Page 1 of Grim and Oro (Lightlark)

INFINITE

Whenever I feel alone, I imagine myself scattered across the sky.

I imagine I am endless, limitless, stretched beyond reason. I imagine myself beyond this single existence.

There is a name for this, I learn.

My sister teaches me.

“You’ll get it one day.”

I jump, not expecting Laila to be right behind me, leaning casually, like she’s been there for a while. She must have flown in from the hole in the wall. I hate when she does that.

My face reddens with thorn-prickling embarrassment as I shove my hand back into my pocket. I’ve been trying for half an hour now to summon a cloaking shadow. Stupid, really, to try. No matter how long I concentrate, or how strong my stance is, nothing happens.

I have powers. I’ve used them before.

But they are fickle. Rare. Summoning shadows doesn’t come easily to me. I barely feel them stirring beneath my skin.

It’s as if they’re resting. Waiting. For what? I’m not sure.

I’m not like my siblings. I watch them sometimes, from my frost-glazed window. I see the shadows in the gardens inch toward them as they pass. My half brothers and sisters, all within a few years of my age, carelessly string them together as if it’s easy, as if it’s natural.

A burden , I once heard a guardian call me, so I have tried everything to become essential.

I left the winter palace early this morning to join my siblings and the rest of the Nightshade elite’s children for training. While they were grouped into shadow-wielders, I joined the warriors. I focused on swordplay.

I can’t rely on my abilities, but I can count on my metal.

Still, a blade can only do so much.

“Here, I’ll do it,” Laila says, straightening, flicking her wrist like it’s nothing. A towering shadow curves out of her fingers and covers us like a cloak.

At eight, my sister is only a year older than me, yet she already has full mastery of her abilities.

I wait for the flash of bitter jealousy ... but it doesn’t come. Not for her. Not for someone I care about.

I’m glad she has her shadows. I would never take them from her.

Even if she, out of anyone, doesn’t need them.

Laila has discovered—or carved—holes all through the palace. Likely all through the training grounds too, up in the mountains of the Algid. She could turn and be outside in a moment’s notice. She’s doing this for my benefit.

Burden , I hear, whispered somewhere in my memories.

Wearing her shadow over our heads, we inch through the castle.

My arm brushes the cold, glimmering stone.

Whisper-quiet footsteps echo nearby, attendants rushing down the halls.

We pass countless oak doors, and I can hear my siblings inside, training.

Always training . There’s the hiss of shadows.

The earsplitting cry of sharpening blades.

Just when we’re at the end of the last corridor, an attendant fills the entrance.

Guardian Asa. Just a few months into her tenure and already the cruelest guardian of them all. I straighten on instinct, the skin in my back stretching, scars tingling, a reminder of the pain she’s inflicted.

We’ve been caught. I swallow, already feeling the ghost of her razor-sharp shadows, already—

Laila digs her nails into my arm and pulls me to the side, just out of Guardian Asa’s way. My heart is beating wildly. Spark-like nerves swirl through my stomach, even as she passes us by, without incident.

From Laila, I feel only bubbling anticipation. Excitement. It’s almost like she wants to be caught.

That was close. Too close .

It’s only when we slip through the door, out into the gardens, that I finally loosen a breath. The cool air hits me and my muscles relax, tension uncoiling.

I hate the staleness of inside. Here in the cold, I feel like I can finally breathe.

One moment. I get one moment of peace.

Then Laila drops her shadow and starts running.

She starts laughing . I curse and run after her, frost-coated blades of grass scraping my ankles as I weave through the perfectly shaped trees and ancient statues just beyond the giant, mysterious hedge maze.

The statues represent our ancestors, immortalized in stone.

The winners . The ones strong enough to continue our line.

The guardians could be watching from the windows, as they sometimes do. The patrolling guards could see us. We aren’t supposed to leave the winter palace by ourselves. More than that, we aren’t supposed to be speaking to each other, let alone being friendly. None of the heirs are.

Laila’s going to get us in trouble.

When I tell her so, she throws me a look over her shoulder. Her black hair is stick-straight, crudely cut by her own sword to just above her shoulders. “Good. I like trouble.”

“That’s because you don’t get punished like the rest of us.”

Laila is our father’s favorite. She’s one of his only children with a flair, an extra power that the bloodline doesn’t guarantee. She can turn into a bat, with fangs sharp enough to rip out someone’s neck.

