Page 8 of Grim and Oro (Lightlark)

HEARTS AND BLOOD

“They’re waiting for you.”

I tense at my general Astria’s voice. I didn’t even hear her enter the war room.

Ever since I started watching the witch sleep, I’ve gotten very little rest of my own. And I’m starting to feel it.

Astria’s gaze doesn’t miss anything. Usually, it’s an advantage, as a general. But as she studies me , that trait becomes fucking annoying.

I know why she’s here. It’s been a week since the last line of Covets.

The time has come again. I grip the edge of the war room table, eyes on the depiction of my realm.

The scar is a long, ragged mark across it.

The biggest threat to my people, other than me and my own insistence on not visiting the consorts again. “Tell them to leave.”

Even the idea of the line of women has me seeing red, literally , as I remember the wretched Wildling hidden within their ranks. Waiting for me to choose her, which I did, predicably, like a fool.

The idea that she knew I would choose her, that I strode right into her assassination plan, makes it all even worse.

When Astria still hasn’t left, I sigh. “I told you to cancel the Covets until further notice.” The dreks are not the only threats to my realm.

She is a threat. Her and her stolen portaling relic.

“We did thorough research into each consort. All of them are verifiably Nightshade. They have no ties to any rebel groups. They—”

“ She almost killed me ,” I say, my voice coming out louder than I meant it to, each word sharpened into cold rage. My grip on the edge of the table is so tight, the wood groans.

Astria bows her head. As my general, she feels responsible. I don’t blame her. The wretched hearteater certainly looked the part of a consort. Our harbors and the perimeter of the castle are tightly monitored. There is only one way she could possibly reach me undetected, and that is portaling.

My own power. She used my power to get here.

The wood cracks beneath my hands, splintering everywhere, and Astria just stares at me. “I will tell them to go,” she says, bowing, before leaving the room.

In a fit of rage, I throw the table on its side. Shadows flare out of me, scratching the walls.

Red seeps into my shirt as my wound tears open again.

Enough.

I’m the ruler of Nightshade. I am done hiding in the shadows of her room. If she won’t show me where she keeps her device, I will make her .

I’m waiting in the chair in front of her bed, made invisible, when she arrives from training that night.

Oblivious to me, she stumbles into her room, surrounded by a cloud of boredom. I would have thought she was drunk, if the smell of alcohol weren’t completely absent.

Then I realize the stumbling is due to the shoes she’s wearing. Their heels are perilously high. Sometimes her training, I’ve learned, involves them. She kicks them off with relish, then sighs, curling and uncurling her toes, pain scrunching her face. Pain from shoes .

Disdain narrows my eyes. So weak. So ridiculous. How could someone so pathetic have tricked me?

How could I have wanted someone like that? Even momentarily? Even by enchantment?

She begins to undo her dress, and that want roars to the surface like a cruel joke. Before she can pull it off, I reveal myself.

A flash of surprise. But not fear. Not really.

She should be more afraid of me.

The fact that she isn’t makes me hate her more.

She grabs a dagger hidden beneath her vanity, shifting from fool to warrior fast enough to make me certain I shouldn’t underestimate her. She has been trained for this.

Her dress is hanging off her shoulder. I try not to notice. “Hello, Hearteater.” I say the word with disgust. Her kind are monsters. If her aim was better, her blade would have pierced my heart.

Would she have eaten it?

Would she have enjoyed it?

She won’t stab me again. In a flash, I’m right in front of her, fingers wrapped around hers, to wrench the dagger from her hand. She tries to wrestle away, so I press her against the wall, just like I did before, under very different circumstances.

Before, I wanted to have her in every way I could.

Now, I want to kill her.

I twist her own blade to her throat.

She winces, but I won’t fall for her tricks. Not again.

“You cursed hearteater,” I spit at her, digging the dagger into her neck. “Dare to come to my realm, disguised, to assassinate me.” Blood puddles. Good . She made me bleed. She deserves nothing less.

Suddenly, my leg is on fire.

The witch stabbed me again. I roar, and fine —now she’ll have my power. It wraps around her like a vise. She chokes, clutching at her throat as I move her up the glass wall.

