Page 78 of Grim and Oro (Lightlark)

LOVE

I love Isla Crown, and she’s about to hate me. Again.

Cleo and Azul step into the throne room, alone. A puddle of water follows Cleo, as if she doesn’t trust any of us. She won’t be left unarmed.

Azul’s face is stern. He’s worried. Of course he is.

“The curses will be brought to an end,” I say, my voice serious. I should be happy, I know, but all I feel is hollow. She will hate me for this. For meeting behind her back .

I told her she would be safe. I meant that. But I also promised she would be able to choose another realm to save ... and that ... I’m not sure if it’s a promise I can keep. Which ruler dies affects us all, especially here on the island. I need to know where the other Lightlark rulers stand.

“I would like you to tell me the realm you would choose to perish,” I say.

“Nightshade,” Azul says, without question.

I nod. Cleo hesitates. She looks from me to him. “Starling.”

I had my suspicions that Cleo injured Celeste. Now, they’re all but confirmed.

“And you, King?” Cleo asks.

I should imprison her for leaving Isla to die ... and maybe I will. But right now, we need to end the curses. We need to take the final step.

“Nightshade.”

If I expect Isla to choose Nightshade to save, I am wrong. When given the choice ... she doesn’t choose Grim.

She chooses Starling. Celeste .

And now she knows that we have all chosen Nightshade to die. She assumed I would want Cleo dead. I do ... but not enough to doom one of my realms.

If she wants to save Celeste ... then Grim must perish.

Regret spears me. Not just for making her angry, but that Grim has to die at all. I hate him. He’s my enemy.

But that wasn’t always the case.

She clearly doesn’t want him to die either. She’s willing to fight. Fight for him .

Her blade is to my throat now. The metal quivers against my neck. I could have stopped it, but I didn’t. I watch her look up at me, chest heaving, eyes full of tears.

“Do it,” I dare her. She won’t kill me; she wouldn’t sentence thousands to death. But will she make me bleed? Will she make me suffer even more than she already has?

We stare at each other, sharing breath.

Then she leaves me here, wondering if I’ll ever see her again.

I should follow her. I should go to her room.

I can almost feel it—feel her getting ready to betray me. Getting ready to find a way to save both Celeste and Grim.

So why don’t I hate her for it?

I’m pacing around my room when the castle jolts. I tense, waiting for the flash of pain, but it doesn’t come. It’s not the island, breaking.

It’s something else.

Screams echo from the halls below. I’m out of my room in a flash, following them.

Part of the castle is in ruins. It’s been brought down. I smell sparks, Starling power ... but no living Starling is capable of this.

This is mastery. There haven’t been masters of Starling power in years, that I know of.

Certainly not in the castle.

Attendants are dead. I use my Starling energy to lift as much debris as possible, but body after body is unresponsive. Crushed.

Celeste is still incapacitated, after the attack. And Isla would never be part of a plan that killed innocents. So, who did this?

Did someone secure a Starling bomb? I haven’t seen one this strong in centuries. The amount of energy needed simply hasn’t existed.

Isla . Is she in danger?

I rush to her room. I don’t even think, I just go there, needing to know she’s okay.

I knock—but there’s no answer. I wait, and wait, and finally, I say, “I’m coming in,” worried she might need me. The room is empty.

No—not empty.

The heart of Lightlark is sitting on her table, glowing through the room, shining through the darkness. Next to it sits a letter. I read it, and my blood runs cold.

No .

She’s left.

She’s left me ... to go with him. She thinks she’s found a way to save him. And there it is. The fire in my chest going out. Freezing over.

But through the pain, through the hurt, there is worry. This isn’t right—something is off. I know it in my soul. Isla is in trouble.

Where is she?

With his flair, Grim could take her anywhere, perhaps even back to Nightshade. Is she already gone?

I remember the Starling sparks, then.

Celeste . She’s immobilized. But what if she isn’t? I fly through the halls, needing to confirm she’s still here.

But her body is gone. She’s been freed.

The Starling sparks ... Could Celeste be capable of so much power?

I haven’t paid her enough notice, I realize. Clearly, I’ve underestimated her. Isla thinks Azul attacked Celeste. I assumed it was Cleo ... but maybe she was right.

Did Azul discover something he wasn’t supposed to know? There’s no time to ask him. Isla is in danger, I’m sure of it. If she’s still on the island, I think I know where she’ll go. I remember following her. I remember the place she keeps returning to.

The Wildling Place of Mirrors.

I fly as far as I can, until the barrier of power around the Place of Mirrors stops me. Then, I run.

The palace glistens, reflecting the night. My heart races. My senses narrow, like I’m back on the battlefield, focused solely on one target. Not letting anything else get in my way.

I’m inside in a moment. And that’s when I see her.

At first, there’s bone-melting relief that she’s okay. She hasn’t left yet. She’s still here .

Then, I see the needle sticking out of her palm, connecting her to the Starling. I recognize it immediately.

“Isla,” I say carefully. All at once, pain lances through me. Something being taken. The gold flowing through my veins is being drained, the fire in my heart vanishing.

My powers ... they’re leaving.

Impossible .

Grimshaw is trapped against the wall, and he’s folded over too. As if the same thing has happened to him.

Celeste is here. She begins to bleed, and I see it: all six powers within her blood.

It doesn’t make sense ... until it does.

Celeste begins to laugh. She starts to speak. I shake as I force myself upright—then her arm juts out, sending me against the glass.

“How?” Isla breathes.

I can barely hear her. A roaring in my ears has muted out the world. I’ve never felt so weak. So drained. As if I blinked long enough, my eyes might never open again.

