Page 37 of Grim and Oro (Lightlark)

FAVORITE PLACE

Enya has yet to tell me how she will die, even though I ask her once every year, on my birthday—or, as she likes to call it, the anniversary of our friendship, since that’s when we first met.

Our last year of Sunling training, we celebrate by stealing Sunling wine and sneaking out of the training camp.

“Where are we going?” she asks, as I lead her through a forest. “We’ve been walking for an hour. If I had known it would be this far, I wouldn’t have taken so many bottles.”

“Yes, you would have,” I say, tasting the bitterness.

She shrugs. “Yes, I would have.”

Sweetness.

She keeps complaining until the trees thin and she sees it. Even in the darkness, the sea shines differently.

It’s green. A beautiful color I’ve only seen on Wild Isle, once, when Elk took me to watch Wildlings duel.

I never had a favorite anything, until I first saw this place and it stopped me in my tracks. Its beauty tugged me out of my never-ending spiral of thoughts.

“Now, this was worth the journey,” Enya says.

I nod. “Reaching this is worth any journey.”

We race our way down to the brush, careful not to tumble down the steep hill. Enya beats me, considering I’m holding almost all our supplies, and I watch her skip all the way to the waves.

The sand is thick, golden. The water sweeps toward us in peaceful curls, leaving behind a blanket of sea-foam.

When Enya has had her fill of dancing in the water, she plops down next to me, digging one of the bottles out of the sand. She looks around and nods approvingly. “If I had any interest in you whatsoever, I would say this would be a great place to take someone romantically.”

Truth. She has no interest in me.

While some women have started to look at me differently, staring when they never used to, Enya has never once liked me in any way other than a friend. I know that for certain, with my flair. And neither have I.

We’re friends. Best friends. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love her.

Still, I give her a look. “As if either of us have time for romance.”

Enya laughs. “Speak for yourself.”

I look over at her in curiosity, but she moves on before I can ask her anything else.

“How did you find this place?”

My favorite place, like the best things in life, was found by accident. “I was looking for something else but found this instead. And it was better than what I originally set out for.”

I was looking for gates, drawn onto an ancient map I found deep in the Mainland castle. Big, towering gates no one—not even Egan—ever mentioned. On my way, I caught a glimpse of this sea, and I was drawn toward it, as if by some invisible tether.

That day, I spent hours on this beach, sitting, staring at the color, mesmerized without knowing why it produced such a feeling in me ... this knowing.

“What’s your favorite place?” I ask Enya.

“You should know this.”

I do , I think. “The Singing Mountains.”

She nods. “Good. You get to continue being my best friend for another century, at least.”

She’s joking, but I turn toward her, hiding the desperation I feel. “So, we get another century together?”

Ever since she told me about her known death, I’ve cursed time. I’ve wondered how much of it we have left together. I always knew we would both die ... but the fact that she knows how, for some reason, makes me feel like I’m always a step away from losing her.

She smiles. “ Many centuries,” she tells me.

I pull her into my side. “Thank you,” I say, my eyes stinging with relief.

“For what?” she asks, leaning her head against my shoulder. A bird squawks close by. The waves nearly reach our feet.

“For not dying today.”

I graduate my Sunling training, and, for the first time, Enya and I are about to be separated. She’ll stay on Sun Isle and continue studies there. I’ll move on to the next realm in my rotation—Moonling.

“It was always going to happen,” my mother tells us over tea.

Enya’s mom laughs. “Remember how they would count with their fingers the years they had left together before she had to leave for training? How old were they? Six?” She shakes her head. “Remember we caught them trying to run away? They made it, to what? The abbey?”

They both laugh, leaning into each other the way friends tend to, while Enya and I glare at them.

“You are supposed to be kind to us,” Enya says to her mother. “We’re your children. You are supposed to be nice, no matter what, and that includes not bringing up embarrassing stories that do nothing to prove the intelligence and capability of the royal line.”

Enya’s mother shakes her head, lips still curled in amusement. “No. I’m your mother, and that just means I’ll tell you the truth . And the truth is often not kind at all.”

Enya and I share a look.

“Our mothers are like harpies when they get together,” she says as we leave the room, their laughter echoing behind us.

I smile. “They probably say the same thing about us.”

Enya shakes her head. “No. You’re not that funny.”

I pinch her side, and she swats my hand away. “Write to me?”

I nod. I’m not allowed to leave Moon Isle for the first few months of training. The only way to communicate will be through letters. If I can find anyone willing to deliver them, that is. “Of course.”

“I’ll try not to talk too much about the warmth of my room’s hearth, or honeyed tea, or the sun caressing my skin.” She grins at me.

I sigh. The comfort and heat of Sunling is about to be traded for harsh, brutal cold.

In their last years, Moonling warriors train near the Vinderland, far north, in temperatures that even my now-mastered flames can hardly breach.

“I’m sure they have hearths,” I say, though I’m actually not sure. I’ve never been on Moon Isle before.