Oro
“Where is she?” Cinder said. She was sitting cross-legged on a cliffside, her back to him. Sparks were dancing around her like a thousand stars, like she had created her own miniature galaxy.
The Starling finally turned around, her sparks sputtering out in irritation. “Well?”
But she nodded. “I assumed as much,” she said, sounding wise beyond her years. “I can barely feel her anymore.”
Cinder nodded again. “I used to only be able to feel people on Star Isle. But now . . . I feel them other places too. Other . . . worlds.” She frowned, her eyes worried.
“What do you feel?” Oro asked gently.
“Him,” she said. “The man who wants the universe.”
The man who wants the universe. Dread spilled through his chest. Oro was about to ask another question when an orb of energy shot straight toward him.
He raised a hand to stop it—but before he could, Cinder brushed the orb away as if it was nothing more than a cobweb.
She rolled her eyes and sighed dramatically.
“I’m not a baby! Stop acting like it,” she told her cousin. Though the way she stuck out her tongue didn’t really help her case.
“Hello, Maren,” Oro said, turning to face the Starling.
The Starling leader and head of a rebel group on Lightlark was glaring daggers at Oro. He couldn’t blame her. Maren had fought for a long time to keep her cousin’s abilities a secret. They had already asked so much of the child in the war against Grim, just months prior.
Oro felt a tinge of regret, remembering his own childhood. How his power had forced him to grow up too quickly. How it had led to one of the greatest mistakes of his life.
But he had never wanted his abilities. Cinder . . . she seemed to revel in them.
“Leave,” Maren demanded.
Oro hesitated for a moment . . . then nodded. Maren was Cinder’s guardian. She was just trying to protect her, and Oro wouldn’t force either of them to participate. He turned to go.
“No!” Cinder called out.
And her voice was a boom that shattered the air around them. Her energy burst forth in a wave that knocked Oro off his feet. To keep himself from being hurled across the cliff, he had to exert the same amount of energy in return. It was an extraordinary amount of energy.
How could Cinder produce so much with simply a word? She was not of the ruling line. Isla was the one who had absorbed all of Aurora’s incredible power. But Cinder . . . this young . . . seemed to have more Starling ability than all of them combined.
He remembered Isla asking about it. He had told her that this sort of random power outside a ruler’s lineage was rare but not unheard of.
Maren had been knocked onto the ground from Cinder’s outburst. She had nearly reached the forest of sky-blue trees with thick curling branches.
The little girl was standing on the cliff’s edge, chest heaving. “I want to help you,” she said. “I’ve seen a place in my dreams my entire life. Something there . . . is waiting for me. It’s calling me. I need to answer the call.”
“Stop this,” Maren chided, getting to her feet. And through her irritated tone, Oro saw fear. This was clearly not the first time Cinder spoke of this. “You’re going to bed. I shouldn’t have ever let you—”
“NO.”
A tide of power exploded from the girl. Oro barely created a shield around himself and Maren in time. But the grass and forest behind them was flattened as if cut down by a scythe. Sparks of energy swirled around them like a storm. A roaring filled the world.
When the sparks settled, all they saw was Cinder, curled into a ball, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean—”
Oro released the shield, and Maren bounded forward, collapsing on her knees in front of Cinder and pulling her to her chest. “I know. I know, sweetheart,” she said soothingly, stroking her silver hair.
“Deep breaths. Ten, remember? Do them with me.” They counted them down.
When they were done, Maren asked, “Do you want to rest?” Cinder nodded.
Her head was bowed, her eyes on the ground.
Oro could almost feel her shame. “Let’s get you home. ”
Maren scooped Cinder up, even though the girl was nearly too big to be held. She shot Oro a scathing look as he followed them down the hill in silence.
But the Starling did not tell him to leave—so he didn’t.
He waited outside the small cliffside cottage they shared—with a sloped roof, wooden door that barely fit its frame, and lopsided window—as Maren tucked Cinder in for the night.
When she reemerged, she sighed, leaning against the door with her eyes shut.
“I’m sorry,” he said, because he was.
She shook her head. “It’s not . . . an uncommon occurrence,” she said. That was when Oro noticed a long scar snaking down Maren’s arm.
Maren opened her eyes and tracked his gaze, rushing to pull her sleeve down. “It was an accident.”
“I never said it wasn’t.”
Fear bloomed across Maren’s expression again. “She’s a child. She—she will learn.”
Oro raised his hands. “I’m not going to imprison her.”
Maren didn’t look convinced. “Azul has been kind to all of us Starlings, but we can leave. We can pack enough supplies and go somewhere far away, even more isolated—”
He put what he hoped was a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “I know what it’s like to lose control. To make a mistake.”
An image of the attendant that he had accidentally gilded flashed through his head. Oro had been a child when it happened, too, around Cinder’s age.
Maren searched his eyes. “What do you want?” she asked, warily.
He explained everything as best he could. Where Isla was. What Azul’s husband had said. What was coming. Maren’s mouth tightened in worry the more he spoke. He knew she wasn’t concerned about herself but about the little girl asleep in the room behind her.
“How much time?” she asked when he was finished.
“I’m not sure,” Oro replied. “But the longer she’s there . . .” He frowned. “She’s in danger. We need to get her back as soon as possible.”
“How do you know she’s still alive?”
He explained the life bond between her and Grim. How he would be dead if she was. How they had seen her in their dreams. And in the images from Lynx.
Maren shook her head. “You know . . . Cinder has asked about Isla almost every day recently. Sometimes more often than that. It was like she could sense something was changing.” She paused. “It’s been hard not to tell her my true feelings. About Isla.”
“Which are?” Oro ground out, knowing he wouldn’t like her response.
Maren straightened, her voice rising with conviction. “That she’s a traitor. She had us prepare for war . . . against a side she was already on. Then she stayed there. They say . . . they say she’s his wife.”
Every time Oro heard that word, a part of his soul fucking died. And though anger blazed through his veins at the Starling’s words, he could not fault Maren for her assessment.
“Am I wrong?” she asked, almost hopefully.
“No,” he said. “But things are more complicated than you realize.”
She scoffed. “What’s complicated about being married to your supposed enemy?”
“She is two people. The person I met during the Centennial . . . and the one from the past who married Grim. Who . . . died.” He took a deep breath. “It would be enough to drive anyone to madness.”
Maren considered that. “And is she? Mad?”
“No,” he said. Not yet, were the treacherous words that entered his mind. Because who wouldn’t be on the road to that fate, with this sort of split life? With this much pressure on all her choices?
“You once tried to recruit her to your cause,” Oro said. “To kill me.”
Maren didn’t deny it. She shrugged a shoulder. “To end nexus. Can you blame me?”
Strangely . . . he couldn’t. Nexus was the curse that bound him to the island. That bound rulers to all their people, so a ruler’s death would kill their entire realm. It was cruel.
“I know you don’t want to help. And trust me, I hate asking.
But war is coming.” If Cinder could feel people beyond this world, perhaps she had already sensed what Cleo had told them was imminent.
“I’m guessing Cinder has told you as much?
” Maren was quiet, and Oro continued. “In a war between worlds, we need Isla here. This might be the only way to save us all.”
Maren looked over her shoulder at the door behind her. When she faced him again, her eyes were fierce. “What do you need?”