“Was this your plan to keep me from the Centennial? To try to break the curses? Did you mean to make a fool of me? Who are you working with?” The questions rush out of me. Ones I’ve asked myself for several days, days of watching her sleep, days of increasing madness.

She glares at me, and I bare my teeth at her. How dare she look so defiant? Does she not see my power? Does she have any idea what I’m capable of?

Still, she isn’t afraid.

No. The only emotion I feel is smoldering annoyance.

She is annoyed at me . I realize then that she must be irritated because I’m asking her questions and not letting her answer.

Fine.

She drops to the floor and gasps. She coughs, for several moments. Is she trying to make me pity her? She grabs her dagger and scuttles to the corner of her room.

She’s looking at me like I’m a monster. Good . I am one.

But so is she.

I glare at her. She thinks she’s so much better than me, doesn’t she? She thinks I’m the only beast here? “Do I need to remind you that you stabbed me?” I tear my shirt up to reveal the jagged scar where her blade pierced my skin.

She has the nerve to feel sinking regret.

Does she know I can sense emotions? Is she that good of an actress?

Does she think I’m a fool? Does she think I believe her?

I stalk toward her, not taking my eyes off her, the same I would for any other enemy. “How did you get into my realm?”

That question, out of all of them, makes her the most nervous. Interesting.

I feel her panic like poison on my tongue, just as sharply as I’ve felt her pleasure. I shove those thoughts away, those memories, because they were a trick . They were meaningless .

I repeat myself. “How. Did.”—a witch like —“You. Get. In.”

I bend down to meet those eyes. Green. The color of deception, of greed, of serpents. She’s afraid now, but not of me. Afraid for some other reason. I can see it and feel it, wrapped with her panic. She cowers.

Then, her blade is suddenly at my throat.

The witch.

Weaving truth with lies, as if she could possibly know I can feel her heart spike like her pulse is beating beneath my teeth.

“Get. Out .” Spit flies from her mouth, and I flinch. Disgusting. “Of. My. Room .”

She says it like she has affection for this place that is so very clearly a prison. She says it like she could possibly order me to do anything .

She pushes her blade into my skin.

I could turn it to ash. I could turn her entire realm to ash.

Instead, I portal away.

I’ll be back.

The witch wants to trick me? I can trick her too.

The next day, she returns from training to find her room torn apart. Her stuff is everywhere. I’ve ripped open drawers, moved her bed, strewn her clothes and swords everywhere.

The moment she sees the mess, a wave of crushing sadness hits me. Then, churning worry. Her emotions are sharp, and they burn for some reason.

“No, no, no, no,” she cries, and her words should please me. I should smile.

I don’t.

I watch her run across her room, her worry flaring. With trembling fingers, she rips open one of the floorboards—

And there it is. My relic. The one I made a quarter century ago.

How did she end up with it?

I watch her fold over, her back-bending relief like a rush of cold water. I can almost feel it trickling down my own spine.

Did she find it by accident? No. She’s barely allowed to leave her room ...

Perhaps it was given to her. Left to her. I’ve watched her for long enough now to know the only two people she ever sees are her guardians, and, given their treatment of her, the last thing they would do is hand over a portaling device.

It wasn’t them. So, who?

I look around this room. The panes weren’t always painted over, I reason. The room has existed longer than Isla has; it belonged to someone else before her. Her mother.

Could an ancestor have gotten it? Even her mother?

For the first time, a possibility rises like a question as I again consider my general, the person the relic was made for. The last person who had it. Could Isla’s mother have stolen it from my general? Did he end up here, somehow?

That doesn’t make any sense. We weren’t looking for the sword in the Wildling newland.

Before, I had thought him lost. Killed in search of a sword I desperately need.

Now I consider the possibility that he betrayed me.

Did he portal here? Is he still alive? No ... or if he is, he’s nowhere near this castle. I would have seen him already. How far could he go, without the relic?

Anger surrounds me like a storm, completely at odds with her sunshine-like happiness, making her practically glow with it. She’s still clutching the portaling device to her chest, like it’s a friend. Like it’s her most prized possession.

Her happiness is deeper than any I’ve ever felt. Right now, I linger in hers, tasting it, feeling it as if it’s my own. It’s light, and airy, and bright .

Interesting.

So, this is what her happiness feels like.

I ready myself to rip it away.

