Isla
She assumed Cronan wanted to resume their torture sessions and that maybe he was suspicious of her motives for killing Jessel, but when she walked inside, she was surprised to find a small table set up in the middle.
It was a fraction of the size of the one the council used for dinner and made of ancient, intricately designed wood.
If only she could access her abilities, she could sense its properties.
And twist it into a pike that could skewer Cronan through the heart.
Cronan stood and motioned toward the open seat across from him. One of his guards unceremoniously shoved her into it before the knights left and doors closed.
In the silence that followed, Isla waited for Cronan to speak, to explain why he’d brought her here.
But then a flurry of attendants swept in, heralding tea.
She watched it be poured and couldn’t help but think of Oro and his demonstration during the Centennial.
And all the tea they’d had together in the months afterward.
She couldn’t fail him—she’d get the answers she needed out of Lark by any means necessary.
The tea was poured and they were finally alone. “Are you ready to join me?” he asked. Straight to the point. “Your display last night was quite surprising. Has my descendant been able to convince you to hand yourself over?”
“No.” Isla’s eyes never left his. She needed more time. She only had ten days left before the invasion.
Irritation flashed in his expression—but he didn’t look completely surprised.
“I suspected enough. Grimshaw is powerful, but he lacks vision.” He eyed her.
“You, on the other hand . . . play the long game. You didn’t respond well to our previous sessions .
. .”—Where you tortured me, Isla thought, hand clenched around the curve of the table—“I thought we could have a conversation in a more . . . civilized manner,” he said, good-naturedly, as if he was not the one who had forced her to the floor and cracked her mind open like it was a stubborn walnut.
She was silent. He motioned toward the tea, and she just stared at it.
“It’s just tea,” he said. “Not drugged, I assure you. Why would I bother? I could force you to do anything I wish, already . . . including, telling me the truth.”
She swallowed at his threat. She would much rather drink potentially poisoned tea than have his shadows digging around in her mind.
She took a sip and was met with a pleasant, calming flavor of an unrecognizable flower. It reminded her that even though this world was a shadow of its former glory, some beauty had survived. It had endured.
The glass clinked against its plate as she set the cup back down.
“Now, then,” Cronan said. “I’m going to ask you questions. And I’m going to hope I don’t have to force myself into your head to get answers.” She sat back in her chair, waiting for the first question. “Why did you kill that woman after she helped you?”
She took a sip of her tea. She told him exactly what she thought he wanted to hear. And the truth. “To absorb her power.”
She was going to die anyway. What Isla didn’t tell him was that she still hoped she could kill Lark and bring everyone back. Including Jessel.
At least, by dying by her hand, there was hope.
Cronan tented his fingers in front of his chin, pondering her. “You see . . . we aren’t so different, you and I. We both take power. It makes us stronger.”
His head tilted at her. “But you are halved. Wildling . . . and Nightshade. Life . . . and death. Killer . . . and creator.” He pursed his lips. “I see the war within you. You’ve felt divided for a while now, haven’t you? Between who you really are, and the person everyone else wants you to be?”
“Yes,” she answered honestly. And with that, there was a slight bite in her brain, a pinprick, and she watched as a memory poured from her mind into the room. Cronan had plucked it out of her head with a razor-thin shadow. So much for not using his methods.
The memory danced around them. Isla saw herself, covered in snakes. Her eyes gleamed as she strutted through Grim’s throne room, the severed head of the Nightshade who had tried to assassinate her held in her fist by the hair.
Cronan hummed, and it reverberated through the room. “Queen of darkness,” he said. “That’s who you are. Anything else is just a mask. An ill-fitting veil over the truth.”
When Isla didn’t respond, Cronan chuckled. “No?” She didn’t feel him scrummage through her mind, so she guessed he could read the defiance in her face.
“Tell me honestly,” he continued. “Would you prefer to be locked up and powerless, back in that room of yours . . .” Isla thought he was talking about her cell in his dungeons, but a new memory bloomed around them—one he had long ago plundered.
The galaxy room disappeared and she was back on the Wildling newland, trapped and alone.
She knew it wasn’t real, it was an illusion, but her heart hammered on instinct.
