Isla
Grim began visibly recoiling from her whenever she was near. He would position his chair at dinner as far from her as possible, as if it was a physical pain to be near her.
And that was how she knew for certain he had seen one of the memories. Her plan was working.
She only hoped that his behavior meant that he was fighting his desire for her . . . and not that he was disgusted by it.
She might have thought that the environment, with his own ancestor at the head of the table, would have put him at ease. But his posture was too rigid. His eyes, fixed on everyone in the room but her, remained alert.
“Is something wrong with your arm?” she asked quietly, while everyone else was locked in conversation about the preparations for the upcoming invasion of her planet.
Grim stiffened but otherwise did not acknowledge her question.
“I can—I can help you.”
He huffed cruelly. As if he thought she would help him right off a cliff. She couldn’t really blame him for that, after what he had seen.
The next night, the pain only seemed to have gotten worse. He nearly winced when his arm jostled and wasn’t using it at all. She wondered how long it would be until Cronan noticed.
When Cronan banished Isla from the galaxy room for the evening, it was Grim who escorted her to her cell.
When they were in the privacy of the dungeons, she turned and said, “Decided to take me up on my offer then?”
His glare was piercing. “What do I use?” he demanded.
As a Wildling, she had basic healing knowledge. But this was not her world—and there was little nature left. She wasn’t sure if she could actually help him, but she would try her best.
“What kind of injury is it?”
“A cut,” he said simply.
That was odd. “Doesn’t Cronan have healing supplies?” A cut was hardly something that had ever brought Grim pain before. Unless it was laced with poison, like with the dreks.
“Didn’t work.”
She should have guessed she would be the last resort. She was grateful he was even speaking to her. “Can’t you ask Cronan?”
Grim’s jaw locked. He didn’t answer.
“You don’t want him to know.” She tilted her head. “You’re . . . hiding something from him.”
He must have sensed her hope, because his eyes turned scathing. “Just because I’m not completely aligned with him, doesn’t mean I’m aligned with you.” He spat the word, like the idea of them working together was disgusting. He looked at her and only saw his killer.
But she could see that he was becoming unmoored. By the memory? Was it making him hate her more . . . or less?
“Can I see it?”
Grim didn’t move. Right. He didn’t trust her either. How was she supposed to heal something she couldn’t examine?
Why would that even matter anyway? Unless . . . the injury itself was something important . . .
Wait. Had Grim given himself a skyre?
She frowned. He must have looked through her research when he was trying to get her back. He must have retraced her steps . . .
What if the skyre was slowly killing him? They were dangerous. It was easy to mess them up. If he was already in so much pain . . .
“Whatever it is you don’t want me to see, mask it.” She knew he could create illusions.
Begrudgingly, he held his arm out and slowly lifted the sleeve.
A circle was carved roughly into his skin. The lines weren’t healing—as she watched, the skin was splitting and reforming, as if something was trying to undo the marking, reverse the skyre . . . and Grim’s power was fighting back.
This must have been how Grim was able to use his power in this world. It wasn’t his blood connection to Cronan after all. Somehow, he had discovered Cronan’s unique skyre.
Cronan would have immediately known that Grim had found a way around his shield.
Isla imagined he wouldn’t have been happy about that, wanting instead for his heir to be as pliant and subservient as the rest of his subjects.
But even if he could, he wouldn’t forcibly remove the skyre if he wanted Grim to be loyal—just like he was trying to make Isla loyal.
So, he was using his powers to fight it.
Did this mean Cronan was afraid of Grim attacking him? Of Grim actually joining with Isla and finding a way to destroy him, together?
Isla bit her lip. She didn’t have her healing elixir here, and even if she did, she wasn’t positive it would work. Not for an injury like this.
But she knew someone who could help.
Grim accompanied her to her cell. Lark was curled up on her side, glaring at both of them.
“Has the happy couple reunited?” she asked.
Isla sighed. “I need your blood,” she said, flatly. “What do you want?”
Lark’s power was regeneration. If Isla’s theory was right, her blood would be the most potent cure.
Her ancestor’s lip curled back. “You know what I want,” she said. “He has it.”
Isla’s pulse quickened. The feather was the way she was going to get Oro the information he needed to find the starstick. She couldn’t lose her only bargaining chip now.
“No, I—”
Lark turned her mocking gaze to Isla, her question clear: Who did Isla want to help more, Oro or Grim?
Isla swallowed.
When she didn’t immediately answer, her ancestor turned to Grim and outstretched her palm. “I want my feather.”
