“I know,” she whispered, grabbing grabbed Isla’s hands. “I didn’t either.” Her silver eyes gleamed. “I’m sorry that this is your burden to bear.”
Isla closed her eyes tightly before reopening them. “I’m sorry it was yours.” Seeing the other woman’s journey...it reignited Isla’s determination to keep going. To keep fighting against the darkness. Just as she had—and so many women before her.
“You have impossible choices to face. And I will try to make them easier for you.” She motioned toward the glistening water.
“What is it?” Isla asked. “Does it show the past?”
“Yes,” the woman said. “But so much more than that.”
From the water’s edge, Isla saw herself reflected in this single moment in time. She saw her dirt-crusted cheeks. Her unwashed hair. Dried blood along her temple, and a burn on her forehead, like Cronan’s shadows had left a mark.
Then, the pool seemed to break, like it was made of glass, fracturing into a thousand pieces. In each shard, Isla saw her own familiar face yet slightly changed. Each herself, but different.
“This is the Pool of Possibilities,” the woman said. “An ancient place that is only found by those who are chosen. Ask a question, take the plunge, and you will see how things might have been different.”
Isla didn’t know how walking through possible paths would help her in this situation. The woman seemed to guess at Isla’s reluctance, because she said, “You can only move forward once you have made peace with your past. This pool can provide that clarity.” She paused, gazing at Isla intently. “Sometimes the hardest journeys are the ones we face within ourselves. It can be dangerous, piercing that deeply into your soul. Often the truths revealed are not pleasant.”
Truth. Isla could never hear that word and not think of Oro.
“On the other hand...Some get lost in what could have been. Many have drowned in the pool, wanting to live in the past forever,” the woman continued. “You must have a strong enough reason to come back.”
Isla thought of Oro. Of Grim. Of Lynx, Wraith, her people, the people of Lightlark, the friends she had loved and lost. Of every single person she had left behind.
“I have a reason,” Isla said.
With one last squeeze of her hand, the woman gestured to the waters.
Here, in Isla’s mind, with this pool in front of her, she was in control.
With a brush of her hand, she was no longer in the tattered, filthy clothes and dirt-crusted boots she had been wearing since she arrived on this world. Her gossamer gown, plucked from her Wildling room, was as light as air and as green as the forest around them.
She dipped a bare foot into the pool, a shiver shooting up her leg, straight to her heart. She rested her foot fully onto the smoothed rocks below the water, then took another step. Another.
And she found that this wasn’t water at all. It was something strange, thick. Glimmering. As she waded through toward the center, her senses felt like they were coming alive in a way she didn’t have the words for. It wasn’t like anything she had ever felt before, even on Lightlark and Nightshade. The more she studied it, the more the pool revealed itself, becoming a color she had never considered. The rippling waves sounded like an instrument she couldn’t name. The water slid over her skin like a fabric she couldn’t describe.
Her dress billowed around her as she turned back to the woman. “You’ll have to submerge yourself,” the woman said.
Isla floated on her back, her gaze up at the night beyond the trees, and the pool held her with invisible hands.Peace. This was what eternal peace felt like. In her mind, the sky was all stars, dancing and forming patterns in the inky darkness. She studied them until her mind felt heavy. Until her body began to slowly sink into the water.
Until only her face was above the surface.
That’s when she felt a bolt run through her as if she had been struck by lightning. Isla seized, her blood ablaze.
And she was pulled down to the bottom.
ISLA
“Where’s my mother?”
Isla was eight years old. She blocked a blow with her sword, and she felt the impact in her teeth.
But the person in front of her wasn’t Terra. It was a man with pale skin and dark hair. He smiled as her blade met his, his eyes crinkling at the edges, and Isla recognized her exact grin on his face. She had only ever seen this man through Lynx’s eyes. Through his memories.
Her father.
“Your mother?” he said, his voice deep and warm. “She’s getting everything ready for tonight, remember?”
Isla did remember. Tonight was her turn to bond with her own creature. The thought made her chest constrict. She couldn’t imagine loving anything more than Lynx, who she had been riding since before she could walk. But the panther was her mother’s bonded, and Isla needed her own.