“Or would you kill innocent people, just to free yourself?”
Isla frowned. She had her answer at the ready, but he waved her away before she could utter a single word. “A useless question,” he said, “considering you already made your choice. If you had just stayed in that room, a lot of people on your world would still be alive . . .”
True. But now Isla knew that many more would have died. But she didn’t dare think about how she knew, lest he break through her mind again.
“Why are you so loyal to a world that already thinks you’re a villain?” He seemed genuinely curious.
“Because it’s my duty,” she said. “It has been since the moment I was born.”
“No. It’s your duty to rule.”
“I don’t think ruling means killing and controlling. I think it means helping your people. Sacrificing for them.”
His lips curved into a crooked smile like a shard of glass. “And is that what you’ve done, Isla? Helped your people?”
She didn’t drop his gaze, and he just hummed, taking another sip of his tea.
She took the opportunity to ask her own question. “Did you create nexus?” Remlar had told her as much, but she needed to hear it from Cronan.
He seemed mildly surprised by that. “Not as a concept. But I’m the one who tied rulers to their subjects.”
“Why?”
“I did the same to the heads of my planets. It’s easier to rule one person whose life impacts thousands, or millions . . . and easier to kill them, too.”
Isla swallowed. For some reason, when Cronan had outlined killing everyone in her world, she had imagined an invasion. A war. But Cronan didn’t have to kill thousands. He didn’t have to slaughter entire realms. He just had to kill their leaders.
“What does Horus have to do with it?” she asked. The rebels on Lightlark had been convinced Oro’s death would end nexus. Remlar had all but confirmed it too.
“His line was afflicted with the original nexus curse,” he said. “I simply borrowed from it. His family was not always so noble . . .”
Curses were a Nightshade power, though. Was Oro’s family cursed by another Nightshade? By another power altogether?
She was knocked from her thoughts by Cronan’s next question. “Have you ever seen a silver pool?”
Her teacup paused on its way to her mouth.
It was just a momentary stutter before her lips pressed against the warmed porcelain.
She kept her expression flat and calm as she took a sip and went to put the cup down.
She had just convinced herself that he hadn’t noticed when his shadows burst forth, striking her straight in the center of her mind.
She dropped the cup and heard it shatter, but she couldn’t see anything.
Her vision had turned black, like a light suddenly extinguished.
In the deepest corner of her brain, a part he hadn’t breached yet, she could almost see it. Silver, glimmering like a star. The water seemed to slither away from his shadows, deeper into her head, as if hiding.
Cronan pushed harder, carving more of her mind, his shadows like an arrow intent on going right through the back of her skull.
She scrambled to build up her wall. To make him believe he had reached the back of her head, when in actuality, he hadn’t. She knew he didn’t suspect she could do that.
So, when he reached it, she felt his disappointment sear through her.
“No. I’ve never seen a silver pool,” she replied.
It was like he didn’t hear her, or he didn’t care.
She could feel him clawing through her mind, shredding as he went, and she had never seen him so hurried.
So desperate. She felt his anger grow, flaming through her skull, his power pressing against bone.
The pressure had her screaming. She thought her eyes would burst.
But it was useless. He found nothing.
He ripped out of her mind, and she fell forward onto the table, hands landing onto the teacup shards. Her palms bled, crimson mixing with the hot tea. She panted, gasping for air, her pulse so fast, her heart rattled her ribs.
Cronan frowned down at her, lip curled back, every air of civility gone from his demeanor. She knew he had a reason to keep her alive, to convince her to align with him. His obsession with the silver pool had overshadowed everything.
“Take her away,” Cronan said, and two knights swept into the room. They grabbed her beneath each shoulder. Her body felt boneless as they dragged her through the halls. Her head lulled. Her vision blurred.
Fuck him.
Fuck this castle.
Fuck these guards, who did his bidding.
Her voice hoarse from all the screaming, she said to one of the knights, “Are you even a person under there? Or a mindless beast, following orders?”
There was no response. Of course there wasn’t.
Isla laughed ruefully, suddenly delirious with pain and exhaustion. “I would love to know what about his cause drew you in. Was it the destroying worlds? Killing millions of people? Or—”