Grim
It only took two nights to find her. He portaled all over this strange world until he finally spotted that unmissable crimson aura.
Did she really think she could hide from him?
She was disguised in the same desert fabrics the rest of the people in this tiny village wore. She wove seamlessly through the oasis market, not attracting any notice beyond a few people who gaped at her eyes.
They were the green of emeralds. Of serpents. Of deception. She moved like a snake herself, slithering around corners. He watched her, wondering what her next move would be. Wondering if she was truly foolish enough to think she could avoid him forever.
She turned a corner and finally spotted him.
To her credit, she didn’t even look surprised. Or afraid. No, if anything, she seemed determined.
Fool. Did she really think even with those powers, she stood a chance against him?
He portaled directly in front of her—
Right into a dagger she had clearly found in this market, a twisted piece of metal that was now sticking out of his stomach. As if she had known exactly where he would portal, exactly how he would attack.
“I know you,” she whispered, leaning in close.
She twisted the dagger, and he growled at the shot of pain.
Before he could strike her down, she was gone, darting through the market.
There were gasps as the people around spotted him and the knife and the blood dripping down his front.
He paid them no mind, his gaze locked on the fabrics she had worn that now fluttered through the air, the only remnant of her.
Blade still in his stomach, he followed her in a burst of shadows.
The witch fucking stabbed him. How could he have let that happen?
He should have snuck up on her and slit her throat before she even had a chance to see him. He was at an advantage here, he reminded himself. He could see her aura. He could portal. His shadows were far stronger than hers.
And he had learned something critical in this interaction—without a storm present, she was unable to use her powers. He wouldn’t let her surprise him again.
There she was. He saw her, scurrying across the dunes, attempting to hide behind them.
With a snarl, he shot a shadow at her back and watched her fall. She slid through the desert with the force, sand sputtering, until she finally went still. Now was his chance.
He portaled to her with his shadows sharpened, ready to end her once and for all. But before he could, she fell through the sand as if swallowed.
And above, the sky swirled. He rolled his eyes. This ridiculous world with its storms that were called to any shred of power. Right now, this storm was called to his own.
His shadows seeped around him like spilled ink as he turned in all directions, searching for her. In a flash, she surfaced, surrounded by flames.
Right. She had Sunling powers because of Oro.
“He loves you,” Grim snorted. “What a fool.”
Her eyes blazed as intensely as the flames around her as she shot a stream of fire right toward him. His shadows raced forward to meet them. They converged in between them, hissing, creating a blinding silver light. “You love me,” she replied, teeth gritted with effort, and he laughed.
“Do you feel any love, Wildling?” he said.
That devastated expression returned. He might not have felt anything other than aggravation toward her, but he could sense an all-encompassing love in her. He refused to believe it could be for him—it must have been for the Sunling king.
“My name . . .” she said, in ragged gasps, “is Isla.” That aura of hers surged as she dug deeper into her powers. As those flames grew.
Isla. A name that sounded like the hiss of a snake. Fitting.
Her name didn’t matter, though. She would be dead in mere moments.
He aimed another stream of shadows toward her, but she met it with a surge of silver, glimmering energy. Both of her arms were extended and shaking. But she stood strong, in a stance not so different from his own.
Just as he was about to shoot forward, take her off guard and hope for an opening, the sky grumbled. Swirled.
She looked up. Her power didn’t falter for a moment, but he felt it—the moment she was about to leap. She had used the portals to escape from him before.
Not this time.
A funnel dropped from the skies, as if drawn to her energy, and he shot forward, hitting her just as it swept them both away.
They catapulted through the air together, colliding and rolling, until they were released. Then, they were crashing onto soft snow instead of scraping sand. He landed on his back. She was atop him.
Her face was just an inch from his. Her lips parted, and his eyes tracked the movement. He swallowed, momentarily frozen. She was even prettier up close. Like this, he could see how full her mouth was, and all the shades of green in her eyes. He noticed a constellation of freckles across her nose.
She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life.
She was also his enemy.
His shadows wrapped around her throat, but she flew backwards before they could take hold.
Snow raged around them on this mountaintop, frost hitting his face. As he searched for her, Grim had portaled all across this world, and he had seen what Cronan had done to it. This place had been ripped to shreds. He had turned most of it to ash. The parts that remained were brutal. Dangerous.
This peak was no different. The mountain beneath them was constantly moving, breaking and reforming, freezing and unfreezing, as if it was trying to fit itself back together.
He lunged toward her, only for the ice beneath his feet to vanish.
His shadows flared, turning to claws, keeping him grounded.
She surrounded herself in flurries, rings of snow and wind and frost spinning around her, like she was a planet.
Then she sent that ball of energy toward him, and his shadows barely blocked it.
“This reminds you of the Algid, doesn’t it?” she said, through the roaring of the wind.
He frowned. How did she know about the Algid?
“You took me there,” she said, as if she could read his thoughts.
The mountain crumbled beneath her, and she leapt into the air, forced to land closer to him.
She shifted her stance, and water wrapped around him, freezing, pulling him toward her.
He portaled out of it, and the ice fell, shattering against the snow.
He appeared right behind her, but she was already turning, as if she anticipated where he would materialize.
Their powers met once more. “You showed me the maze. You told me you used to hide there as a boy. Hoping never to be found.”
His eyes narrowed as his shadows surged forward, sending her feet sliding back across the peak. Why would he have ever told her that? Her? A Wildling? He stepped closer. Closer. Leading her to the edge. “You must have done a good job tricking me then.”
