stripped off her clothes in the dark and put on whatever the woman had given her—fabric that was tight against her body. All Isla cared about was that it would make her look like the rest of the Nightshades. Even if the guards did find her here, she would blend in. Especially if she was joining people wearing the same thing.
The door swung open, and Isla nearly brandished the dagger she had kept strapped to her thigh, alongside her starstick.
It was just the woman. She had paint on her finger, and before Isla could object, she unceremoniously smeared it across her mouth.
“Go,” she said, pushing her toward another door.
A dozen other women were waiting on the other side. All dressed like her. She nearly sighed in relief. She blended in perfectly . . . especially with the red on her lips.
All she had to do was find her way back outside, where she could try her starstick again—
“Into position!”
Position? The women suddenly straightened into a line, one she quickly joined, wondering what in the world was happening.
Was this a fighting legion?
If so, why were they wearing dresses?
Was this some sort of rehearsal?
She swallowed. If it was, she would be found out momentarily. She obviously wouldn’t know any lines for a play, or choreography for a dance . . .
“I hope I’m chosen,” a woman to her left whispered to someone who seemed to be her friend.
“I hope I’m chosen,” she replied. “This is my fourth time hoping to get noticed. It would be an honor to be part of the ruling line.”
Ruling line?
Isla turned to the women to ask them what was happening, and why they looked so excited, when the door in front of them opened.
He walked in.
Isla froze.
She knew who he was instantly. Something about the way the air moved around him, about the resonance of his step. He was the tallest man she had ever seen, a foot and a half taller than her at least. He had relatively long black hair like spilled ink, falling across his forehead, curling around his ears. His mouth seemed set in a permanent frown. Unimpressed.
He was the king of nightmares, a demon.
The ruler of Nightshade.
She was dead. He had found her out. They had trapped her; the woman must have recognized her somehow, alerted the guards—
What an idiot. Poppy and Terra had taken such great pains to keep her safe, and she had disobeyed their orders, for what? To experience something new? How selfish she was.
Her fingers inched toward her thigh. She wouldn’t have a chance against the ruler of Nightshade, against any ruler—no matter how well she could handle a blade, power was power—but she would die with dignity. Fighting.
Just as her pointer finger found the smooth metal, his eyes met hers. She stilled.
His look was strange. There was no hint of fury, or even satisfaction. Just a slight widening of his eyes—a curiosity.
That didn’t make sense. If he was about to kill her, wouldn’t he announce his intention? Slay her where she stood, in front of all the others?
“You,” he said.
He was staring at her. He meant her.
She didn’t move a muscle. His eyebrows rose just a fraction of an inch. Surprise. Another unexpected emotion.
The woman from before all but shoved Isla forward, toward him.
The Nightshade ruler stared down at her. She didn’t breathe. Then, he turned and walked back through the door.
She was expected to follow him. She knew that for certain when the woman from before gripped her wrist and said, “Follow,” so fiercely that she actually did.
Her steps echoed through the empty hall. His were almost silent in front of her. All she saw was his back. Her own shoulders were small—tiny slopes.