“You—you want to fight?” Isla asked, doing her best to siphon surprise out of her tone. This was not really their battle. Wildlings hadn’t been on Lightlark in five hundred years. None of her people had been alive before the curses. They had never even stepped foot on the island.
Asking them to potentially die protecting it seemed like a stretch.
“Are you giving us a choice?” Wren asked.
Isla hesitated. Choice. She was their ruler. She could have ordered them. Should have, probably. Now, Grim had Moonling. Cleo had been building a legion. She had seen it herself during the Centennial, sneaking around the Moon Isle castle.
To defeat them, they would need as many warriors as they could get. Still . . .
“Yes,” she said quickly. Once the word was out of her mouth, she couldn’t take it back. “You have a choice.” Isla studied her people. Some looked determined. Others looked wary. “I hadn’t been to Lightlark until a few months ago,” she said. “I could have returned here and ignored the threat on the island, but I know if Lightlark falls, so do we. Eventually, without that power . . . we will cease to exist. I see a future where we return and claim our isle again. I see a future where we use the power of the island to help regain everything we lost.” She paused. “Who will fight alongside me for that future?”
For a moment, no one moved a muscle, and Isla’s heart sank below her ribs. Wildlings were known to be among the best warriors. Without them—
One woman stepped forward. She had long hair tied into a braid and wore bracelets made from thorny vines.
Another.
Another.
Then, an entire group.
Isla wanted to smile, she wanted to cry, but she did neither. She nodded sharply and thanked them.
“For those who will not fight, I ask for something critical.” She was honest with them. “Moonling joined Nightshade.” There were a few murmurs. “They took their healers with them. To keep this war from destroying us, we need as many healing elixirs as possible.”
“It’s not something that can be rushed,” Wren said. “We only have one small patch of the flower left.”
Isla knew that. “We’ll need to find more,” she said. “We will need to search every inch of the isle for it.” She sighed. “The elixir will be the difference between life and death. We need everyone available to learn how to extract it.”
Wren nodded.
She faced the rest of her people. “Grim is coming to destroy Lightlark.” Her vision echoed in her head, and her heart started beating faster, each beat like the chime of a clock. “We are in a race to save thousands of lives.”
Lynx was waiting for her in the woods outside the Wildling palace when she was done. Now that part of Wild Isle had been restored by her and Oro, she had contemplated bringing him to Lightlark.
With Nightshade approaching, however, she didn’t know if it was the best idea.
“War is coming,” Isla told him, wondering if he really could understand her. “I . . . I saw a vision a while ago. Of someone I used to care about, destroying the world . . .” She swallowed. “He’s Nightshade, like my father.”
Lynx’s gaze sharpened.
“You must have known him, right? My . . . dad?”
The leopard blinked, and Isla didn’t know if that was confirmation.
“The oracle said I’m the key. I’m the only one who can remember why he wants to destroy Lightlark, and how. I’m the only one who knows about the mysterious weapon he has. Some sword.” She sighed. It was nice talking to someone, even if she wasn’t sure he was listening. “I’m the only one who can open a door that has rejected me already, that is apparently extremely important in all of this.” She laughed without humor, and Lynx just stared at her. “You know what? After the Centennial, I truly believed things could not get any worse. I was wrong. I . . . I was wrong about a lot of things.”
Lynx didn’t care. She knew that. She made to turn around, to leave him to his business, when he stopped her, with a quick nuzzle of his head that nearly sent her off-balance.
She turned around and found his head bent low. She reached out with careful fingers, and he allowed her to pet down his nose. His eyes closed, and he made a thrumming sound in his chest.
Her bonded didn’t hate her. That was a relief. At least, he didn’t hate her today.
Perhaps, Isla thought, it meant she had proven herself as a Wildling. Perhaps it meant she could finally open the vault.
Isla stood outside the hidden door. Voices echoed inside. It reminded her of being in the forest when her powers had first been released, a thousand mouths calling her forward. They were almost clear but muffled in meaning, like speaking underwater. She took another step and tried to listen. They became louder, more insistent.
A spark traveled up her spine, and she didn’t dare move too quickly, in case it broke the connection. This was it all along, she thought. All she needed to do was connect to the vault, the same way Oro had taught her to form a link to her abilities. The same way she had begun to form a connection with Lynx.
Something in her recognized something in the hidden door. It pulled her forward, a hand gripping a thread behind her navel. It all felt so natural, so right, so fitting, just like the crown clicking into the lock, every twist and ridge lining up. Just like turning it, and pulling it—
Closed. It remained closed. It didn’t move an inch, not even a sliver of an opening, like before. No force threw her across the room.
Just . . . nothing.
Isla ripped her crown from the lock and almost hurled it across the room. They had twenty-six days. Twenty-six days before—
Her vision flashed in front of her eyes, and she could almost smell the burning. She could almost feel the ashes landing on her bare arms as they swept over her in torrents. She coughed like the cinders were in her throat again, choking her. Screams sounded in her ears, followed by howls from dreks—
Dreks. That was new. She hadn’t seen them in her vision before. They had suspected the drek attack was from Grim, but this was confirmation.
“We were right. He has dreks,” Isla told Oro. She could still hear their howls in her head. “Last time was a bloodbath. How could we stand a chance against that many? Their skin is nearly impenetrable.”
Oro sighed. “Ever since the first drek attack, I’ve had my best team looking for a special type of ore. It was mined a millennia ago and requires Sunling and Starling power to turn it to metal. When weapons were made from it, it’s said that they could pierce even the thickest hides.”
“Have any of those weapons survived?”
He shook his head. “If they did, none of us know where they are. We’ve already checked the castle’s reserves.”
So they would have to make new ones. “Who’s looking for the ore? Have they had any progress?”
He looked at her. He seemed . . . almost nervous. “You’ve met Enya. Now, it’s time for you to meet the rest of my friends.”
Just an hour later, Oro led Isla into a room located in a turret at the back of the Mainland castle, with massive, curved windows overlooking the sea. A round table sat in its center, crafted from solid gold. It was a war strategy room. Oro walked to the windows and looked out at the horizon, in the direction of Nightshade.