When Isla didn’t respond, Cronan chuckled. “No?” She didn’t feel him scrummage through her mind, so she guessed he could read the defiance in her face.
“Tell me honestly,” he continued. “Would you prefer to be locked up and powerless, back in that room of yours...” Isla thought he was talking about her cell in his dungeons, but a new memory bloomed around them—one he had long ago plundered. The galaxy room disappeared and she was back on the Wildling newland, trapped and alone. She knew it wasn’t real, it was an illusion, but her heart hammered on instinct. “Or would you kill innocent people, just to free yourself?”
Isla frowned. She had her answer at the ready, but he waved her away before she could utter a single word. “A useless question,” he said, “considering you already made your choice. If you had just stayed in that room, a lot of people on your world would still be alive...”
True. But now Isla knew that many more would have died. But she didn’t dare think about how she knew, lest he break through her mind again.
“Why are you so loyal to a world that already thinks you’re a villain?” He seemed genuinely curious.
“Because it’s my duty,” she said. “It has been since the moment I was born.”
“No. It’s your duty torule.”
“I don’t think ruling means killing and controlling. I think it means helping your people. Sacrificing for them.”
His lips curved into a crooked smile like a shard of glass. “And is that what you’ve done, Isla? Helped your people?”
She didn’t drop his gaze, and he just hummed, taking another sip of his tea.
She took the opportunity to ask her own question. “Did you create nexus?” Remlar had told her as much, but she needed to hear it from Cronan.
He seemed mildly surprised by that. “Not as a concept. But I’m the one who tied rulers to their subjects.”
“Why?”
“I did the same to the heads of my planets. It’s easier to rule one person whose life impacts thousands, or millions...and easier to kill them, too.”
Isla swallowed. For some reason, when Cronan had outlined killing everyone in her world, she had imagined an invasion. A war. But Cronan didn’t have to kill thousands. He didn’t have to slaughter entire realms. He just had to kill their leaders.
“What does Horus have to do with it?” she asked. The rebels on Lightlark had been convinced Oro’s death would end nexus. Remlar had all but confirmed it too.
“His line was afflicted with the original nexus curse,” he said. “I simply borrowed from it. His family was not always so noble...”
Curses were a Nightshade power, though. Was Oro’s family cursed by another Nightshade? By another power altogether?
She was knocked from her thoughts by Cronan’s next question. “Have you ever seen a silver pool?”
Her teacup paused on its way to her mouth. It was just a momentary stutter before her lips pressed against the warmed porcelain. She kept her expression flat and calm as she took a sip and went to put the cup down. She had just convinced herself that he hadn’t noticed when his shadows burst forth, striking her straight in the center of her mind. She dropped the cup and heard it shatter, but she couldn’t see anything. Her vision had turned black, like a light suddenly extinguished.
In the deepest corner of her brain, a part he hadn’t breached yet, she could almost see it. Silver, glimmering like a star. The water seemed to slither away from his shadows, deeper into her head, as if hiding.
Cronan pushed harder, carving more of her mind, his shadows like an arrow intent on going right through the back of her skull.
She scrambled to build up her wall. To make him believe he had reached the back of her head, when in actuality, he hadn’t. She knew he didn’t suspect she could do that.
So, when he reached it, she felt his disappointment sear through her.
“No. I’ve never seen a silver pool,” she replied.
It was like he didn’t hear her, or he didn’t care. She could feel him clawing through her mind, shredding as he went, and she had never seen him so hurried. So desperate. She felt his anger grow, flamingthrough her skull, his power pressing against bone. The pressure had her screaming. She thought her eyes would burst.
But it was useless. He found nothing.
He ripped out of her mind, and she fell forward onto the table, hands landing onto the teacup shards. Her palms bled, crimson mixing with the hot tea. She panted, gasping for air, her pulse so fast, her heart rattled her ribs.
Cronan frowned down at her, lip curled back, every air of civility gone from his demeanor. She knew he had a reason to keep her alive, to convince her to align with him. His obsession with the silver pool had overshadowed everything.
“Take her away,” Cronan said, and two knights swept into the room. They grabbed her beneath each shoulder. Her body felt boneless as they dragged her through the halls. Her head lulled. Her vision blurred.
