Isla
Grim’s gaze kept drifting over to her, but she didn’t meet it. She was lost in her mind. Lost in what she had just witnessed.
After the meal, Grim escorted her back to the cell in silence. When they reached the dungeons, she heard a faint ripping sound. “Here,” he said, shoving a small piece of fabric at her.
She blinked, not knowing what she was supposed to do with it. He glanced meaningfully at her shoulder, and she looked down. A streak of blood was splattered there. Some of Lark’s must have gotten on her. She wiped it away with the cloth.
“Thank you,” she said quietly, turning to him, and that was when she realized he had sliced a piece of his shirt with his shadows to give to her. The side of his stomach was now visible, a line of muscle she knew very well.
He huffed with faint amusement. “Finally, some manners.”
“Don’t get used to it,” she said, as she continued down the hall toward her cell.
The next afternoon, Isla was doing her best to ignore the sinewy, crackling sounds of Lark’s body reforming when someone appeared at her cell door.
It was Grim.
Her brows came together. There were still hours left before dinner. “What—”
“Cronan is invading our world early,” Grim said, cutting her off. His voice was hurried. His shadows filled the hall, cloaking them.
She stood and approached the bars. “What?”
She could hardly see his face through the growing darkness, just the gleaming of his eyes. “I heard him planning with the other lords.” He looked at her. “He knows you’re not going to join him. He knows you’ve been speaking to someone in your cell.”
Oro. Cronan knew about her conversations with him.
“Why are you telling me this?” she asked.
His eyes didn’t meet hers. It was like he was afraid to. He touched the shademade door and it gave.
“I’m going to leave this open,” he said roughly. “This is your one chance to leave, but Isla—I never want to see you again.”
His eyes finally met hers. And she could see the conflict in them clear as day—how torn he was to be helping the woman who might put a blade through his heart.
Still, he was opening this door.
“Why are you helping me?” she asked.
His eyes fell to her lips, to her neck, down and up again, as if he knew this was goodbye. As if he was trying to memorize her.
“Because I don’t remember you.” Those words were like a blade to the gut. “But I remember a world worth saving.”
There was good in him yet. He was not Cronan, intent on turning entire worlds to ash out of greed.
“If he finds out, he’ll imprison you,” Isla said, perplexed.
Grim only lifted a shoulder. “I said I remembered a world worth saving. Not that I remembered a life worth living.”
Isla’s throat felt tight. The fact that Grim did not think his life was worth saving . . .
Her eyes burned. She shoved the gate back into place and stood on her toes to grip his shirt in her fists and say right in his face, “I remember, even if you forgot. You don’t just have a life worth living—you have so much more than that.
You have love worth rediscovering. And our love was worth living a thousand times over.
” She shook her head. “I can’t do this without you,” she said.
“But together . . . he’s afraid of us. He knows that joined, we can defeat him. ”
He looked between the closed door and her. And in his eyes, she saw only rage. “You are a fool for rejecting my help. This was your only chance at survival.”
“You don’t understand,” she said. And she desperately wished he did. “I made a vow. Not just for this life. But the next. And the one after that. And all those that might follow.”
She took a step toward him.
“And when I do finally leave this cell . . . I’m going to break out of it,” she said, holding his gaze. For a few moments, they just glared at each other.
“You are a fool,” he snarled.
“So you’ve told me.”
“You both are,” a voice said, and it broke through the obsidian like a blade. Before Isla knew it, a new wave of shadows had formed.
And Cronan was walking out of them.