Page 48 of Grim and Oro (Lightlark)

They say nothing. They nod at me, then pass us by on their way to the Mainland. I glance at the glowering heir. He’s leaking shadows everywhere, staining the island with his presence.

“Are you masking yourself?”

“Of course I am,” he says, like I’m an idiot. “I don’t need people gawking at me.”

Right.

We race through Star Isle quickly. He moves assuredly. He seems irritated, more than anything, to be doing this. There is no benefit to him in it ... he claimed he wouldn’t use this as a chance to escape.

My flair has never failed me. If he doesn’t plan to betray us .

.. why help? The villain I fought against for years across the battlefield is heartless.

He doesn’t care about a child he’s never met—not when he’s taken so many other lives with ease.

So why is he here, risking himself to save just one?

I decide to come right out with it. “Why are you doing this?”

He snorts. “Are you trying to talk me out of helping your people?”

“No. I’m trying to understand why my coldhearted enemy cares about a Starling child.”

He turns. “You think I don’t care about a child, just because she’s from Lightlark?”

I shrug a shoulder. “You didn’t care about thousands of Lightlark soldiers.”

He bares his teeth. “When we first invaded, we made our terms clear. Anyone who didn’t want to die could surrender unharmed. The moment they set foot on that battlefield, they accepted the risk of death.”

We’re past the Starling castle now. Then, past the woods behind it. “Do you think doing this will help you get out of the prisons? Free you?”

He sighs in a long-suffering way. “I’m just trying to save a child. Though now I’m hoping the Midnight Woods will kill you , so I can be rid of your infernal presence.”

Truth. Both statements.

Bastard.

The trees are silver. Glowing. The dirt looks like ground-up stars. Star Isle is beautiful. As far as I know, Grim has never been here. I’d have expected him to study everything, to memorize it all in case of a future invasion, but he runs quickly, eyes straight ahead. Focused on our mission.

“I would expect a prisoner to revel more in his freedom, as temporary as it is,” I remark, as we near the Midnight Woods. We both slow.

“I’ve never been free in my life,” Grim says.

I open my mouth to issue a retort, when a scream spears through the rising darkness. We both stop. Relief spills through my bones. It’s her; it must be. She’s alive . The scream continues, echoing relentlessly. She’s alive, but it’s clear she’s suffering. We turn to look at each other for a moment.

Then we take off.

The second I step foot into the woods, a chill licks down my spine as if in warning.

The cold deepens. Everything behind us is silver as the stars; here, the roots are dark as night.

The trees are shriveled and sticky, as if they’ve been poisoned.

The ground is muddled ash. This is a place of death.

Of suffering. Shadows flicker in the sides of my vision.

Branches move like swords trying to strike us down.

“Don’t let them touch you,” Grim warns.

I smell the poison on them. It seeps from dark moss, covering their pointed tips.

“I wasn’t planning on it,” I say, ducking to avoid the branches. One gets close, and I burn it away. Another swings wildly at Grim, and he grunts in irritation.

“Enough,” Grim growls, extending his hand. From his palm, he issues nothing short of an avalanche of shadows that throws trees to the side, clearing a path.

I swallow hard. After months of being imprisoned, his powers should be weakened. Yet he doesn’t even seem winded.

The screams are getting louder. Closer.

We reach the edge of a black lake and stop, crouching in the brush surrounding its banks to avoid being seen.

In the center sits an island. In the center of that sits a child.

Ara. Her hands are covering her ears, as if she hears something we cannot.

Tears streak down her face. Her mouth is elongated in a scream that’s suddenly gone silent, as if her voice has given out.

Slowly, she rises from the ground, floating, compelled by an invisible force. She shakes, back and forth, resisting its hold. Hooded figures suddenly emerge from the shadows, tattered and frayed. Beneath their hoods I make out bones, and nothing more. Night creatures. And they’re not alone.

A hiss sounds behind me, and I whirl, only to be met by a towering shadow. No. Not just a shadow. Moonlight escapes from behind a cloud, and the figure is momentarily revealed—ghastly and shredded, a mauled body.

There are dozens of them clustered around the edge of the forest. I hear them behind me, crawling from the depths of the lake. We’re boxed in.

The light shifts suddenly, and they’re all gone, made nearly invisible without the moon’s glow. Then there’s silence.

