She laughed softly. “Did you ever wonder why this necklace can’t come off unless I die? Why he hasn’t just taken it, like everything else?”
Grim stood very still. He wasn’t breathing. He still couldn’t imagine whyshewore it.
“How about the one around your neck? Have you tried to take it off?” she asked.
Grim frowned. He reached up...and found that a thin chain rested at the base of his neck. He had bathed several times here, but he hadn’t looked at himself in a mirror. He hadn’t evenbeenhimself.
No matter. His shadows engulfed the necklace to turn it to ash.
Nothing happened.
The realization crashed upon him like a tidal wave.
Isla took a step toward him, her gaze unrelenting. She leaned in close. She was far shorter than he was, yet she found a way to look down at him. “Hello, husband,” she whispered. She held out her hand, right through the bars, as if to shake his. “I’m your wife.”
No.No. He didn’t dare touch her.
“A Nightshade ruler has never taken a wife,” he yelled. She was foolish for thinking she could make him believe such a ridiculous idea. There had to be another explanation...another way...
“You did,” she said. She was gripping the bars now. Leaning as close to him as she could. “You chose me. From a line I was never meant to be in. You took me back to your room...and you kissed me.”
“I don’t kiss anyone,” he said, fiercely.
“You kissedme,” she said. And for some reason, he leaned toward her, as if pulled by an invisible tide. She reached a hand through the bars to press against his chest. He was too shocked by all of this to stop her. His skin prickled with awareness. “I stabbed you for it. Right here.” She gently tapped a spot just an inch short of his heart, and it sent a chill down his spine.
“I kissed you, and youstabbed me?” he growled, perplexed. She wasn’t making any sense. And why was he listening to her anyway? Why was he letting hertouchhim?
She only nodded. “Look.”
Warily, he pulled down his shirt, if only to call her a liar. But there, right where she had pressed, was a scar. One that he should have erased by now, like he had erased all others.
Why would he have kept this one? It made no sense.
She must have seen the confusion on his face, because she said, “You told me later it was a reminder of me.”
He shook his head.Enough. Cronan was right. These memories were shameful. “I am not a weak fool you can trick again.”
“Love does not make you weak,” she said. “It made us stronger.”
“Yeah?” He sneered, gesturing at the cell behind her. “How do you explain this, then? You’re a prisoner.”
Her mouth turned up into a smile that leveled him like a scythe. “No.You’rethe prisoner,” she said, leaning close, her breath hot against his mouth. “And I’m going to break you out.”
ISLA
The next day, it was Grim who came to lead Isla out of her cell instead of a knight. He glanced coldly at Lark in the corner—she had been growing weaker by the hour and didn’t speak much anymore, which Isla might have been grateful for, if she still didn’t need the location of the starstick.
But first, she needed the feather. And only Grim could give it to her.
Wordlessly, he brought Isla to the room with the bath and the attendants with the blank stares. They bathed her and dressed her as usual. But before they had finished painting her face, she looked in the mirror, only to see Grim standing behind her. Studying her with narrowed eyes.
“What—”
“Out,” he said to the attendants, the word a brutal command.
When they didn’t immediately scatter, he bellowed, “OUT!”
They moved toward the door, but apparently not fast enough. Grim portaled them away in a flash of smoke.