She did, once. The act of violence only made Father like her more.

I’m not like Laila. Father has the guardians punish me every time I break the rules. Tonight, we’re breaking several.

Laila and I have broken the rules for years now, though.

Whenever we get caught, she uses her flair to fly away, leaving me to deal with the consequences.

She doesn’t even feel bad about it. I know.

I might not have a flair, but I can feel the emotions of those around me, an increasingly rare Nightshade power.

I’ve never sensed anything remotely like regret from her.

Maybe her abandonment should hurt. All I feel is admiration.

After all, it’s what will make her a good ruler one day. Just like Father, who has also never felt remorse.

One day soon, we will fight to the death at the Gauntlet to determine who becomes Father’s heir, just as Father did before us, and his father before him: each generation since Cronan founded Nightshade pitted against their own.

Only the strongest from each generation continues the line, while the rest feed the land with their blood.

Once the youngest of us reaches training age, we must do the same.

Laila finally slows her pace, then stops, mud-laden snow sputtering around her leather boots.

She’s facing a low stone wall that encircles the perimeter of the grounds.

I come to a halt next to her, our breaths releasing in clouds.

“You’re thinking about it again, aren’t you?

” Laila says, turning to face me. “The Gauntlet.”

“No.”

She laughs. It’s a gentle sound, completely at odds with her sharp, catlike eyes. “You, Grimshaw, are a terrible liar.”

I scowl. “Don’t call me that.”

Father calls me by my full name. And my skin crawls every time I hear it. It doesn’t sound like me. It sounds like someone else.

“You are a terrible liar, Grim . Happy?”

Never.

I sigh. “Fine. I was thinking about it. Don’t you?”

She shrugs. “Of course I do. But I don’t get sad.”

“That’s because you know you’re going to win.”

She grins, flashing her white teeth, canines sharper than mine.

“I’ll make it easy,” she says. “Your death. I won’t make it hurt.”

Small mercies.

I crouch to help Laila up, and, when she’s at the top of the wall, she reaches back for me.

My feet are frozen in my boots by the time we trek up the hill.

My nose is numb. I don’t mind the cold—in fact, I like it—but it also feels like I might be dying.

If I had known we would hike for this long, I would have worn thicker fabrics.

I would have found socks that didn’t have holes in them.

I’m about to tell Laila we should turn around, when I see it.

We both freeze at the crest of the hill.

This—this is what we came for.

The sky is ink-black, and a glimmering circle has formed in its center, as if the stars have all been roped together. They’re moving quickly, unnaturally. Beautifully.

It looks like ... it looks like the stars are dancing. Could they be that happy? I envy the stars, for once. I envy them, as they twirl as one, like children playing together, out in the open, the way me and my siblings never could.

“How did you know about this?” I breathe, slowly sinking into the snow.

Laila shrugs as she joins me. “I overheard some of the prophet-followers talking in town. They were going to watch it from their hill. Did you know some of them are allowed to leave their mountain?”

My father hates the prophet, though I don’t know why. I’m surprised he hasn’t already turned their entire mountain to ash.

“They called it something nice. I don’t remember now. They made it sound like it happens on the same day every fifty years.”

Once every fifty years.

I won’t be alive in fifty years.

This is the only time I’ll see the sky look like this.

I study it carefully. I study it so that maybe, I’ll dream of it. Maybe it won’t be the last time I see it.

In my dreams, I don’t have to fight my siblings. In my dreams, I can leave this castle without getting in trouble. In my dreams, I’m not the son of the ruler of Nightshade. I’m no one at all. No responsibility or duty or tradition burdens me. I’m like the stars—free and never alone.

“Are you afraid of dying?” Laila asks, pulling me out of my thoughts. I don’t feel any sadness from her, just curiosity. I look over, and her large brown eyes are studying me just as intently as I’m studying the stars.

I remember seeing those eyes for the first time, years ago, in the hallway. She was the only one of my siblings that ever looked at me in passing. I remember her eyes, because they had a strange gold tint. They reminded me of a cat’s.

That was right around the first time I got in trouble.

I was three years old, supposedly intent on finding my mother.

Somehow, I snuck into a room in the palace housing Covets, still nursing their heirs.

I went around and asked each one if she was my mother, until the guardians found me and hauled me away.