1. Isla
1
ISLA
T he letters on the labels twitch, rearranging and distorting themselves without cease. I clasp my lids, reopen them. The lines and curves freeze, but their inertia lasts only for a second before they’re warping once more.
I snatch an apothecary bottle and squint at the label to decipher my grandmother’s penmanship. Because of my condition, she’s taken to writing in bold, block letters, but unfortunately, many of her ointments and poultices were brewed before my birth, so their contents are inked in elegant cursive.
It takes me a hot minute, but I finally manage to decipher the words: “ Reduces inflammation of the gut. ”
After tucking the jar into the waistband of my leather trousers, I magick myself out of Shoshair’s closet of miraculous remedies and soar back her way. The hallways—especially in this part of the Sky Kingdom—are eerily quiet, what with everyone having gone to Glace for Konstantin Korol’s Jubilee.
Although Phoeppa suggested keeping my grandmother company so I could attend, my parents insisted I stay at her side. They trust my uncle implicitly, but Phoeppa isn’t a Crow. He can’t tap into the pack’s mind link and inform my father should Shoshair’s sudden illness worsen.
In truth, even if Dádhi hadn’t insisted, I would’ve stayed, because my paternal grandmother means everything to me.
I make a pit stop at the Sky Tavern where I snatch a mortar and pestle, unscrew the lid on the jar, then tip it. A sliver of mossy fungi plummets into the scooped gray stone, releasing the scent of damp earth. I mash it up into the finest sludge, then uncork a bottle of extra strong liquor—which Connor brews from mountain berries and which my grandmother adores—and pour some atop my mushroom puree.
Once I’ve got everything mixed, I fill a metal stein and give my concoction a whiff. Somehow, the liquor has intensified the muddy odor. Not to mention that it’s tinted the clear liquid brown. I scan the countertop for a syrup likely to camouflage both the smell and color. I opt for a neon green one and drizzle in a liberal amount.
The result is…
I shove the drink away so fast that some splashes onto my hand and then I dry-heave, stomach spasming from the fumes. That fungi paste must be extra potent if the stench alone can reach my abdomen. After my throat stops contracting, and saliva stops filling my mouth, I add another finger of berry liquor, another squirt of syrup, then dump in heaping spoonfuls of sugar.
Tentatively, I bring the cup to my nose. The aroma has not improved. My grandmother adores me so much that she’d probably take a sip of my healing cocktail. Nevertheless, I adore her too much to subject her to such a rank beverage.
I glance at the jar again. Could the fungi have expired? It didn’t smell expired in its original form. Perhaps I could spoon some mash onto her tongue? Just as I go to wash the stone bowl and pestle, another idea slams into me.
I prick my index finger on one of the ruby spikes adorning my hoop earrings, then think of the berry cream Shoshair relishes as I press my bleeding fingertip against the metal mug and paint one of the only sigils that I don’t botch—twin peaks. The instant my blood penetrates the stein, the odor turns sweet and creamy.
Feeling rather proud of myself, I carry my potion to her quarters that are steeped in darkness. A single oil lamp combats the gloom. It burns on her nightstand, casting the heavy tome propped on her thighs in light.
“I whipped up your favorite berry shake!” I tread toward the bed I spent the greater part of my childhood in, snuggled up beside my grandmother.
“Oh, sweetheart.” A smile presses into her wan cheeks. “You didn’t have to go through all that trouble.”
“It was no trouble at all, Shoshair. How do you feel?” I plop down on the edge of the mattress. “Any better?”
“A little under the weather, but I should be right as rain in a day or two.” She closes the book and sets it aside.
Thanks to the foiled sketches of flora stamped into the cloth-bound cover, I deduce it’s a book on plants. Her favorite.
I lower my gaze to the drink in my hands, a touch of guilt coiling through me that I plan on tricking her into ingesting a remedy. Especially after her whole spiel about how one’s immune system turns weak if one forever coddles it.
Yes, this is what our pack healer—who brews remedies for everyone but herself—explained to me when I suggested she take a dose of something and let me fly her to Glace so she didn’t expend energy.
As though she senses my thoughts, she says, “I’m sorry my condition kept you away from the Jubilee.”
“Please. How fun can a royal Jubilee be?”
I shush my mind when it pitches in: epically fun . My grandmother needs me. Besides, I’m immortal. I’ll have many more occasions to visit Glace and attend formidable revels.
As I hand the stein to Shoshair, I do not picture flying over the northern land steeped in shimmering snow.
