Isla #2
Before she could get another word out, she was slammed against the wall face-first. Her teeth sang from the impact. She could feel blood rushing down her nose. For some reason, that made her smile.
“Was it something I said?” She sighed. “If hearing your own beliefs spoken aloud causes this reaction, then—”
Her scalp burned as the knights pulled her back by the hair and smacked her skull against the stone once more, her forehead taking the brunt of the impact. It hurt less than Cronan’s shadows had. As her vision dimmed, she still couldn’t muster a shred of regret for opening her mouth.
They gathered her hair in a fist, to send her head back toward the wall, but before they could, a voice spun from darkness itself echoed down the hall.
“Release her.”
The knights paused, but their grip on her hair didn’t lessen. She turned, cheek pressed to the bloody stone, and watched as Grim stalked toward them.
“We don’t take orders from you,” one of the knights spat. So, he was a person. His voice was strange—deep and resonant, like he was ancient, perhaps older than the world she came from.
That didn’t seem to matter as Grim turned them both to heaps of ash.
The metal. Grim had turned the shademade metal to cinders . . .
Isla slid down the wall, released from their hold. Her boots slipped in the mess.
She knew her husband was powerful. She had shared that power. But on this world, it had seemed that he had gotten stronger.
“I—”
“Don’t speak,” he growled, before taking her by the arm.
His touch was steadying, not nearly as firm as it was during those first days after he lost his memories.
He pulled her to her feet, but her knees immediately buckled.
Her head . . . it pulsed with pain. Even standing seemed like a momentous task.
He sighed heavily before kneeling—and taking her into his arms.
It was like an echo of the past. Of so many memories that this moment had conjured.
And he had no idea.
In a daze, she leaned against his shoulder and said, “You once killed everyone in a room because one touched me.”
She looked up at him. Her vision was going in and out, but she noticed him frown. His eyes dipped to hers before focusing on the hall again. “Sounds dramatic,” he said, flatly.
Her lips twitched. Her whole body was spent, her energy nearly gone, but she fought to stay conscious.
“It was,” she said. “Then you carried me . . . just like this . . .” A half-crazed laugh spilled from her lips.
It almost sounded like a sob. She lifted one of her hands, glass still sticking out of her palm.
“You’re not going to believe it . . . but my hands were injured then too.
” He stopped, then. It was as if he hadn’t noticed her bleeding palms. “You healed them . . . with me on your lap.”
That made his eyebrows come together. “Why were you on my lap?”
She shrugged. “You said it was to keep me still . . . but I have other theories.”
He blinked, long and hard. It seemed like he was struggling to remain focused on her injuries. “Your powers are suppressed. Your hands will scar.”
She sighed. “Does it matter, when I’m going to be dead in ten days?”
His eyes narrowed. “You have another choice. Another path.”
She looked up at him. “Do you think I don’t know you plan to kill me if he doesn’t?”
Grim didn’t even deny his plans to kill her. He was peering at her like she had lost her mind.
“You forget, husband, that I’ve lived through this before with you. Every step. Clearly, some things stick every time.” Him, plotting against her. Him, saving her anyway. She tilted her head at him and his incredulous expression. “I have to believe this ending will be the same too.”
“Death, you mean?”
She shook her head, but that made her dizzy and she groaned. “No. Death wasn’t the end. It was just the start, really.”
She knew she wasn’t making sense. She couldn’t keep her thoughts in order. They kept slipping out in all directions, as if the connections in her brain had been severed.
His gaze broke from her face as if he was snapping out of a trance of some kind. He started walking again, tearing down the hall in long strides. He must have gotten impatient because then they were portaling . . .
She was in his room.
He set her down immediately, as if her touch burned him. She sank to the ground, her dress pooling on the floor. She held her stinging hands out in front of her. They really were a bloody mess.
“Here,” Grim said, throwing vials and bandages at her. He even tossed her a needle and thread. Supplies he must have found for himself, when he was trying to heal his arm.
She stared down at the tools, her mind still numb. Getting the pieces out of both of her hands would be complicated . . . and she would almost certainly need to be stitched.
She looked up at him from the ground. He leaned against his bedpost, his arms crossed over his chest. He wouldn’t help her until she asked.