She shook her head. “You told me about your sister,” she said.
Those words made him stumble. That was impossible. There was no chance he had told her about Laila. He hadn’t told almost anyone about her. About . . . what he had done. He had spent centuries fighting hard not to think about it, burying it in the back of his mind.
“Liar,” he growled, though how would she know about his sister, then? Had she somehow gotten into his mind?
Or . . . had Oro told her? Of course. He had been foolish enough to trust the Sunling with that information in the few years when they had been friends.
“Yes, I am a liar,” she said, her blue-tinted, white-hot flames crackling against his shadows. “But not about this.”
The mountain between them crumbled away, and his hold on his shadows slipped.
She saw the opening and took it. But instead of delivering a killing shot, she flew forward, right at him, knocking him onto his back.
They slid against compact snow, and she was atop him again, pinning him down with her power.
Freezing his shadows. His chest rose and fell against hers, her breath hot against his face, and he was confused by the chill that snaked down his spine.
She roughly removed the dagger that was still sticking out of his stomach from when she stabbed him in the oasis. He jolted from the pain and braced for another blow—maybe she’d slit his throat this time—but instead, like a smothered scream, the pain settled.
She could have killed him, right then and there. But instead. . . . she was healing him.
And that . . . that, he couldn’t explain.
Her eyes never left his. She must have seen his confusion there, because she smiled softly.
“You showed me the licorice store,” she whispered, her words coming out in clouds.
Her long brown hair whipped in the wind against her cheeks, made pink from the cold.
The snow was thick, whirling around them both, and it was almost like they were the only two people in this broken world.
“You gave me hot chocolate when I was injured.” Her eyes roamed his face, searching for something.
“You took twelve arrows through the chest for me. You . . . you gave your life for me.”
He shook his head, vehemently. “I would never do that,” he spat, as his skin fully stitching together beneath her touch.
Her smile was sad. “You did it for me.”
The moment his wound was healed, he closed his fist. She gasped, clutching her throat, as his shadows wrapped around her windpipe, crushing it. She was lifted off him, into the air. With more distance between them, he could finally breathe.
“Then I was a fool who deserved to die. I’m glad I don’t remember,” he said, rising.
She fought hard against his hold, her expression twisted in rage.
Her feet kicking wildly. He almost felt disappointed that a fire like hers would be smothered.
He hadn’t had a worthy opponent in centuries.
Perhaps, never. It had been thrilling, dueling someone as skilled as she was.
He frowned at those thoughts. Nothing about her was worth praising. He went to snap her neck to end her for good, but a blizzard swept them both off the mountain, right into another storm portal.
They landed in a forest. The remnants of one, at least.
He heard the Wildling fighting for breath. Good. It would be easy to kill her now. He was relieved to almost be free of whatever curse she had put upon him. She was clearly dangerous—Cronan was right.
He took a step toward that gasping, choking sound—and the breath shot out of his lungs as he was launched through the forest. All those twisted, gnarled trees .
. . they were hovering in the air, their roots ripped from the soil.
And she was standing in the center of them all.
Blood dripped from her nose. Her eyes narrowed in concentration.
She was using emotions as power.
Fine. Grim dropped the vise around his own.
His power surged, fed by the pain and regret of his past, of his worst mistakes. His long-buried memories.
But without that wall up, new emotions came to the surface too—like his curiosity. All his thoughts turned to this woman who had uprooted an entire fucking forest. Who was she?
Her eyes seemed to glow with power as she forced those trees together, forming a massive blade that she hurled right at him. She seemed to know that compacting her power would make it more likely to break through his shield of shadows.
Fascinating. As he watched the tree-spun blade approach, Grim almost let it take him down. It wouldn’t be a bad way to die, at the mercy of the universe’s most intriguing woman.
Then he turned that thought to ash. She was his enemy. She had been proving everything Cronan had said right.
Grim transformed himself into shadows, the roar of the hundred compressed trees passing through his body.
When it crashed behind him in a ground-shuddering thud, and she was temporarily spent, he flew toward her, knocking her down.
With her pinned, he reached for his sharpened shades to skewer them through her chest.
But the moment his shadows touched her, something strange happened.
A force ignited between them, splitting the storm above them in half. And as a bolt of lighting struck them both, Grim was plunged into a moment in her mind. A memory.
A bloodied battlefield. Countless dreks falling through the sky. Then him, on his knees, roaring in agony. Not from a physical pain, though. From her, lying lifeless in his arms.
He jolted away from her, but not quickly enough. They were both sucked through a portal in the tempest, then roughly deposited onto a beach that once must have been glorious but was now just a craggy shore.
In his shock at the memory, he didn’t catch himself before he slid against the rough sand. Isla landed in the water.
She did not surface.
She must have gone unconscious, he thought. Good. The ocean could put an end to this for him.
But that vision flashed in his head again. The pure and utter pain he saw across his face.
There was clearly something more to this than Cronan let on. There had to be a reason for his actions. And if she died . . . that explanation would die with her. As much as he wanted to claim Infinite for himself, he wanted answers more.
Grim stepped into the shallows. From here, he could see her body floating just beneath the surface. She was in his arms in a moment. Her head lolled to the side as he carried her toward shore. This was the first time he had seen her so still, and she looked almost peaceful.
He brushed a wet strand of hair off her face and portaled them both back to Cronan.