I do not think of the tallest peak—the White Fang—where my parents waged an exacting battle before my birth.
I absolutely do not imagine myself stealing away to visit the underground palace Izolda has told me everything about.
The same way I don’t dream of all the sleigh and train rides to be had.
My grandmother watches me over the rim of the cup she tips to her lips. “Your father was telling me there’s much unrest in Glace.”
“I heard. But surely no more than in Luce?”
“More.”
I narrow my eyes. “Yet not too much unrest to throw a big party?”
“Faeries,” she says, as though their propensity for merrymaking was explanation enough.
Her tongue darts out to swipe a smudge off the corner of her lips.
Shit . I forgot to change the color. Hopefully, she won’t notice that her berry shake is green. Come to think of it, her white skin now appears a tad greenish too. Because of my cocktail?
Goddess below, I pray that isn’t the case.
A deafening gurgle rises from her stomach. We both blink—first at each other, and then at her abdomen that is…that is swelling . My grandmother gathers the hem of her tunic and hauls it up.
“Sweetheart, did you—” More gurgling distends her stomach, and then a burp interrupts her speech. She startles as though this were the very first time she’d produced such a sound. “What sort of—berries did you use?”
I bounce my knees. Drum my fingers. “You wouldn’t be allergic to…anything?”
Her abdomen swells some more.
“Isla?” Alarm tightens her tone.
“I ground some fungi inside your drink, Shoshair.”
Another belch.
“I found it in one of your jars.” My knees bounce even harder, as though hooked onto springs. “The label said—it said—it—I was only trying to help.”
“Shh. I know. It’s all right.” She reaches over and clasps my wrist. “Just show me the bottle so I can—take something to—counteract…” Her forehead glistens with sweat.
I race back to the Sky Tavern and seize the jar. After three unsuccessful attempts at screwing the lid back on, I forfeit the task, stick both inside my trousers’ waistband, and streak back to Shoshair’s room to find her moaning, feet flush with the stone floor and upper body bent over her thighs.
Oh, Mórrígan, what have I done? What have I done ?
“Shoshair?”
She peers up at me, features contorted with pain.
My arms bob as I hold out the jar.
One glance and her greenish skin turns a further shade of sick. “Ah…”
I drop onto my haunches and clasp her clammy hands. “What, ah ?”
Her stomach gurgles so violently that I think it will echo down the bond she shares with my father and alert him that his inept daughter has, yet again, bungled something.
“It’s nothing, Isla.”
Clearly, it’s something . I consider sketching the symbol to heal, but I’ve never drawn it correctly during my lessons, and now isn’t exactly the time to try. What if it makes it all worse?
“It’ll pa—” She inhales a breath that’s so sharp it sounds like a blade sinking into flesh, and then her eyes roll to the back of her head and she collapses right into my arms.
I scream out her name.
When she doesn’t react, I stick the jar back into my waistband, grab ahold of her lithe body, then carry her out into the hallway where I morph into my Crow. After carefully caging her body between my talons, I streak over the ocean toward Shabbe, my heart pounding so brutally that there’s no dip between its beats.
The guards surrounding the Cauldron startle when I land in the Vale.
“Is—is—did the Akwale—is anyone here?” I pant.
“Isla?” I hear Behati call out.
I whirl, my pulse still rioting against my eardrums.
The ancient seer tilts her head as she clicks over to me on her cane. “What are you doing here, child?”
“I p-p-poisoned my grandmother.” I lick my lips, tasting the salt of my sweat and tears.
“A tad extreme to attend a Jubilee.”
When I realize what she’s implying, I snarl, “I didn’t poison her to attend a revel, Behati!”
Her brows dip behind her heavy white and gold bangs.
“I didn’t poison her, period. It was an accident . I was trying to heal her.” I dig out the jar. “She took ill all of a sudden yesterday, and?—”
“How convenient.”
“—I brewed her a— What do you mean, convenient ?”
Behati moves over to Shoshair’s supine form and prods her stomach with her cane.
I streak between them and bat away the gold stick. “What do you mean convenient , Behati?”
“Your parents don’t want you to go to Glace because of the prophecy.”
After thrashing, my heart turns into a lump of inert flesh. “The prophecy? What prophecy?”
“A prophecy that Bronwen foresaw.”
“That involves me?”
“Yes.”
“…In Glace?”
“Yes.”
“And what exactly do I do there?”
“You meet your mate.”
My head rears back. “I…? My…my mate is Glacin?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“The Mahananda hasn’t shown me what he looks like. Only that you meet him at the Jubilee.”
