Page 70 of Grim and Oro (Lightlark)

I was ready for minutes of nonstop poison, but sweetness fills my mouth. A special sweetness. One I savor. Isla’s truths taste different. Or at least, they do now. They taste sweeter than anyone else’s, like a fruit I’ve been craving for longer than I care to admit.

She continues, and I’m captivated, unable to do anything but hope she never lies to me again. “I love my guardians—they’re my only family. But—” She squints. “Have you ever felt like a bird in a cage?”

Constantly .

I’m trapped inside during the day, because of my curse. My crown is its own cage. I live solely for duty. My wants don’t matter. My very life is tied to this island.

I’ve never heard anyone phrase it that way, I’ve never had anyone who could truly understand, but yes . “Every day for the last five hundred years,” I tell her.

Questions rise to the surface of my mind.

I savor these moments like sand running through my fingers, I want to ask her anything I can while she’s being honest, because it’s like being let into her mind, even for just a moment.

It’s what I’ve wanted for weeks now. To just know what she’s thinking . To just know ... her .

“Who trapped you?” I ask, even though it isn’t my turn. It’s the wrong thing to say. She winces as if the question hurt her, and I curse it, and myself.

“Not trapped ... just ... protected,” she says, and it isn’t quite a lie. It isn’t quite the truth either. She asks another question. “Have you ever been in love?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Kings of Lightlark do not fall in love. It makes us vulnerable. Our power becomes unprotected.” I look over at her, knowing it’s something we have in common. “I suppose we are similar in that regard ... in our inability to have that.”

Her curse means she can’t fall in love. It would be a death sentence to whoever she is with. Is that why she wants to break it? The thought pierces right through my skull. Is she ... falling in love with someone?

With someone else ?

“Do you think it’s possible for a ruler to love another ruler?” she asks. “Truly, without any agenda?”

I’m right ... she is falling in love. And I know with who. My stomach sinks. I feel bitterness, even though she hasn’t lied to me.

“No,” I say, meaning it, because I’ve yet to see a selfless love between rulers in my long life. “Not truly.”

Part of her seems to wither. “So, your brother really wasn’t in love with his bride-to-be?”

The topic of my brother upends various emotions, and I bury them deep.

I work hard to make my tone casual, even though this is a sore topic.

“Egan loved Aurora. But not in that way.” In the years of their engagement, they became close friends.

Confidants. But he never loved her, not the way she wanted him to.

Though I suppose he did love another ruler ...

I wasn’t around them enough to see if it was true love, without an agenda.

How could it be? Rulers have to think of their realms. I meant what I said to her.

True, selfless love between rulers doesn’t exist. It can’t.

I briefly wonder if I’m trying to convince myself of the fact . .. or if I truly believe it.

“How would you know?” she asks.

I meet her gaze then. It’s easy to know if love is true. For rulers ... there is a sure way. “They didn’t share abilities.” She looks even more deflated, and I hate that my words had that effect on her ... even though they were the truth.

“Your turn,” she says.

My chest feels tight. Around her, I forget my crown, but her words force me to remember my own realm. My own duties. And the fact that my partner seems to be falling in love with my greatest enemy.

Could she truly be having these feelings so soon? Could he really care about her, when he’s told me himself that he doesn’t care about anything or anyone ?

I must know.

“Did you know Grim prior to the Centennial?”

“No.”

Truth.

She’s telling the truth. But it doesn’t make sense.

She rolls her eyes, as if sensing my turmoil. “I’m not working with him against you, don’t worry.”

Truth. Pure, sweet truth.

What else could I ask for? Her words are firm and specific. She isn’t working with him. She isn’t working with him against me . I feel a surge of relief and surprise.

She continues. “What’s your favorite part of Lightlark?”

I don’t know if it’s her unexpected honesty, all the blood loss, the relief that she’s fully confirmed she still isn’t working with Grim, or the fact that I just had that strange dream, but I admit something I have only ever told Enya.

“There’s this secluded stretch of beach on Sun Isle, along a cliff, with giant coals in the water that sizzle when the sea hits them. The sea is a strange shade there ... dark green.”

I look at her, and I don’t know what compels me to say the next words, but I do. “The color of your eyes.” My favorite color.

But my favorite color is not just green—it’s her green.

The green of reawakening. Of growing. Of beginning again. Looking into her eyes feels like taking a deep breath after being underwater. Like finally seeing an oasis in a desert. Like discovering stars in darkness.

Her eyes are hope, in despair. A sun, through the night.

Eyes full of summer, even in the dead of winter.

“Sounds beautiful,” she says.

Yes , I think, looking right at her. Unbelievably beautiful .

“Your singing,” I say.

She seems surprised. “What about it?” I shrug, wanting to know this about her. Something, maybe, she’s never talked to anyone else about.

“Tell me about it.”

Tell me everything , I want to say. I’ve never wanted to know so much about anyone before. I’ve never cared enough to ask .

And if this world was not so cruel, if the weight of it did not fall onto our shoulders, I would be honored to spend every day undergoing the unmatched and eternal task of getting to know you .

She answers, and the sweetness returns. “It’s calming to me. Something I was born being good at, without really trying.”

“Like swordplay?” I ask, watching our game become a conversation. Feeling the lines between us fading.

“No. That was hard. I wasn’t naturally good at it, not like the singing. It used to frustrate me to no end ... Terra, my fighting instructor, would scold me for my impatience constantly.”

I try to imagine it. Isla as a child, training.

“So, I practiced. A lot. Every day, all day, all the time. Until the sword was weightless in my hand. Until it was part of me, just as much as my voice was. I forced it to be.”

