Oro
The Nightshade was soaking wet, his hair and clothes dripping. He didn’t seem to care.
“Obviously,” Grim snarled.
Grim paused. “What do you mean, you saw her?” he asked, very slowly.
“In my dreams.”
Oro could see the tensing of his shoulders. Grim obviously wasn’t thrilled that his wife had been in his dream. Still, his voice was steady as he said, “What did she say?”
“She asked me to stop looking for her.”
Grim nodded. He didn’t seem surprised.
“She visited you too,” Oro guessed.
“Of course she visited me,” Grim snarled. “She’s my wife.”
The word burned him. Grim seemed to know that. Revel in it. Still . . . he didn’t ask more about the dream. Oro didn’t know why he felt the need to say, “That was all. Nothing else—”
“I don’t care what happened,” Grim snapped.
Oro just looked at him as bitterness coated his tongue.
“I don’t enjoy it, of course,” Grim clarified, scowling. “The thought that you care about her. That she . . . cares about you.” Grim’s shadows were spilling behind him, clawing the stone floor, like a representation of what the Nightshade wanted to do to Oro. “But it is no one’s fault but my own.”
That last sentence sounded so dejected, so unlike Grim, that Oro could only blink. But he was telling the truth. Oro felt the sweetness of it, on his tongue. “You actually mean that.”
Grim glared at him. “It would be a waste of breath, I think, lying to someone who could sense truths.”
Oro hated Grim. He had been at war with him twice in their lifetimes. Once, just months ago. He was a villain. He had cruelly killed thousands.
But Oro was almost ashamed to admit that he didn’t hate all of him. No . . . being here with Grim, in this castle . . . it was easy to fall into the friendship they had shared for decades. Before the curses. Before . . . her.
Strangely, she had brought them together again.
Perhaps that was why guilt swirled through Oro’s chest. He couldn’t keep working with Grim without making this admission.
“In the desert. A little while ago. We . . .” Oro frowned.
He and Isla hadn’t necessarily done anything.
Not everything he had wanted to, anyway.
He remembered running that melting ice down her skin, watching the goosebumps erupt at his touch.
He had been helping her get relief from the heat .
. . but he knew very well that wasn’t all they were doing.
Grim scowled. “I know about the desert. She told me.”
Oro blinked. “She . . . did?” He considered whether he should be readying himself for another fight.
But Grim only nodded. “She is halved. Part of her, the part of her that fell in love with you, is not my wife. I know that. I take full responsibility for it.”
Oro couldn’t believe these words were coming out of the Nightshade’s mouth. Grim seemed to sense his surprise, because he said, “Loving her has made me better.” His gaze was piercing. “Even if you believe my love has made her worse.”
The Grim he knew before would have never been this forgiving. He had held a grudge against him for centuries, after all. It was true. Love had changed him.
Grim motioned toward the threads on Oro’s table, clearly done with this conversation. “What’s your progress?”
He shook his head. “I can’t use it anymore. The last time I did, I hurt my friends,” Oro said.
Grim just stared at him blankly. “I don’t care about your friends,” he said.
And they all knew it.
Oro sighed. “I didn’t find anything you would consider useful.” He leaned against the side of the table. “I watched through thousands of years, and I never heard anyone talk about creating a portal.”
Grim studied the golden relic. “It’s called the Threads of Time . . . one would assume you’d be able to actually go to the past.”
Oro shrugged a shoulder. “One did assume. But no matter what I tried, nothing worked. I just sat there. Seeing, but not interacting.”
“Because you can’t portal.” He said it matter-of-factly.
Oro blinked, long and slow. Of course. He hadn’t thought about traveling to the past as a sort of portaling. He glanced from Grim . . . to the threads. “Do you think you could help me use it?”
Grim gave him a withering look. “I will use it. Since you’re so worried about your friends.”
The last person Oro wanted to be able to go into the past and potentially change it was Grim. His friends weren’t in front of him now. And the Nightshade could handle himself.
“We need to speak to Horus. And he’s certainly more likely to give me answers than you,” Oro argued.
Grim considered that. “Fine.” Oro was surprised he conceded so easily.
“Portaling is draining under normal circumstances. Traveling through thousands of years? It could kill you.” Oro wasn’t deterred, especially as he remembered the state Isla had been in.
She was covered in injuries, and weak. She needed them .
. . and they were at the end of their rope.
If anyone knew how to build a portal, it was Horus.
He and the other founders had done it before.
Grim continued, “How do we know you’re strong enough to make it back?
How do we know you won’t just get stuck thousands of years in the past like a fool? ”
“We don’t,” Oro said. This entire conversation, the threads had been calling him forward.
As his hand reached toward it, the voices became louder.
More insistent. He remembered what he had done, and the horror on his friends’ faces.
No, he wouldn’t lose himself. Not this time.
He would be strong, just as he had promised Isla she was.
There was a jolt through his veins as he grasped the threads again. “But she’s worth finding out.”
He thrummed his thumb against the threads, and immediately, the connection was made, as if the threads were eager. Hungry. His vision began to blur. The castle around him turned to sand, crumbling around him. The strands pierced his skin and slid into his veins. His blood burned.
