“Pain is useful,” he said quietly. He didn’t elaborate.
“It doesn’t feel very useful now,” she mumbled.
Grim looked down at her. It seemed to surprise them both when he said, “When I was seven, my training consisted of being cut and skinned until there was barely any flesh left on my back.”
Isla’s jaw went slack. Her training could be painful . . . but to do that to a child? “That is barbaric.”
He only lifted a shoulder. “It was a custom here, for a very long time. Meant to toughen the body and mind at the height of its growth. The place I trained as a warrior . . . we were punished for the smallest of infractions. In public. Shadows can turn into the sharpest, thinnest blades.”
“That’s humiliating.”
“It wasn’t. It was a chance to prove we didn’t react to the pain. Standing there, being cut, and not moving a muscle in your face . . . It was seen as strength.” His eyes weren’t on her when he said, “My father would come and watch. It was an honor to show him that I had no reaction to the pain.”
She crinkled her nose. “You know how awful that sounds, right?”
He nodded. “It’s why that doesn’t happen anymore. Our training is still ruthless . . . but not as cruel.”
Isla swallowed. What he had said about the punishment . . . “But . . . you don’t have any scars.” He only had one. And she had given it to him. “You have a Moonling healer, don’t you? Or Moonling healing supplies?” It didn’t make sense. “Why is Cleo helping you?”
Grim just looked at her. After a few moments, all he said was, “You should leave.”
She felt a bite of hurt and didn’t know why. He was asking her to leave his quarters, when she was injured. Why was she shocked? He didn’t care about her.
The second thing she needed from him. Isla collected her torn top from the floor and said, “Can you . . . destroy this? I can’t bring it home. All the blood . . .”
A moment later, the top was only ash.
She grabbed her starstick and, without another word, portaled back to her room.
In the middle of the night, she woke and almost screamed.
Grim was sitting across from her bed, watching her.
“What are you—”
“I’m making sure you don’t bleed out in your sleep,” he grumbled.
Isla looked down at her bandages. Blood was already peeking through again. She got a few rags she used to clean her swords and pressed them to her, so she wouldn’t stain her sheets. She would need to ask Grim to destroy them before he left.
“I’m fine,” she said, though she certainly wasn’t. All she could do was hope the bleeding stopped by the time her training started. “You can leave.”
Grim gave her a look that made her think he didn’t believe her for a second. He leaned back in the chaise he had decided to sit on. It was decorated with roses, and far too small, but he made himself comfortable and stretched his long legs out in front of him. “Your death would be most inconvenient. I’ll stay a little longer.”
“Inconvenient?” she said, scoffing at him.
He didn’t look fazed. “Inconvenient,” he repeated. “You are an investment.”
Her voice raised to a high pitch. “An investment?”
He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “My time is valuable. I have a lot to do. Choosing to work with you . . . fitting you into my plan. You are an investment. You’re no good to me dead.”
She glared at him.
Fine. Let him stay. If he wanted to watch her sleep, that was his decision.
She made it ten minutes this way, willing sleep to come down and find her again. It did not, and the only thing more uncomfortable than having him sit and watch her was the pain pulsing like a second heartbeat in her chest.
When she carefully sat upright and pulled her knees to her chest, she found him still watching her.
“I can’t sleep,” she said.
His chin rested on his hand. “Clearly.” He studied her. “If you weren’t going to sleep, I suppose I could have allowed you to stay at my palace. Let you heal there.”
“I hate your palace,” she said.
That seemed to surprise him. “Why?”
“Besides the fact that you live there?” Grim looked faintly amused. “There’s no color. It’s so . . . dark. I could never live in a place like that.” He said nothing. “You know,” she said, staring at her glass wall. “My guardians closed my window because of you.”
He raised an eyebrow at her.
“There was . . . a loose pane. You saw it when we dueled. It was the only way I could sneak out. I had to tell them about it, to explain my ankle injury.”
“Can’t you use your portaling device to go outside?”
Her eyes found the floor. “I—I’m awful at traveling short distances with it. And I can only reliably go places I’ve been before.”
The portaling device was born of his own power, which he clearly had complete mastery of. She wondered if he would think less of her than he already did.
“I’m sorry,” he said suddenly. Her eyes abruptly met his again. “About the window.”
Isla asked a question she’d had for a while. “If you created my device, then how did it get to Wildling?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” he said.
All at once, a thought gripped her mind and chest. “Did you . . . did you know my mother?”
Grim frowned. “No. I haven’t met a Wildling since the curses,” he said.
So how had her mother come to possess the starstick?
They just stared at each other. Isla watched him watch her and wondered if he would be the first to look away.
“Do you always play with your hair when you’re uncomfortable?”
It wasn’t until then that she realized she was raking her fingers through her damp hair like they were two combs. She immediately put her hands in her lap. “No.”
“Liar. I’ve watched you do it on no less than three occasions.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. Without breaking his gaze, she made her way to the end of the bed, so she was sitting right in front of him. “Here I was thinking that you couldn’t even bear to look at me, and you’ve apparently been studying me quite carefully.”
Grim’s expression did not change. “You are my enemy. Of course I study you carefully.”
“Right. Tell me, Nightshade,” she said. “What do you do when you’re uncomfortable?”
“I rarely am.”
“You seemed pretty uncomfortable when I stabbed you in the chest.”
Grim looked bored. “I’m used to being stabbed.”
“By someone you were trying to bed?”
That got a reaction from him. His jaw tensed. “You tricked me. Had I known who you were, I never would have touched you.” The disgust in his tone was clear.
Isla scoffed. “Had I known what was about to occur, I never would have joined that line.”
“Why were you there, then?” he snapped.
She recoiled, taken aback by his sudden rush of anger. “I accidentally portaled there with the starstick. It wouldn’t work, and I was chased by your idiotic group of guards. The head woman grabbed me, and the next thing I knew I was in that line.”