I recall something my cousin Naeva—technically my aunt, but she’s six months younger than me, so, yeah… cousin —mentioned a while ago: Behati isn’t the sharpest sword in the armory.
Instead of challenging the Shabbin advisor about this prophecy— delusion? —I prop the jar in her face to return to the more pressing matter. “This is what I gave Shoshair.”
She glances at the label. “ Fungi Alaramis: induces inflammation of the gut .”
Where the corners of her mouth quirk after she reads it out loud, mine plummet. I spin the jar. The cursive letters begin to shiver, to shake, but not before I make out the first syllable of the word after the mushroom’s name: in .
In-fucking-duces! Not re- duces.
“I’ll purge the gasses from her intestines before more can form. Arin will be just fine, Isla.”
Brimming with self-loathing, I squeeze the jar with such force that spiderweb cracks form on the brown glass.
Behati holds out her arm. “Help me kneel.”
I ease the seer onto the sunstone floor, then watch as she begins to bloody my grandmother’s stomach with a complex array of lines and swirls, ones I didn’t have a fighting chance of getting right.
“Arin can convalesce here until your return,” she tells me as her sigil penetrates into my grandmother’s flesh.
“My return?”
“From Glace.”
My grandmother’s stomach begins to deflate like a pricked balloon…unlike my onus.
“I’m not leaving her,” I say.
The ancient sorceress cranes her neck to stare up at me. “It’s your destiny.”
“I’ll go next week…or next month,” I mumble as the green tinge finally recedes from Shoshair’s skin.
Behati inhales a bladed breath that reels in my attention. Her eyes have gone bone-white. I stay quiet as the Cauldron feeds her a vision.
Once color returns to her irises, she says, “Your mate will perish if your paths don’t collide tonight.”
My heart snaps like those whips Faeries use on horses. “The Cauldron has just shown you this?”
“Yes.”
I glance toward the mirror-smooth basin that reflects the cloudless blue expanse above. If only I could communicate with it like Taytah Daya. If only I could ask it if Behati is sending me on a wild love chase, or if there’s truth to her vision.
I suppose that if I go to Glace, I could ask Taytah. Or I could just shift right here, right now, and demand the truth from my father.
Except that would make him wonder how I heard about the prophecy, and I’d have to tell him about the mishap that led me to Shabbe. Preferring not to worry him—and to disappoint him once more —I decide to confess my mistake after Shoshair recovers.
Guilt and remorse stiffen my hold on the jar, which shatters. The shards bite into my palm before slipping free and dinging against the stone floor.
I kneel beside Behati. “Why isn’t she rousing?” With my unwounded hand, I smooth a silver strand off my grandmother’s brow.
“Because her body’s healing.”
“I can’t…I can’t leave her. I promised her…I promised my father that I’d?—”
“Shabbins don’t have mates, so I don’t know what the loss of one feels like, but I hear it’s akin to parting with a piece of your soul.”
“But if the two souls never collide?—”
“Is that what you want, child? Never to meet your mate?”
I roll my lips, because, no, that isn’t what I want. “Tell me something.” I sit back on my heels. “Why would my parents keep me from him?”
“Because they don’t want to lose you.”
“Lose me? They could never lose me. And besides that, they’d be gaining a son.” Under my breath, I add, “Not to mention, they’d probably be better off without me.”
Behati skims my wrist. “Why would you say such a thing?”
“Because I ruin everything I touch.” I swallow as I sweep my somber gaze over Shoshair.
“Isla, Isla, Isla, you are your parents’ pride and joy. As for your mishaps, you will get better at it all. You’re only twenty-four. Trust me, after a century of life, your bloodcasting and reading will be impeccable. Now, please go. I don’t want to vex the Mahananda.”
I pick at the fresh scab on my index finger
Behati must sense my reticence, because she gives my wrist a squeeze. “I’ll look after Arin. She’ll be fully recovered by the time you return. This, I swear to you.”
Even though I’m not discarding the possibility that Behati is delusional, I reason that joining my friends and family in Glace isn’t the greatest hardship. Especially if it can save a man from perishing and the Cauldron from sulking.
After pressing a kiss to my grandmother’s cheek and making sure her pulse is strong, I take off for the land of ice and Faeries, where a mate waits for me.
A mate. Skies, am I even ready for a mate? Here I was, hoping I’d get to live a little more before settling down.
Halfway to Glace, I consider turning back. But turning back means never having a mate, so I forge ahead on the path the Cauldron has drawn for me.