Grim
He ground his teeth as he fought off yet another memory from last night. At the way she—
No. He had meant what he had said. Last night was purely physical. Meaningless.
Regardless, in just an hour, they would both be dead. The heads of planets were already at the crumbling arena. Thousands of people from this world and others had gathered too, excited for the spectacle. It was the entertainment before the invasion.
Cronan peered at him with narrowed eyes. Before he could say a word, a group of knights burst through the doors.
“What?” Cronan barked.
“The prisoner.”
Grim looked up then.
“What about her?” Cronan demanded.
The knight hesitated for a moment, before saying, “She’s gone.”
Cronan frowned. Grim echoed the movement. Gone? She didn’t have any powers. She had refused his chance to leave. Those bars were made of impenetrable steel.
And when I do finally leave this cell . . . I’m going to break out of it, she had said.
Impossible. Unless—
Lark’s feather. Grim had obscured the marking Isla had healed . . . but had she sensed it, somehow? Had he let the disguising illusion drop during their night together?
Had she used him for that? Is that why she had been waiting in his room?
The witch. She had told him herself how she had stabbed him in the chest during their first kiss. He should have known. This entire time, he had convinced himself that he was using her . . . only to see she had been using him.
He might have been impressed if he wasn’t so fucking angry. At himself, mostly.
What would Cronan do if they weren’t able to duel? Would he simply decide not to let one of their realms live? Her escape could cost him his chance to save Nightshade.
“Find her,” Cronan said, his anger like poison.
He would. Not for Cronan, but for himself.
He began striding from the room—but a thought stopped him.
The smart thing for her to do would be to leave this place. But Isla did not make smart decisions. She made them out of emotion.
She still believed there was hope he could remember her. He knew exactly what she was doing.
She had waited until this moment to make her move. She must have known he had lost his control. Of course, she did, after the way he had behaved last night.
But she was wrong.
Last night meant nothing. Especially when the lives of everyone in his realm were on the line.
As if to prove the fact, he turned to his ancestor and said, “Let me prove my loyalty to you.”