It had made her the perfect person for Celeste—Aurora—to target and take advantage of. That name in her thoughts made her ache. Her friend. She had been her best friend.
Finally . . . she thought of him. Grim.
The memories were like pulling the stitches of a wound, making it bleed again.
After hours of letting her thoughts go wild, Isla took a breath and began to forgive herself for some of her mistakes. She pictured the little girl, sitting alone in her room, and thought, She doesn’t deserve this.
When she focused on the rock again, she realized that besides her crown, her powers were the only thing that connected her to her ancestors. To her mother.
She closed her eyes and found the incessant, anxious, cruel thoughts weren’t so strong anymore, as if letting them run wild had caused them to lose their energy.
Isla had never known her mother, but she wanted to make her proud. She wanted to help her people. She wanted everything that she had already been through to be worth it.
She wanted to be better, for that little girl sitting in the glass room.
Her arm lifted, her gaze trained on the rock.
Something in her chest thrummed, coming to life, then caught—a key clicking into a lock. She didn’t dare blink as she outstretched her hand.
The rock began to vibrate. It squirmed beneath her gaze.
She reached back, then threw her arm forward.
It moved—
Along with the five feet of island beneath, which was carved out like a giant had dipped its finger into Wild Isle and dug a path right across it. Isla now had a clear view all the way to the water from where she stood. She was covered in dirt.
Isla was breathless. It was sloppy, and far from controlled, but she’d done it.
. . .
From then on, they trained from the first sunlight to the last. In the mornings, she and Oro ran on the beaches below the Whitecliffs. He said it would help clear her mind, and it did.
She practiced moving large and small objects. She practiced manipulating the dirt and rocks around her. Every day, he came up with new tests, new ways to sharpen her control. In the evenings, they had dinner together, just the two of them. Afterward, they would sit on the floor, drinking tea, trading stories about their childhoods, until Isla inevitably fell asleep. She always woke up in her bed, though, meticulously wrapped in blankets.
Since she hadn’t been able to visit the Starlings after the coronation, Isla asked Oro to station guards at the Star Isle bridge, to prevent the attacks, and to provide any immediate assistance they might require.
“Consider it done,” he had said, and it made her feel a little better about committing all this time to training.
Little by little, control became natural. The power within her, unruly and vast like the sea, began to sharpen into a single stream of ability.
Today, Oro pulled a blindfold from his pocket. “Is this okay?” he asked.
She nodded, and he tied it tightly around her head. “Bring back any memories?”
He laughed, the sound low and scraping the back of her mind.
“Did you want to kill me that day?” she asked, remembering how she had knocked the crown from his head with one of her throwing stars. How it had clattered noisily in the shocked silence.
“No,” he whispered somewhere close to her ear, the shade of his voice making her arms prickle, even though it was scorching outside. “Quite the opposite.”
“Really?”
“Really. That night, all I could think about was your annoyingly smug face when you took off the blindfold.”
The corners of her lips twitched. “I was pretty impressed with myself.” She frowned. “Though my demonstration wasn’t nearly as impressive as your gilding.” She said the last word carefully. With what he had shared with her, she imagined his ability to gild was still tinged with pain. Tainted. Hundreds of years had gone by. She wanted to take the pain associated with the ability away.
Was that love?
She reached up and moved the blindfold so she could see him. “You know,” she teased, “for someone who can make anything into gold . . . I would think you would have already gifted someone you love at least a golden apple. Or a golden . . . blade of grass.”
Someone you love . . . She surprised herself with the boldness of her words.
He tensed. She only got a glimpse of his surprise before he tugged the blindfold down over her eyes again. His hand did not leave her face. His thumb slid down her temple, and it sent shivers through her body. He sighed and leaned down to whisper in her ear, “When all this is over, I’ll gild you an entire castle. Is that sufficient?”
“That’s a little excessive.”
Another sigh.
He stepped away, and his voice became serious. “Wielding power means feeling it around you, not simply seeing it. Even with your back turned, or eyes closed, you should be able to sense a threat.”
A rock hit the side of her head, and she whipped around, baring her teeth. “Really?”
“It was a pebble. I’m reaching for a rock now. Focus.”
Isla couldn’t see a thing behind the blindfold, but she focused, and the tiny threads that had annoyed her so much previously began appearing, a million little links around her. She had blocked them out the last few weeks, but now they all came rearing back, especially since one of her main senses had been taken away. The more she mentally searched her surroundings, the louder everything became again. It was like endless noise; she couldn’t focus on anything—
By the time she sensed the rock, it had already hit her shoulder.
She winced. The bruise was sure to look like a storm cloud.
“Focus.”
“I am,” she said through her teeth.
Another rock hurtled at her. She sensed it and shot out her hand but missed. It hit her hip.
Isla felt something rising through her ribs, uncurling in her chest.
When the next rock hit her in the stomach, it unleashed.
“Put your arms down, Isla.”
Were they even up? She ripped the blindfold off, only to see sharp blades made from branches, dozens of them, levitating in the air, all pointed at Oro. Rocks hovered between them, vibrating with intensity.
Isla gasped, and they fell to the ground with a lifeless thump.
She took a step back. “I—I’m sorry.” She hadn’t even realized what she was doing. Her power had taken over.
Oro stepped toward her. “I was never in danger.”
But what if she did hurt him one day? When he was asleep? When she wasn’t paying attention?
“You need to work on controlling your emotions when using power,” he said. “But.” There was a but? “That was impressive.”
“It was?”
“It was focused, at least. A lot more controlled than when Remlar initially released your powers,” Oro said.
“So, what you’re saying is, I am getting more efficient at trying to kill you,” she deadpanned.
“Precisely.” His expression turned serious. “Emotion undoes control,” he explained. “When you’re emotional, your power has no constraint. It might seem like it makes you more powerful, but it can be dangerous. It can drain you completely until there’s nothing left.”
Isla trained harder. She tested the limits of her control, working to keep her emotions steady. Her life narrowed to just her, Oro, and her Wildling power. For over a week, there were no more memories. No more voice inside her head. No sightings.