Her green eyes were wide as her emotions hit him like a battering ram.
Soul-shredding sadness. Bone-deep despair.
Lastly, and strongest of all...Love.
For him.
Impossible. Grim would never get close enough to a woman that she would care about him this way. She was a stranger. Why would she love him?
Then he felt something else. Herpowers. She was Wildling...andNightshade. And Starling. Somehow, she also had access to Sunling, Skyling, and Moonling abilities. There was only one way he could think of how...
“Do you know her?” A deep, resonant voice said from across the room. Grim turned to see a man who he recognized as Cronan, his ancestor. Grim knew he was in another world, the one in which the founders of Lightlark had once lived. But he couldn’t remember why. He searched his memories, brow furrowing. Had he really been working with Oro, his enemy, as well as the Skyling and Moonling rulers? They had wanted to bring someone back to their world...could it have been this woman?
No. She—although glaringly beautiful and disturbingly powerful—was a stranger.
“No,” Grim said.
At his response, sadness surged from the woman. Tears rolled down her flushed cheeks. Grim studied her, fascinated by the enigma of her.
That fascination only grew when he noticed what was around her neck. The diamond Infinite. How was that possible? Could it be an illusion of some kind, a trick? But he could feel the power that was radiating right at him. Had she claimed it? How?
“This woman is the reason your realm is facing ruin,” Cronan said. “She is in love with the Sunling king.”
Yes, that was what he suspected, after feeling her arsenal of powers. Then why was she looking at him this way? Why was she so sad?
Grim felt around for both Cronan and the woman’s emotions, trying to make sense of this situation. Cronan’s were almost nonexistent as if eroded by time, his aura a pulsing, near-colorless void. The woman was the opposite. She felt so much, she seemed to bleed with it. But right now, those emotions did not surge in defiance or outrage. She did not even try denying Cronan’s words. And she certainly was strong enough to ruin his realm.
Is that why Grim had come here? To stop her?
“That’s right,” Cronan said as if he could read Grim’s thoughts. And maybe he could. “She will be the end of you and everything our line has worked for. She tried to kill me, and you will be next.”
“Grim,” she said, andthat voice. It pierced right through him. If he hadn’t had a vise around his own emotions, he might have been moved by it. But he didn’t care about her. She shook her head against the lack of recognition in his gaze. “You know me,” she said, choking a sob.
He didn’t.
“Kill her,” Cronan said.
And Grim did what he always did—he eliminated any threat to his realm.
He unleashed a curl of daggers, sharpened into blades, right at her throat.
That diamond would behis.
Her eyes widened. That one look thrust him back in time, to when he had killed someone else with these same shadows. Someone he actuallyhadcared about. It was almost enough for him to call them back.
Almost.
A moment before the shadowblades struck, the woman lifted her arms, crossing them in front of her face—
And power exploded out of her in a surge that hit him straight in the chest. He was knocked back by the force of it, sliding across the room, until he hit the wall. He watched her look at him, her expression one of pure devastation, her aura soaked in it, before she shot up, breaking through what remained of the ceiling, and soaring into the glittering sky.
A second later, thunder rumbled. A storm had formed above them.
“Hunt her down, and bring back her corpse!” Cronan bellowed.
Grim peered over at him. Cronan was his ancestor, but Grim didn’t take orders from him.
Cronan’s eyes narrowed at his defiance. “She will be the end of you and all your people. Are you going to let her get away? When she wields that diamond? Only you can stop her.”
