“Where are you taking us?” she said, her voice rough and hoarse.
They didn’t even glance at her.
“Do you serve Cronan?”
Isla noticed the slight tightening of one of the captors’ shoulders. Still, they all remained silent.
“What is that around your neck?”
Silence.
“Do you—”
Lark clicked her tongue. “My line certainly devolved over time. Coming to another world without a single plan...”
Isla flashed her teeth at her. “My goal was to get you far away from my world,” she spat. “This is where you’re from. You’re home.” Isla’s eyes dipped to the still gaping chest. “It seems you’re not welcomed here.”
Lark said nothing. She just looked at Isla as if she was a fool with no idea what she had walked into.
Cronan, Lark, and Horus—the original Nightshade, Wildling, and Sunling founders of Lightlark—had escaped this world to build a better one. They had taken their people with them.
Only now did Isla wonder what, exactly, they had been escaping.
Had Cronan turned this place to ruin after he had returned? Or had this been why they fled in the first place? Why had the others taken Cronan with them?
Lark knew the answers to these questions. Of course, she did—she had been there. But Isla knew she wouldn’t tell her. Lark only smirked, as if she could sense Isla’s thoughts.
“So young. So reckless,” Lark said. “Solving one problem by creating an even greater one.”
Isla had a retort on her tongue when she felt something hit the top of her head with a force that made her jolt. An attack? No. A cool droplet of water slipped right between her brows.
Rain.
She slowly lifted her head to the sky, only to see that its color had abruptly darkened into violet and blue, closer to the sky back home. Other parts were purple and green. The rain picked up slowly, wiping her face clean of the dust that had coated it. She opened her mouth and nearly cried as the fresh water smoothed down her throat.
Though rain was a welcomed sight in a place like this, Isla knew something was very wrong. Because these scavengers had defended their loot for days. Against creatures. Against other scavengers.
But at the first sign of the sky turning, they abandoned their cart and prisoners—and ran.
The weather was intensifying into a storm. Isla could feel its energy, just as she felt the force of the ones that had formed over Nightshade. This tempest, though...it was infinitely stronger.
And though the storms on Nightshade—brought in from Skyshade and filled with shademade metal—had leeched her powers...the ones here seemed to have the opposite effect.
Her abilities awoke, one by one, and it felt better than the sip of water in the desert. It felt like sinking into a cold pool. It felt like she could finally fully breathe. She groaned, stretching out her fingers. She could feel her blood igniting, her strength returning.
She wasn’t the only one.
Lark laughed, long and slow. She straightened, flexed her hands—and broke through the rope. As the sky began to shift, she rolled her shoulders back, and her chest healed before Isla’s eyes.
Lark turned to Isla, gaze blazing. “You really should have stayed buried,” she said. She lifted an arm over her head.
Above, a storm portal opened, as if called to her power. Through the swirling clouds, it looked like a window to another world completely, one with an endless stretch of enormous trees. A thick forest of towering pines.
Lark made a fist—and sent it all hurtling down toward Isla.
GRIM
Now that these bastards weren’t being drowned, they werescreaming. Grim guessed it was the first time they could, for possibly centuries.
