They led him out of the room, escorting him to his room to rest.
Oro tried not to look at the threads on the floor, though he could hear them calling to him.
ISLA
Isla shivered against the cold, polished floor. She stared up at glimmering galaxies beyond the window, tears blurring the stars together.
For days now, it had been the same routine. A knight would drag her from her cell into this room. Cronan would pin her down, and his shadows would plunge into her head, crashing against the wall in her mind, trying to break through.
She could hear his steps ringing out as he approached her. Her heart raced instinctually, her body bracing for the pain. The tears were near constant now.
“For your own sake, let’s hope you’ve decided to let me in today.” His voice echoed around the room, rattling her tired mind.
“No,” she said, as firmly as she could, for her voice was the only thing she had left. After that first day, Cronan released his hold on her just enough so she could speak. She suspected it was because he enjoyed the sound of her screams.
“Then, breaking in it is...” he said.
“I cannot be broken,” she said. The words came out weaker than she intended.
He laughed. “Anything can be broken.”
Then, without warning, his shadows pierced her skull.
The feeling of his shadows crawling through her mind...it was worse than any physical torture. Worse than an arrow through the heart, worse than burning flesh, worse than being stabbed or starved beneath the ground.
And he was right. Anything could be broken. She knew that for certain when a stone in her wall finally came loose.
She could not keep him out forever. But she could choose what to show him.
She felt his surge in satisfaction as if it was her own, as his shadows felt that gap in her defenses. And plunged through it.
Isla gasped with pain, so sharp she couldn’t even form a sound, like a pike had been driven right through her skull.
Through the agony, her vision was replaced by memories. The ones she had allowed him access to.
She saw herself in the Wildling newland, training with Terra. Being cut to pieces. Injured. Locked away.
Cronan tutted in her mind. “A ruler...being commanded by a mere subject. How shameful.”
She watched as Terra threw down her double swords. As she raised her hands, about to collapse the entire forest atop Isla.
But instead of being crushed—
Isla knelt, grabbed the swords, and cut Terra’s head clean off.
She tensed, watching her guardian’s head hit the ground first, before being joined by her body.
That wasn’t what happened, he—
“That is what you should have done,” Cronan said. “Your teacher failed you.”
He wasn’t just shuffling through her memories. He wasreshapingthem. No—
The scene shifted, and Isla was on Lightlark, at the Centennial. The people of the agora were gawking at her. Whispering to each other. Looking upon her like she was a monster.
Instead of simply walking past them, red burning her cheeks, like she did at the Centennial, the powers Isla hadn’t realized were within her burst forth, and every one of those people were turned to ash.Screams filled the market. Roots were pulled from deep below the island’s crust, rising, shattering stone buildings. The ground rose like a wave, rippling, until the market was no more than a pile of ruin.
Isla watched as her own eyes glowed dark—almost black—and she smiled.
