I shake my head. “Everything is a false death on the island, remember? You die; you come back. And eventually, you die again. Wash, rinse, repeat. Day after day, year after year.”
Creed glares. “No one here will pity you, so stop trying.”
I roll my eyes. “Oh, fuck off.”
A low wind sweeps up the ridge, dragging a coil of gray fog with it, thick enough that it swallows my boots halfway to my knees. Something pale juts through the mist a few strides ahead—long, curved, too smooth to be stone. Bone. Lots of it. A whole stretch of the hillside littered with half-buried remains, some small, some the size of overturned canoes, but all pointed downhill like they crawled here to die.
“Where are we going?”
“Keep walking and keep talking,” Creed demands. “How does it work?”
I fight a smirk and nod. “It’s not poison, or maybe it is, essentially, but its very soil is cursed. The seed grows of that curse, and the flowers grow of those seeds. Basically it enters the system and eats the gifted from the inside out.”
“Eats?” Sinner grins, hands in his pockets.
“It doesn’t just kill,” I nod, stepping over a jagged chunk of bone half sunk in the hillside. “It eats. Slow. Methodical. First it slips into the veins, threads itself through every pathway it finds, like it’s mapping you. Then it starts digging deeper, past the blood, past the marrow. It goes after whatever makes you…you.” I tap my sternum once. “Your spark. Your core. Aka…”
“Your soul,” Legend completes, reaching out and pushing my hair from my face as he continues to walk beside me.
“Exactly.”
“Soul-eating is a fairy tale, even for the gifted.” Knight frowns. “There is no such thing. If there were, ifanyoneknew about it, it would be us. Not some outsider.”
An outsider who saved your sorry ass once upon a time.
“Why, because you’re big bad royals?” I look across them. “I’d bet there is a lot more out there than your little golden crested realm shows you. You’regifted. Royals, at that. You have powers, and a being that lives inside you. The possibilities are likely endless. For you more than any… But you’re closed off because you sit on your pretty velvet chairs and boss people around. So how could you possibly learn more,becomemore, if you just keep doing the same shit the Kings before you did?”
“Our father was a great king,” Sinner snaps.
“I’m sure he was, but I wouldn’t know, now, would I?”
Creed glares, but his head jerks toward Legend when he starts to stagger.
My arms shoot out to steady him, but Sinner gets there first.
Legend’s eyes close and he accepts his brother’s offered shoulder, pulling in a long breath.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Sinner beats me to the question.
Legend just shakes his head, a low, brittle laugh leaving him as he pushes off and shuffles to his own two feet again. “Nothing. I’m fine.” His ocean blue eyes find mine and he offers a small smile. “Keep going, monster.”
My eyes narrow but he tips his chin at me. “Isle’s Kiss,” he presses.
Right.
“Once the ‘poison’ finds what it’s looking for, it starts pulling.” I drag my fingers through the air, mimicking the motion. “One vein at a time, like it’s unraveling you from the inside out. You don’t notice at first—just a heaviness in your limbs, a little heatunder the skin. But then it’s like a pack of wolves are born inside you and they’re gnawing and clawing their way out. Your veins are ripped open on the inside and the blood starts leaking. First from the nose, then the eyes, then the mouth. Eventually, it pushes out everything it can reach. Even between the legs.” I smirk. “Not pretty. But satisfying to watch.”
All but Legend stare at me like I’ve sprouted a second head.
“What?” I shrug. “People killed me every day for sport. You get bored. You pick favorites. And when Isle’s Kiss took root in someone, it dragged on for hours. Plenty of time to watch them scream.”
Creed’s jaw locks. “How do you fight against it?”
“You run as fast as you fucking can and hope it didn’t already wrap its thorns around your heart. Because if it did…it’s lights out.”
He keeps running his mouth. “If it can be created, it can be destroyed.”
“Of course it can. The island’s enemy is its counterpart.” When they don’t guess, I give them the answer. “Fire.” I push forward, and their footsteps follow.