“Thank you for finding it for me,” I say from the darkness.

The joy withers. The relief quickly turns to dread.

I let my shadows fall.

She scuttles back, fear gripping her chest, not of me, but now, I realize, fear of losing this relic .

Of course she’s afraid of losing it , I think. Her plans against me and my realm must require it.

“Please,” she says, her voice breaking on the word. “Don’t.”

She’s crying. I see those tears on her cheeks; I can feel her sadness like a storm around us both; I can feel that she hates herself for crying. Or maybe she just hates me.

I frown down at her.

Enough of this. I don’t care about her. I don’t care about her feelings .

I reach down to rip the stolen device, my device , from her arms. She blinks, another tear escaping. I’m hit with another wave of soul-clenching sadness. Then something else: loneliness .

Memories thrust me back centuries. I remember a little boy clutching at a locked door handle. I remember sand in my shoes. I remember the joy of discovering the world outside my confines. I remember the rush of freedom .

Could this device ... not be part of a plan? Could it be her only escape from this room like a cage, not so different from my own? Could this ability be her only chance at life, just like it was for me?

I don’t know why, but just before I’m about to take it from her, I change my mind.

I don’t know why—

I let her have it.

Something is wrong with me.

I should have taken that relic with me, should have ripped it from her hands. Her tears and begging should have slipped right off me, just like the pleas for mercy I’ve ignored for centuries on the battlefield.

Instead, I let the Wildling keep it. I left. Like a fool. My portaling flair is our realm’s biggest defense. Our biggest advantage.

Now anyone who finds it could claim it. Especially since she’s a reckless idiot who managed to portal into my own castle .

My pulse is racing. My thoughts are scattered. My hands won’t stop clenching. I’m not myself. This doesn’t make sense.

It must be her Wildling curse. A trick. Or a veiled enchantment.

But I didn’t sense either around her. Could she possibly be skilled enough to veil a curse? Does she ... have a curse at all?

That’s when I realize I haven’t seen the hearteater eat even a single heart. I remember my general. His flair was being immune to curses. He enchanted the very metal charm I wear, to be able to walk in darkness.

The thought occurs to me.

No. It can’t be.

She looks nothing like him , I think, remembering my general. He had been serious and mostly silent—not given to talking about his private life.

Not that I’d asked. Still, he hadn’t looked anything like her . Could she have taken after her mother? Could he truly be her father? Could she ... have inherited his flair?

Impossible. I’ve never heard of flairs being passed down directly. Cronan and I have several generations between us.

I’m desperate for answers. So desperate, I storm out of my castle, then portal to a creature that can’t be trusted.

The augur is waiting at the mouth of his cave. His smile is serpentine. “It’s been a while, ruler ...” he says. “To what do I—”

I hurl a vial of blood—my blood—at him. The creature isn’t getting close enough to me to draw my blood himself.

The augur’s smile grows, the intricately marked skin around his mouth creasing.

“I don’t have all day,” I growl, and that just makes him laugh.

He pries the lid off the vial and turns it over, allowing a single drop of blood to trickle toward his hand. I was careful not to include enough for him to keep or use for making enchantments.

He presses the blood-tipped finger to his lips and makes an interested sound. The crimson void of his eyes gleam.

“What is it?” I demand.

He shakes his bare head, his cape furling. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing. But that’s not the answer you were hoping for, is it?”

It isn’t.

“I’m not cursed? Plagued? Poisoned?”

She had to have afflicted me with something . Something that had her catching my interest immediately, something that ensnared me and my emotions after just one simple glance.

He only shakes his head. “Not by anything new.”

I turn around and leave without another word. I can hear his laughter echoing through the cave.

She isn’t cursed. Which means, if my theory is correct ...

Her mother ... ruler of Wildling, an enemy realm.

My general ... the most trusted position in my court ...

She is both Wildling and Nightshade .

My curiosity rises, my interest crests—and with every ounce of centuries worth of self-control, I smother it. I tamp down my fascination, my inexplicable pull to her that I now know isn’t because of any curse. I destroy it. I kill it for good.

I will stay away from her.

She is no one. She is nothing. As long as she keeps to her own realm, as long as she leaves me alone, then I don’t have reason to think of her again.