Isla
Or take her last breath here, by Cronan’s hands.
Neither option saved the people she loved. She had traveled here for more options, for more chances at survival. To bring back those she had lost. To save herself.
She wished she could forget how hopeful she felt when she had finally seen Grim crash into the galaxy room. He had been there to save her, and together, they would have saved everyone.
Now all that foolish hope had been extinguished. She pressed her lips against a sob.
“Finally realized that no one is coming to save you?”
Lark. Her voice was a scratch along the stone wall. Air wheezed through her words, as if her throat was still gaping.
Isla said nothing.
Lark managed a scoff. “It took me years to lose hope. But I suppose it’s foolish to expect anything resembling strength from you.”
Her ancestor’s words sank right through her armorless skin.
Without waiting for a reply, Lark continued, “You think this cell is bad?” Her laugh was half-crazed. “Imagine being buried miles below ground.”
At that, Isla’s head snapped up. “I don’t have to imagine. You buried me.”
“That was nothing compared to my tomb.” Her green eyes glowed through the dark. “You were there for mere days. I was imprisoned for thousands of years. In metal that was molded to my body so that I didn’t even have an inch to move or breathe. No power. No light. Nothing but the darkness.”
Isla swallowed. As hopeless as she felt in this moment . . . she couldn’t imagine that existence. Unable to die. Death, in that state, would have been a mercy.
“The only thing that kept me going was the promise of vengeance,” she continued. “And now . . . look at me.”
Lark was ancient, and unbelievably powerful. Isla had seen everything she was capable of. “So why haven’t you at least tried to break out yet?”
Her ancestor turned to her, catching the sliver of moonlight coming in from far above.
Isla swallowed. Lark’s face was half-gone.
One of her eyes was hanging where her ear should have been.
Her throat was in tatters. Her chest was gaping open, her organs shoved crudely together.
“Does it look like I’m capable of breaking out of anything? ”
Isla took a shaking breath. Her ancestor’s condition was worsening.
Anything can be broken. Even Lark, it seemed.
“Why can’t you break through his hold on your powers?” Isla demanded. If only they could find a way to reclaim their abilities, they might be able to escape. Together, they might be able to stop him.
Lark shook her head. “You don’t understand. Cronan’s tie to this world is deep rooted.”
“But you’re from this world, too,” Isla countered.
“Yes, but this is not the same world I left,” Lark said. “I’ve been away for thousands of years. And in that time, Cronan has poisoned it against everyone but him.”
“Is that why Grim can use his abilities?” Isla asked. “Because of his bloodline?”
“Perhaps. Or because Cronan allows it . . . though that would be a surprise.” Lark sank back into the shadows. “Cronan controls everything in this world, isn’t it clear? He is woven into its very fabric.”
Isla was starting to understand Lark’s anger when she had realized where she had brought them to.
“Except for the storms,” Isla said.
Lark grunted. “He cannot control some of the other worlds that filter in. At least, not yet.”
That meant Cronan had a gap, a weakness. If he had a way to stop these storms, he would have by now, wouldn’t he? Whatever he had done to the universe had clearly damaged it, causing rips between worlds.
With that, Lark stopped speaking.
Cronan said the diamond was still resisting him . . . and that he had been locked out of her world. Clearly, something was fighting his hold. Something was winning. Which meant perhaps there was a chance at stopping him.
As soon as that hope formed . . . it withered.
There were only three weeks left until Cronan was going to consume her world. She was powerless, trapped in a cell with the woman who had nearly destroyed everything she loved, and her husband had been turned against her. She was alone.
How would she possibly stop what seemed inevitable?
Curled in the back of her cell, in this endless darkness, she tried to remember the light. To remember why it was so important to keep fighting.
She closed her eyes and saw that silver pool, like a mirror in her mind. She stepped into the water and saw memories that were like pockets of sunshine, hidden in the back of her head.
She was in a forest of wildflowers, fields of color that she had created. She was learning to control the tidal wave of power behind her ribs. To use it to create life. He had taught her.
Him. She turned to the side and found gold hair and amber eyes and glittering armor right next to her. He was showing her how to turn ash into seedlings. Darkness into light. Her own fears into strength.
Cynicism into hope . . . and hatred into friendship. Into more.
That was always their power, wasn’t it? Reshaping hard things into shared weight that they carried together.
She could talk to him, and he would listen. He was patient and kind, the truest friend she had ever known. As she saw him in her memory, she wished now, more than ever, that she could still count on that friendship.
I’m lost, she said in her own mind. I’m buried in darkness.
And in the quiet trenches of her despair, a voice echoed back, like a hand pulling her to the surface.
Find your fire, it said. And it was his voice. She didn’t know if he had somehow heard her plea across the universe, or if he was saying the words to himself, but she took them. She took them like embers she could feed to the nearly extinguished flame in her chest.
Find your fire.
He had seen her do it before. He had seen her lost and found again. He had seen her at her lowest—and at her best.
She had endured so much to get here. And she thought about how it all would have been for nothing if her story ended here, in a cell on a ruined world. She had survived plenty of hard things before, and she could do it again.
Anything can be broken.
Cronan was wrong. She would not flicker out, like a forgotten fire. She would not become another world that Cronan plundered and left hollow.
She would find her fire. She would ignite.
And when she did, Cronan would burn.