Isla
Then Aurora broke the silence. “I can’t feel it, you know,” she said matter-of-factly. “The fire. It’s always cold here.”
“Come,” Aurora said, motioning beside her. “Sit.”
But . . . she also wanted to hug her. Because Celeste had once been her only friend. Her best friend. And those feelings didn’t just die. A love like that was not simply lost.
Aurora nodded. “Smart. You were always smart. Except when it came to love.” She smirked. “Love made you an utter fool.”
A flash of anger roared to life in Isla’s chest—then withered. Isla didn’t have the strength for hatred. Not anymore, after everything. And especially not for someone already dead. “Love made you a murderer.”
Aurora had been in love with King Egan. Once she realized he loved her best friend instead, she spun the curses, killing thousands in the process. She plunged the world into five hundred years of misery.
For a moment, Aurora’s eyes shifted. Her confident expression faltered, revealing the scared and sad woman underneath. One who had killed her best friend over a man. One who perhaps felt . . . regret.
But in the next instant, her resolve hardened again. She pursed her lips. “My soul was split, too. Just like yours,” Aurora said, looking over at her. “It happened when I was young. When my parents—when they died.”
Isla had never heard this story. Celeste had never spoken of her parents, and Isla always avoided the subject—because of the curses, they would’ve died when her friend was very young.
Aurora continued, “That loss . . . it split me for good, leaving me to teeter between good and evil. But I let it feed my power, harnessing more energy than anyone could ever fathom possible.” She winced. “Violet . . . she understood what I struggled with. She made me good.”
As if plunged into Aurora’s head, Isla saw it. Her ancestor and Aurora as friends. It reminded her of her own relationship with Celeste.
The Starling’s eyes hardened. “And then . . . when she betrayed me . . .” Aurora turned back to the fire. “She got what she deserved.”
Isla could see those two sides of Aurora as clear as day. Was that Isla’s destiny too? To be torn not between two men but between becoming a villain or a hero?
“When it came to choosing between vengeance and love, you know which one won out.”
Isla didn’t want revenge, though. She would always choose love. But it was the result of that love, of what it would do to the world, that reflected on her. That made her either the one to save the universe . . . or end it.
She could sit here and scream at her friend for hours. She could ask her a thousand questions, could demand explanations and apologies.
But she didn’t have time for that. And now that she had explored her past, she was ready to fix the future.
“Cronan is alive,” Isla said. “Do you have any idea how I can kill him?”
If Aurora was surprised by the revelation, she didn’t show it. Aurora was more familiar with the founders of the island than she had originally realized. Isla had found the feather that could communicate with Lark hidden in her room after her death.
Aurora was still for several minutes, her gaze on the heatless flames as if hypnotized.
Eventually, she said, “The founders transferred parts of their power to an object. It was an ancient practice, long forgotten by now, that would amplify their abilities and give them access to more power than a single person could ever hold within them.”
“Like the feather,” Isla said.
Aurora nodded. “That was Lark’s. Cronan likely has one as well. If destroyed, it would weaken him. He would be vulnerable.”
Isla wasn’t sure what Cronan’s object was, but she felt a surge of hope. Aurora had given her a chance . . .
“Thank you,” Isla said. She turned to leave.
Aurora’s voice stopped her. “It wasn’t all pretend, you know,” she said softly.
Isla swallowed the knot in her throat. She remembered the hundreds of times they had sat in this room before the hearth, laughing and braiding hair and making oaths. Tears pricked her eyes. “I know,” she said, before she walked out the door.