Grim’s power hit the threads, and Oro jolted, the flaming becoming a wildfire of pain.
A portal began to form around him, a circular door crackling with lightning-like energy.
Then it multiplied, again and again, until there were thousands of layers behind him, connected like an endless tunnel. He frowned. “If I—”
He didn’t finish his sentence before he was thrust backward. His shoes slid against the floor, and he was falling through those portals, dragged through room after room, thousands of years, until finally, his body lurched to a stop.
The force of the travel hit him at once. He stumbled forward, landing on his knees. His hands flexed against the familiar floor. Gold. The same as his throne room. Only this one was gleaming. Untarnished.
“Who are you?”
Oro’s body tensed. He knew that voice. He had heard it often these last few days. Heart racing, he slowly got to his feet, and turned.
There he was. Horus Rey. The original king of Lightlark. One of the three founders of the island.
Horus’ eyes went straight for Oro’s palm, and Oro looked too. The threads were visible through his skin, as if they had replaced his veins. They shone gold.
Then his ancestor’s gaze shifted to him. He studied him meaningfully. “Huh,” he said. “I’m guessing you’re my grandson.”
Horus . . . didn’t seem surprised at all. As if he had seen far stranger things in his lifetime.
“Several times over,” Oro said, his voice a croak.
A variety of different emotions flickered across Horus’ face. Oro was sure he had a thousand questions, but he landed on, “Why are you here?”
“I need to know how to create a portal to the otherworld.”
Horus stilled. Oro did not miss the flash of fear that went through his ancestor’s expression. “To Skyshade?”
Skyshade. He hadn’t known the name of the otherworld until now. Good. The visit to Horus had already been useful.
But then his ancestor shook his head. “I’m sorry. I can’t help you.” He made to turn around, but a tower of flames stopped him. Horus paused. Anger seemed to coil through his body, but he did not move to strike back. Slowly, he faced Oro again.
“History has repeated itself,” Oro said. “You, Lark, and Cronan. Now, it’s me, Isla, and Grim. We are on the precipice of ruin because of the other founders.”
Horus’ jaw worked. He couldn’t meet Oro’s eyes as he spoke. It was almost like he didn’t want to know what was going on in the future.
But Oro had not traveled all this way for his own ancestor to refuse to help him. “Your legacy will be for nothing if we can’t build a portal. Trust me on that.”
Horus shook his head again. He and Oro wore matching crowns. “You should have left the threads alone. Some powers are better left unused. They destroy the balance.” The balance between light and darkness. The one that was supposed to have existed, before Nightshade and Lightlark became enemies.
“There is no balance in a world of ashes,” Oro said.
Horus went quiet. Finally, he spoke. “Even so . . . I can’t help you. What you seek . . . is nearly impossible. We made it difficult on purpose,” he explained. “The portal was built into the very foundation of the island. Meant to be used only as a last resort.”
“You said nearly impossible,” Oro said. “So how do we build a new one?”
He did not drop Horus’ gaze, until finally, his ancestor sighed. “What is your flair?” he asked.
“I can sense truths,” Oro said.
Horus’ eyes narrowed, peering at Oro closely, as if searching for something. “Our world has already almost ended,” Oro said. “But we have survived countless trials. Countless obstacles. I refuse to let our world die now.”
Horus looked down at the threads. Oro got the sense that he was about to turn around again.
But instead, he sighed, and said, “First, you need to know the world’s name.”
Oro took a step forward, memorizing every word he spoke.
The world’s name was Skyshade. He knew that now.
“Next . . . you need portaling ability.” Grim’s power. Cronan’s.
“Massive amounts of energy.” That . . . they would figure out.
“A living piece of the other world.” Living?
“And, lastly, and most importantly . . . great Sunling, Nightshade, and Wildling power.”
Isla. They would need her to reform the love bonds to access her Wildling abilities. If only they could convince her to help them.
Still, Horus shook his head. “Even then, with all of that . . . the journey would kill you. The bridge between worlds, the one that brought us here, it was built for a reason. Without a bridge . . . you wouldn’t survive the journey.
Tears between worlds have teeth. That’s what we say . . . and we learned it the hard way.”
“What if we used linked sacred waters?” Oro asked.
Horus considered that. “If they were truly linked and of the same waters . . . they might protect you. But you would still need everything else. And even then—”
Oro could feel his energy waning. The throne room was slowly turning to sand, melting all around him. He was falling away, pulled back to his own time.
“Thank you,” Oro said hurriedly. His ancestor frowned with worry. He opened his mouth—but Oro was flung through thousands of years before he could hear what he had to say.
Grim was the first person he saw when he landed. He caught him by the shoulders, keeping him from falling on his face.
As soon as he was steady on his feet, Oro dropped the threads. He gritted his teeth as the strands were pulled through his skin, into a bloody mess on the floor. They shifted into a pile of sand, then back to string again.
“Well?” Grim demanded. “Did you get what we need?”
A slow smile crept across Oro’s face as he said, “I did.”