Bastard.
She didn’t want to have to plead, not like this, but she was worried she would do more harm than good if she healed herself in this state. Finally, she whispered, “Will you please help me?”
He tilted his head at her. “Eager to be back on my lap, Wildling?”
Isla ignored the flash of feeling at his words.
Even in this state, even in this situation, she had pride.
“Never mind,” she said. “I can do it myself.” And she could.
She’d healed herself plenty of times before she had ever met him.
She would find a way to do it, even now, while her head was spinning.
He just stood and watched.
She winced as she removed the first piece of glass, and it clinked against the floor. This was harder and more painful on her own, but she refused to beg him for help again. She really had forgotten how damned infuriating he could be.
Finally, all the glass was out, so she poured the alcohol on both her hands. Her body tensed at the burn. She cursed loudly.
Grim raised a brow at her. “You have a dirty mouth,” he murmured.
“You have no idea,” she breathed. She watched his eyes widen in surprise for a fraction of a moment. She held his gaze, as if in challenge. “But you did . . . once.”
He swallowed.
She looked away, grabbing the needle to weave it through her skin.
She cursed again and ignored Grim’s deep chuckle.
When she was finished with one hand, she cut the thread with her teeth.
She heard Grim swallow again, and found his eyes glued to her mouth.
He dragged his gaze back up to hers. “How do you know how to heal so well?” he asked.
She resumed her work. “Same way as you,” she countered.
She stole glances at him as her statement washed over him.
As he considered that they might have had a brutal childhood in common.
She had told him before, about both being locked in rooms and trained, but it seemed he hadn’t considered the implications.
His eyes hardened in understanding, but he didn’t say a word.
She kept stitching, but her vision was starting to go in and out.
It hurt to focus. She winced as the needle pierced the wrong spot. As her grip faltered.
Apparently, her work wasn’t clean or fast enough for his liking.
“Here,” he said, the word full of impatience, as he pushed off the bedpost. He kneeled before her roughly, but his touch was featherlight as he gently put her hand in his. Her palm looked so much smaller than his. He took the needle and began stitching her himself.
She took the opportunity to pore over his face while he worked. His eyes were narrowed in concentration.
“What?” he demanded.
His features started to blur. She blinked them back into focus.
Her mind felt loose, unraveled. “We always start off as enemies,” she said.
“Trained to hate each other. We lie and steal and fight. Until we learn we aren’t so different.
That we’re . . . we’re on the same side.
” She swallowed. “You hurt me with your words. Then . . . you heal me.” Her laugh was half-crazed. “It’s always like this.”
He frowned. “You say that as if this isn’t just the second time.”
She lifted a shoulder. “Even if it was the hundredth, I still think it would be the same. Us . . . always being both the curse and the cure for each other’s souls. The wound . . . and the stitches. Just because we’re always on opposite sides of fate.”
She didn’t know if she was making sense. Her mind was slipping, but she had to say this.
“But we used to wish for a world where we didn’t have crowns. Where we weren’t ever enemies. Where fate didn’t care if we loved each other. Where we weren’t each other’s downfall or ruin. Where . . . there were no prophecies. No stakes. Where we could just be the balm. Not the blade.”
Her eyes closed tightly as she remembered the illusion Cronan had shown. One of her futures. She didn’t want to hurt him.
She never wanted to hurt him.
“Our world has always viewed us as weapons. Only seeing the ways we can wound. But we can heal too . . . and we did. And we do. Every time.”
She opened her eyes. Hand still grasped in his, he looked down at her. He was finished; her cuts were all closed. Yet he didn’t drop her hand or her gaze. She sat up on her knees to get closer to his level.
The damage to her head, from both Cronan and the knights, made her mind throb, made it difficult to find the words. Still, she managed. “You want to know why we fell in love? Not because we were lonely. But because we were hurt. And in each other . . . we found a cure.”
Isla didn’t breathe. Her whole world narrowed to the cool gray of Grim’s eyes as he held her gaze. They drifted closer. Closer. As if brought inevitably together by the gravity between them. Until their mouths were just inches apart. His fingers curled over hers.
Then, she was gone. Back in her cell.
Healed and still covered in blood.