I can see the fire in her heart, similar to mine. Fuel to prove something—most of all—to herself. I wonder if she knows how rare it is to care so deeply. I wonder if she knows how long I’ve cared about nothing at all. Nothing beyond my duty.

Nothing else until now.

We watch each other. Could she ever find my face as interesting as I find hers? Could she want to know about me the way I constantly want to discover her?

She swallows. Her mouth tightens, and I know her enough to see the shift. The levity hardening into seriousness. It’s coming. The question she wanted to ask from the start, the reason she suggested this game in the first place.

For even though I want to ask her a thousand questions that have nothing to do with this game, she does not see me as anything beyond a means to an end.

“Is there a relic on the island that can break any bond? That can break the curses of the ones that wield it?”

So that’s what she’s been looking for, in these libraries. A relic.

One that breaks curses? She’s been looking for something that doesn’t exist. “No. If there was, I would have found a way to use it.”

She frowns. Looks away.

“Is that what you were searching for?” I ask, wanting to confirm it.

She nods.

She’s clearly gotten the answer she was looking for—though it hasn’t seemed to please her. She doesn’t need to ask anything else.

But then she says, “How long have you been able to gild?”

I blink. I’m torn between the surprise that she wants to keep playing, and the fact that her question is the last thing in the world I want to talk about.

With her, though, through these weeks ... I have talked about hard things. We have done hard things, together. This is just one more.

“Since I was a child,” I tell her, amazed I can get the words out.

For centuries, I’ve avoided all conversations about it, shame and guilt nearly eating me alive.

Not now though. Not in front of this Wildling who feels so deeply, who is so afraid all the time, yet still shows up every day and fights .

It’s that fight in her, that flame, that I had nearly forgotten.

“I was told to hide it,” I say, thinking about my mother.

Thinking about how she taught me to hide from my father anything I didn’t want used against me.

Then, there was that fateful, terrible time that I did it by accident. There was no hiding that.

I tell her something else. Something unprompted, but for some reason, I want her to know about my family. I want her to know part of what made me. “Egan was the eldest. The heir. He was supposed to be the strongest.”

“But he couldn’t gild,” she says, filling in a blank.

I nod.

“So why now? Why show everyone?”

I tell her what I told Enya. “I figure I’m dying. Might as well share all my secrets.”

The words are casual, but inside, dread stirs again. Remlar’s blade shouldn’t have injured me so much. I shouldn’t have passed out flying. I should have been able to have the strength, at least, to bring myself to water.

I’m growing weaker. My near inability to stop the tremors at the ball proved that. The blue mark is almost everywhere now.

Time is running out for all of us. So, I ask something I’ve been wondering a while too.

“What was your secret, Isla?”

Isla . Except for public appearances, I’ve only really called her Wildling. I can see her eyes widen. Is she thinking the same thing?

“What?” she breathes, the word barely making a sound between us.

I don’t drop her gaze. This is what I’ve been following her around for. The question I’ve asked myself over and over and over. Perhaps if I learn this secret, my strange infatuation with all things Isla will dissipate.

“Your secret from my demonstration. What was it?”

I watch her throat work. I watch it far too closely. I can’t breathe, waiting—waiting for her to potentially be honest about this one last thing.

But all she does is shake her head no. She won’t tell me.

I laugh without humor. Of course not. “I didn’t think so.”

At least she didn’t lie.

“How about this—why did you let me win our duel?”

She doesn’t seem too shocked that I figured it out. “I didn’t want to make myself a target.”

“Ah.” It makes sense.

Her eyes narrow. She raises her chin. I know the question is going to be piercing before she even opens her mouth. “What is your flair?”

Her nerve nearly makes me smile. Does she know how secretive that question is? Does she know no ruler would dare ask another about it? Does she care?

It scares me, how much I want to tell her my flair. How I want her to know so that I can finally call her what she is—

A liar .

“Share your secret, and I’ll tell you.”

The words hang between us, an offering. I sit still, wondering if she’ll take me up on it. She glares at me, and I only smile. It seems to unnerve her even more. The obsession with her secret is the only explanation for what I say next.

I sit up, even though my every muscle is aching. I lean toward her. “How about this? Tell me your secret, and you can be the one who wins.”

I mean it. I mean every word. And that should scare me.

She pauses. “What?”

“When we find the heart, you can brandish it, fulfilling the prophecy. You can win the great power promised.” I shrug, as if this is a casual offer, though there is nothing casual about it. “But only if you tell me your secret.”

It’s the only way I’ll ever be able to trust her. Because she’s gone to great lengths to keep this secret. I want to know why. What is she hiding? Who is she protecting?

She turns it around on me, because of course she does . “Why would you do that?” she demands. “Don’t you want the power for yourself?” The power the oracle promised was vague but is sure to be magnificent.

No. Never. “I do not wish to become a god. Too much power is dangerous. I have never wanted to win. I simply want to save Lightlark.”

“You would give it to me ?” She doesn’t think much of herself.

I curse myself for having any role in that.

And yes. Yes, I would give it to her. Because she has the same flame within her—the one that burns in me.

A desire to be better. To do better. To protect those she cares about.

And those are the same things I saw in Egan.

“Who else? Do you suppose Cleo should have it?” She makes a face. “Precisely.”

“How about Azul?” she asks.

“No.” The last thing the Skyling ruler wants is more ability. I watch her consider. I wonder, for an endless time, what is going on in her head. I wish I could know her every thought. I wish she would tell me, freely.

Finally, she shakes her head.

I sit back, shocked. “Either you are the only other ruler not interested in the Centennial’s prize, or your secret is worse than I suspected.”

“That’s not a question,” she bites back. With that, the game ends.