His eyes went straight to her. There was no hesitation. No break in their gaze. It was as if he had known from the moment he had walked in exactly what she was—his. Some distant part of her head had known that he was hers.
Isla turned to the Grim next to her, and his gaze was glued to the scene. His eyes were narrowed, his hands in fists. Isla wondered how much time she had before he was wielding his shadows against her once again. Still, he watched. It was all she needed. Just a few moments.
The scene shifted as the Grim from the memory took Isla into his room. She was against the wall, her legs around his hips, not so different from how they had been just a few hours prior. Beside her, Grim swallowed.
He flinched as they both watched Isla stab a dagger into his chest.
The memory fell away, breaking into scattering leaves that swirled to make a new scene—
A slice of darkness cut through it, and Isla was thrown back, right through their memories. She landed on the floor of her Wildling room. She watched as past Grim forced the Isla of the memory up the wall with his powers, invisible shadows choking her.
The Grim before her did the same thing now.
Two Grims, of the past and present, stood side by side, and both Islas clawed at their throats, inches apart. Their gasps for air synchronized across time.
No. Grim was fighting this, fighting remembering. But that only meant that it wasworking.
And Isla was not the same woman she had been back then.
She growled and burst forth in a shot of energy, crashing into Grim. They rolled through the memory, the powers emanating off their clashing skin, until she managed to pull herself away and get to her feet. Grim was right behind her. He wasn’t going to stop and listen. He was resisting this. He wanted a fight.
Isla bared her teeth. One arm rippled in flames, crackling through the forest. The other wrapped in water from the dew of the woods, which she hardened into ice. “Fine. You want to duel? Let’s duel,” she said, as the scene around them shifted to the market.
And they both lurched forward.
Grim’s shadows became blades that shot toward her, and she blocked them with a wall of fire. She pushed the flames toward him, and he just managed to make himself matterless before he was burned. The fire kept going, roaring through the market memory, as they battled through it, surrounded by Nightshade guards as Grim of the past ordered them to take Isla to the prisons.
A wave of obsidian rushed toward her, choking her senses, but Isla raised her hand at the last moment—and those shadows froze. They fell to the ground and shattered in a thousand black pieces.
The scene transformed to the dark and dank prison on Nightshade, and Grim smirked, looking over at past Isla who hung from the ceiling by her wrists. “It seems you make a habit of being imprisoned.”
“And you make a habit of leering at me,” she shot back as they both watched him very noticeably study past Isla’s body in her plum dress.
Her Grim glared at her—then shot forward. But instead of his body crashing into hers, shadows emerged from his skin in the shape of him. One. Two. Then half a dozen, all surrounding her, blocking out the scene. He was using her own powers against her.
His voice echoed through the forest as he said, “This isn’t personal. I need to save my realm.”
Then, he attacked, the six forms closing in.
“And I need to save my husband.” Isla lifted her arms, and the full force of the forest was upon them, cutting those shadows into pieces with vines and thorns and jagged bark until they were no more than ribbons. The moment his shadows were destroyed, Grim was upon her again, a sword made of shadows rippling from his palm. She watched it calcify before her eyes. She flexed her hand and used her Starling energy to create a blade of sparks and stars.
She took her stance. He took his. For a moment, Isla’s heart broke with how familiar this felt—like they were back at the Centennial, during his first demonstration. But these were very different circumstances.
He charged forward, and she blocked his attack, sparks surging from her starsword. They dueled through the blacksmith’s woods, then through Creetan’s Crag. And as they battled through their memories, through their love story, Isla could see subtle changes in Grim’s expression as he watched past Isla dance, on that stage. As his former self pinned her against that wall. As he killed everyone in that room after one of them had hurt her, as he picked the glass out of her hands. Echoes of their past had bled into the present. He must have seen it. He must know that no matter how hard either of them fought it, they were inevitable.
It was working.
But it was only making him angrier. She grunted as he delivered a particularly brutal blow that sent her tumbling through the forest. She landed right next to his own body from the past, on the floorboards of her room. His pale skin was ravaged by dark markings. Injuries from dreks.
“I healed you. And you healed me,” she said as his shadows crashed against the starshield she summoned, propelling her farther across the floor. When she came to a stop, she turned and saw thatGrim was studying the scene before him—watching past Isla tend to his past self’s wounds with care.
“We healed together,” she said, rising to her feet, darting toward him, blocking yet another swing from his shadowblade. The colorful leaves of this forest flurried around them, before the scene settled into that cave with dragon fire roaring toward Isla, and the shadows Grim sent to stop it, saving her instead of claiming the sword.
Present Grim stared at the blade, clearly recognizing it as Cronan’s. But after a moment, he was streaking toward her again, weapon raised.
Their swords continued to meet, over and over and over, emitting high pitches of power and sparks every time they touched. Isla remembered what the silver-haired woman said about fated pairs. About souls that were meant to fall in love again and again.
“It never made sense,” she said, as they dueled through Isla’s bedroom, the first time they became one. “This love...it went against both our interests...” She slashed at his chest before ducking to swipe his legs, but he dodged her. “Yet...in the end...we chose each other. Over everything else. Every time.”