A moment passes. Two.

“The quiet is bad. They’re about to strike,” Grim says, shadows unfurling from his arms.

A high-pitched scream splits the world in half, and they’re on us.

I erupt in flames. They curl down my arms to create two swords. I use them to decapitate the creature right in front of me, but its head quickly replaces itself. I swallow. They’re already dead. Nothing will kill them—not for long. We’ll never defeat all of them.

At my side, Grim battles with his shadows, demolishing everything in his path. Unlike with my flames, the shadow creatures disappear for longer against his power. Some don’t return at all, as if permanently extinguished.

“Go,” he yells, looking over his shoulder. He looks ... almost afraid. But not of the creatures.

He’s afraid for the girl, I realize.

Ara .

I shoot into the sky, toward her—only to go hurling back, smacking against a tree.

The shadows engulfing her ... they’ve created a swirling current, almost invisible save for the faint grayness in the air.

I squint at the sky. The grayness is growing.

The shadow creatures around Ara are swirling, almost blocking her from sight.

They know we’re here. They don’t want to let her go.

Fine. If I can’t fly, I’ll get to her on foot.

Creatures shoot out of the forest again, but I make a wall of flames, temporarily cutting them down.

I use that second to freeze a path across the lake and take off toward the island.

Immediately, I hear them behind me, chasing, so I collapse the bridge almost as quickly as I make it, sending them into the water.

It took years to learn how to freeze ice this sturdy.

My armored boots clash against it, but it holds.

Even through my panic, it holds, as I race toward Ara.

She’s shaking wildly, against the shadows.

It’s as if they are burning her, the way she screams. It looks like the shadow creatures are gaining something from her pain.

“Hold on, Ara!” I yell. “We’re—”

The world tilts, and my head smashes against the ice.

Something has my leg. I blink through the roaring in my skull, through my blurred vision, and twist, only to see a skeletal hand clasped around my ankle.

More creatures are slinking up from the icy water.

Their rotted arms are reaching over the frozen path beneath me.

I’m surrounded. If I collapse the ice, I’ll go down with them.

If I fly, I’ll be beaten down by the howling current above.

There’s a Starling ability I’ve only tried once before. It requires great energy—energy I don’t have right now, as blood spurts from my head where it hit the ice. But Ara needs me.

I take a breath. Force my panic into focus. I narrow all my senses into that power in my heart. I brush away all thoughts, doubts, and fears.

Find your fire . It doesn’t just apply to flames. It means finding the light in the darkness. Finding the calm in the chaos.

It happens in a ripple. Sparks travel down my armor and across my skin, shielding me in energy. The moment it’s in place, the night creatures are on me, scraping against the glimmering silver—

Hundreds. Crawling from deep below. Covering me completely, raking against the sparks. I close my eyes, then project the energy off me—it sends some flying.

But it’s not enough. There are too many of them. And more are coming. Spindly arms encircle me from below, pulling me down, trying to drag me into the water. I thrash against their hold, fighting to keep the shield, the only thing standing between me and their bladelike claws.

But I can feel my hold weakening. My vision is swirling. My head is still pouring blood from the fall. I can’t heal it without breaking the seal. Without letting them in.

I roar and kick one off, then punch another, trying to clear my vision. But they’re replaced. They’re endlessly replaced. Think. Think .

My thoughts inexplicably go to my friends. To that fallen drink in the bar ... how Calder froze it, and it shattered.

With a final burst of energy, I unleash a flurry of frost, freezing the creatures around me—and they tumble off the sides of the ice, sinking into the waters. The ones below are smothered and weighed down. Until finally, I can see the sky again.

Ara .

I get to my feet. Within seconds, the creatures I didn’t freeze begin surfacing from below, clawing at my bridge. I dissolve the rest of the ice, only creating sheets of it where I step, not giving them a place to hold, but they start to lunge. Start to grab at my clothes.

She’s right there. Right there . And she’s dying. She’s hanging limp in the air, now. Not even screaming. The darkness swirls around her, triumphant.

Enough .

Fury heats the ability in my chest, making it boil over. Fury that night creatures exist. That they would drain a child .

I growl in frustration, and that power, the endless stream that I’ve fought hard to keep buried down, spills over. The next step I take doesn’t just freeze the spot beneath my foot. No.

It freezes the entire lake.