Grim just blinked at her. At first, Isla wondered if he didn’t remember. After all, Isla had been the one to discover it.
But then he reached into his pocket. Of course. That was why she hadn’t found it in his room—he had carried it on his person. It must have been in the bathroom while he had bathed, in the clothes he had discarded.
“Why do you want it?” he asked, revealing the feather. It was half charred, but still, Lark’s eyes gleamed.
“It’s a part of me,” she said. “I want to be made whole.” She sneered at the gaps in her body, at all the places that had been ripped apart and crudely put back together. “As whole as I can be.”
Grim seemed to be weighing his options. Her ancestor had nearly leveled his lands. She had killed hundreds of his people.
“Do you want to be healed or not?” she said.
His eyes roamed over her wounds like he could just take her blood without giving away the feather.
Lark seemed to sense that, because she smiled knowingly. “My blood isn’t so easily taken. And if you try, I’m sure Cronan would love to hear about this visit.” She tilted her head at Grim. “So, what will it be?”
Grim’s injury must have been impacting him more than Isla thought, because she watched him hand the feather over.
The moment it touched Lark’s hand, there was a burst of light.
Isla watched as her body began piecing together—she wasn’t completely healed, but it was much better than before.
She took a deep, shuddering breath, grinning.
Grim opened his palm in return. He clearly didn’t want to show her the marking, even disguised.
Lark gave him a scathing look, not trusting him either. She sliced her skin open with a sharpened nail, and only a single drop of blood was revealed. She dripped it into Isla’s hand instead.
“I’ll know if you use it for anything else,” she said to Isla. “And I’m in much better shape to hurt you in here.”
Isla’s jaw worked, realizing Lark could now pose far more danger to her.
“Fine,” Grim said, looking angry about everything. He roughly took Isla’s arm—
And they were in his room.
The last time she had been in here, Grim had been shirtless. And he had betrayed her, bringing her to Cronan. She could still feel the tears in her head from his shadows.
Grim wasted no time, sitting on the edge of the bed and pulling up his sleeve to reveal the circle. She gingerly perched next to him, waiting to see if he would object. He didn’t.
“Why are you helping me?” he asked before her blood-soaked fingers could touch him.
She looked up at him. He was peering at her with narrowed eyes. She imagined he was combing through her emotions. He glanced at the symbol on her own arm but didn’t ask about it.
“Isn’t it obvious?” she asked. Then she pressed her fingers against the mark. He was concealing its true shape from her touch too. She covered the entire swath of skin to be safe.
Grim’s entire body went stiff, shifting away from her slightly. “I don’t like to be touched,” he said through his teeth.
“I know,” she whispered.
She kept her hand on his skin, his body both fighting it and welcoming it. She could tell he was in pain by the way his hands were clenched, his knuckles white. His fingers curled around his bed frame, and the wood splintered.
Her hold didn’t loosen. She needed time to fully heal the skyre so that it was completely seared into his skin, impenetrable by even Cronan’s power.
She was turned toward him. Their knees were nearly touching. Grim’s jaw tensed. His voice was thick as his gaze bored into hers. “I don’t understand you,” he said. “I called you weak. I called you a fool. I told you . . . I would kill you . . .”
Isla just shrugged a shoulder. “You’re a bastard in each lifetime, I guess,” she said. “In every version of our love story.”
“There is no love story,” he said, his hand in a fist, the veins of his arm quivering. His voice was so full of malice, she was positive he was considering throwing her out of his room, despite needing her help.
“Not yet,” she breathed.
After a long pause, he spoke like it was hard to get the words out, around the pain. “This. . . . this isn’t going to soften me. If that was your hope, it’s not going to work. I’m just using you.”
“That’s not why I’m doing it,” she said, shaking her head. She applied more pressure and he hissed.
“Then why?” he demanded. “Why waste your efforts healing me only to kill me later on? It doesn’t make sense.”
He had done the same. She hadn’t known it at the time, but he had planned to kill her by using her to unlock Cronan’s sword. Still, he had healed her on multiple occasions. But she knew the Grim in front of her didn’t care about that. And all she could tell him was the truth.
“Because I love you.”
That word was a mistake. His entire face shifted, transformed into a mask of rage.
“You don’t love me. You love a weak, foolish version of me that is dead.
” His lip curled in disgust. And as the skyre fully healed, he portaled Isla back to her cell, where she landed roughly on her side while Lark’s smug laugh echoed around her.