“Why don’t you ask them?” Celeste says. She looks right at me. “Love on Lightlark is a dangerous thing, isn’t it?”

I shake with rage. She’s dead. She hurt Isla, and I’m going to kill her. I don’t even need to hear what she’s about to say. She’s dead .

She walks over to me and sighs.

“The untrusting, cruel king fell in love with a Wildling?” She grins, and I want to set her aflame.

I want to watch her burn. “It was torture, wasn’t it, King?

Trying to fight it. Believing yourself under her spell .

.. not knowing that she had no Wildling powers to begin with, until she told you her secret. ”

There it is. The truth.

And so many more follow it.

Celeste is not Celeste ... but Aurora .

My brother’s bride. Grim knew. He knew everything.

He unknowingly gave her the heart of Lightlark, which allowed her to spin the curses.

He was partially responsible for them, as I suspected.

And according to Aurora, he and Isla have a history . .. one he made her forget.

So that she could fall in love with me.

So Isla could get access to all my powers ... and Grim’s ... and Aurora could take them all.

The fact that Grim was betrayed by Aurora doesn’t make me hate him any less.

Grim kept Isla in the dark. He didn’t let her in on his plan ... he made all these decisions for her.

He underestimated her.

Aurora underestimated her.

But they’re going to learn. I watch them learn, as Isla manages to escape. But then ... she does the unthinkable. She returns, with armor and blades.

She doesn’t have many reasons to care about us, or this island. Still—she returned. I’m both relieved and horrified. Her face is set in determination, the fire in those green eyes blazing .

She is blazing.

She is magnificent.

Aurora tries to cage her, but that cage shatters.

And Isla wields the heart of Lightlark. Somehow, she’s using it. She takes off toward Aurora, not wasting a second, the needle, the bond maker that transfers power, in her hand now. Aurora wasn’t expecting any of this.

Her features morph and twist, transforming back to Celeste.

Don’t trust her , I want to scream to Isla.

She doesn’t. Of course she doesn’t . Isla doesn’t hesitate before stabbing the woman she thought was her friend—right in the heart.

Then, the island shatters.

The world slows. I watch Isla be thrown back with the force of the curses being broken, the original offense committed again. I watch as the floor in the Place of Mirrors fractures in half.

I watch as Celeste’s body falls through the gap.

And Isla’s follows it.

No .

All the anguish from hours before, losing her that first time—it rises to the surface. My blood roars.

The vines around us have gone slack. Grim and I rush toward Isla. But it’s too late.

Only Wildling power works here.

Her screams echo through my head, just like her singing did.

I’ve never known fear.

I’ve never known panic.

I’ve never known love.

I’ve never known any of these emotions, not really, I know that for certain when they all hit me at once, in their full capacity.

I’ve never known them, because I’ve never known her.

This can’t end. No. Love like this is endless.

Through the splitting glass and roaring, I reach my hand out, reaching toward her, throwing every broken and mended piece of me through the world, ready to fall in after her, if only for the small chance I might save us both—

And I feel something.

A tether, tying us together.

Power . Wildling power.

I don’t question it. I take it and use it to send a vine down after her, with every shred of focus and care and desperation and need to see her again, and need for this flame to not be extinguished.

Too late . I’m too late—

The vine goes taut.

I pull her out of the gap, inch by inch, until she claws her way back onto the floor. She looks up at my hand. I release my fist.

She knows.

She knows .

And only when she’s safe, in front of me, do I allow myself to accept this truth. I used her power. I had access.

She—she loves me .

I love her.

And she loves me back .

I don’t even glance at Grim as he turns and flees the Place of Mirrors. I hold her gaze, and she holds mine.

Then, everything seems to hit her at once, as she sinks to her knees and sobs.

She loves me .

We don’t talk for weeks. I give her time and space, leaving tea and comfortable clothes at her door every night, as if they could offer any true relief.

She lost everything. She was betrayed.

She needs time.

So, I wait. I’ve waited hundreds of years for her. I can wait hundreds more.

Other duties demand my full attention. The curses are over, and the island is chaos. I’ve just returned from a meeting with the nobles, when I peer through my window, and see her, on her balcony.

It’s the first time she’s left her room in weeks.

I land carefully behind her. I don’t reach for the tether between us, in fear that it might be gone. Her feelings could have changed with time. The rush of emotion could have been fleeting.

And I would understand. It would be fine. We could continue our friendship. I could continue to love her, even in secret, even if it isn’t reciprocated.

Then she turns to look at me, and it hits me with knee-wobbling force.

This bridge, glistening between us.

Love .

A bond. Access to her powers.

I use it now, to make a rose. She does something unexpected, for as much as I have studied her, she still manages to surprise me. I hope to spend my entire life learning and decoding this captivating mystery.

She throws the flower off the balcony. I blink, but before I can ask her what she wants instead, she rises to her toes, and her forehead is against mine.

And she’s so close. And she’s staring at me the way I’ve stared at her, countless times before.

Like I am a puzzle she wants to decipher. Like my eyes could be half as mesmerizing as her own. I look back at her like she’s the answer to a question I didn’t realize I was asking. The key to a lock I didn’t know I was keeping.

Find your fire , my mother told me.

When I look at her, I feel like I’m on fire. I feel like I’m burning with every single want and dream I long believed could never belong to me.

When I look at her, I feel like this world might be worth saving. When I look at her, I feel like we could be the ones to save it.

Find your fire .

When I look at her eyes, blazing green with flecks of gold, I think—

I’ve found her .