Terra had always said no.
Isla opened her mouth to speak. Before she could, they did something she couldn’t have expected. Didn’t deserve.
One by one, they bowed.
“No, I—”
They had never done that before. Isla had never demanded it. It wasn’t a custom she was used to.
She didn’t like it. Anxiety thrummed across her skin, and she wanted to yell that they should be screaming at her, calling her names, telling her everything she had done wrong up until this point. They looked like they were still dying. She was a failure, not a hero.
Isla stepped back, words caught in her throat, when a woman with a capybara next to her said, “You broke the curses. You did what all other rulers for centuries could not.”
She frowned. “How do you—how do you know that?”
“Terra told us.”
Terra? The name was a dagger to the chest. How had her guardians even known she was the one to break the curses? Why had Terra told them, after being banished?
Had she defied Isla’s order? Was she still here, on the newland?
“Where is Terra now?” the woman asked. “She was here . . . and then she vanished. And Poppy?” No. Not still here.
“I don’t know,” Isla said honestly. She thought about telling them about the banishment, but she needed to first get a sense of their allegiance. Would they be loyal to her . . . or to the guardians who had mostly ruled the Wildlings since her birth? “Please stand,” she said. She told them everything else. That she’d believed she had been born without powers. That she had a device that allowed her to portal at will. That she now had Starling power. When she was finished, she said, “I have not been a good ruler. I don’t know your struggles. Speak candidly, please. I know you must have questions. Ask them. Tell me what you need.”
Something flickered in her vision. Isla turned, and for the slightest second, she saw Grim, standing among the crowd, watching her.
She froze. Panic dropped through her stomach.
A blink, and he was gone.
Someone asked a question, and she didn’t hear it.
She shook her head. “Sorry, what did you say?” Her ears were ringing. First, the vision in the Place of Mirrors. Then, his voice in her head. Now, she was seeing him . . . What was next?
What was wrong with her?
“I asked what is happening on the island.”
She wondered how much she should say. “There is uncertainty on Lightlark right now. The realms are divided. There are signs of rebellion. We also have reason to believe Nightshades might try to attack Lightlark, like they have in the past.” She attempted a smile. “Once all of that is dealt with, I hope to have us all back on Lightlark one day,” she said. “This has been our home for five centuries, but it is weakened. Lightlark is where we have always belonged.”
There were some murmurs, but no one spoke out against her. She hoped that was a good sign.
She answered their questions as best she could, then sought out a woman who wore purple flowers through the ends of her hair, the color of leadership. She was tall, with light skin, dark hair, and sharp eyes. Her name was Wren, and Isla learned she led one of the larger villages on the newland.
“Why are some people standing apart from the rest?” Isla asked. Her people were not as united as they had seemed months prior. Some were huddled together, but others stood on the outskirts.
Wren looked at her for a moment. “I mean no disrespect,” she said. “But you didn’t have the curse. You don’t know what it’s like to have to kill others for food. To go hungry because there simply wasn’t enough.” She shook her head. “Most of us did things we’re not proud of to survive.”
Tears burned Isla’s eyes. All her life, she had thought it a horror being locked in her room and training so rigorously. It was nothing compared to what her people had gone through; she knew that now. “What do you need?” she asked. “How can I help you?”
Wren pressed her lips together. “We have slowly learned to make food. It has been good for us, I think, figuring things out on our own. Any challenge now . . . it is a mere shadow of what we endured.”
“You must need something,” she said. “Some of you still look starved. I can bring more food. Bring people to help teach you to make other crops or help reconstruct houses.” She had seen the state of the villages during her travels with her starstick. Some buildings had stood the test of time, and others had fallen to pieces. “I can—”
Wren cut her off. “How are the Starlings?”
“I don’t know. I’ve asked, but I haven’t yet visited the newland or isle.”
“Help them,” she said. “We are resourceful. Older. They are so young. They need you more than we do.” She smiled sadly. “It would help,” she said. “With the guilt. To know in some way, we are aiding another realm, instead of . . .”
Killing them.
Isla nodded. “I’ll be back,” she said. “With help and resources, after my coronation.”
Wren nodded. “We will be waiting.”
Bells rang at a distance. The air was sharp with salt from the sea and burned honey from the fair that had cropped up at the base of the castle, all carts filled with varieties of roasted seeds and bands holding their instruments, but not playing them, not yet.
Isla stood at the top of the stairs, just beyond the shadow of the doors, just out of view of the thousands of people waiting below.
It was the day of the Starling coronation, and it seemed everyone on Lightlark was in attendance.
Well, almost everyone.
“No sign of Moonling,” Ella said quietly behind her, because Isla had asked her to look. The young Starling had been her assigned attendant during the Centennial. Now, Isla employed her to be her eyes and ears wherever she could not see or hear.
The bells came to an end. It was time.
Isla stepped forward.
Strings of silver beads made up a dress like spun starlight. Her cape glistened in a ripple behind her as she walked down the stairs. It was still a shock to wear a color she had only dared to use on her prohibited excursions beyond her own realm. It felt wrong, it all felt so wrong, like she had taken her friend’s life, robbed her of her silver, and put it on herself.
Was that what these people thought? That she had killed Celeste—Aurora—for the power?
She looked to the crowd for answers, stomach tensed, braced. Their faces were a mosaic of surprise, curiosity, hate, disgust, trepidation, vitriol—
Breathe.
Isla took another step, and her foot nearly missed the stair completely. She briefly considered gathering her gown in her hands and running back upstairs, locking herself in her room and going anywhere, anywhere, with her starstick.
She wasn’t worthy of any of this. She didn’t deserve to rule anyone. She didn’t even know herself. Part of her past was missing, and that person—the one who had supposedly loved a Nightshade—felt like a stranger. She was sad all the time, and there were so many emotions pressed down, in the deepest depths of herself, that she knew one day would overpower everything else and claw their way out—
She felt it: a thread of heat, steadying her. It was honey in her stomach, a beam of sunshine just for her.