She lifted a shoulder. “Even if it was the hundredth, I still think it would be the same. Us...always being both the curse and the cure for each other’s souls. The wound...and the stitches. Just because we’re always on opposite sides of fate.”
She didn’t know if she was making sense. Her mind was slipping, but she had to say this.
“But we used to wish for a world where we didn’t have crowns. Where we weren’t ever enemies. Where fate didn’t care if we loved each other. Where we weren’t each other’s downfall or ruin. Where...there were no prophecies. No stakes. Where we could just be the balm. Not the blade.”
Her eyes closed tightly as she remembered the illusion Cronan had shown. One of her futures. She didn’t want to hurt him.
She never wanted to hurt him.
“Our world has always viewed us as weapons. Only seeing the ways we can wound. But we can heal too...and we did. And wedo. Every time.”
She opened her eyes. Hand still grasped in his, he looked down at her. He was finished; her cuts were all closed. Yet he didn’t drop her hand or her gaze. She sat up on her knees to get closer to his level.
The damage to her head, from both Cronan and the knights, made her mind throb, made it difficult to find the words. Still, she managed. “You want to know why we fell in love? Not because we were lonely. But because we were hurt. And in each other...we found a cure.”
Isla didn’t breathe. Her whole world narrowed to the cool gray of Grim’s eyes as he held her gaze. They drifted closer. Closer. As if brought inevitably together by the gravity between them. Until their mouths were just inches apart. His fingers curled over hers.
Then, she was gone. Back in her cell.
Healed and still covered in blood.
ORO
Oro was so confident that Isla would find out the location of the portaling device that he set out for Nightshade. To get there from Lightlark, he would be flying for days. He knew, because he had made this exact same flight months prior. In order to seeher.
During that journey, the days had passed devastatingly slowly. He had been consumed with worry about Isla. How strange to think about that after everything that had happened recently. At least she had been onthis world. Now, Oro couldn’t even get to her, no matter how far he flew.
And she was trapped with the most powerful person who had ever lived.
Oro could almost feel her pain through their bond now, as if Cronan was hurting her. He tightened his hold on the threads between them.
And he saw a pool.
A shining, glittering, silver pool, right in his mind. Was Isla projecting this to him?
In the next instant, he saw the endless sea below him again. Nothing but rolling waves that stretched to the horizon. He flew through wispy clouds as the sun warmed his neck and back.
Just when Oro had started to believe he had imagined the pool, the ocean flattened, the waves stilling so much that it looked like a mirror. The water glistened silver and bright.
The pool.
He saw himself reflected in its surface, flying. He wasn’t alone...There was a woman with silver hair and eyes right next to him. Matching his pace as they soared through the sky.
He turned abruptly, but the air to his side was clear. Nothing for hundreds of miles.
A voice echoed in his mind, saying, “Oro Rey, king of Lightlark, you have been chosen by the pool.”
Oro blinked. The pool?
As if the woman heard his thoughts, she said, “The Pool of Possibilities.”
He looked down at the water again. A spot below him rippled, as if something had fallen into its center. And as the surface wobbled, the image it reflected transformed.
“You will have a choice to make,” the voice said. He couldn’t see the woman anymore, but he could feel her, could sense her power in the air around him.
“What choice?” he asked.
The woman didn’t answer, but the surface of the pool had settled into an image. A memory.
