I kick off my ragged shoes, the dust and rocks digging into the soles of my feet as I take in a deep inhale of home air. “Fine. But only because I know where I’m going.”
Despite the pain, I start following the large—demon?—since I need a minute to gather my thoughts.
Silence.
Goosebumps raise across my skin as my senses peak on high alert.
The island has never been silent. Everywhere you go on Exile you hear the cries of death, the screams for help, or the laughter from whoever is causing it.
I slow to a stop. Trees spill out in front of me, the obvious carve from the track that leads you right down to the main road. Fromup here, you can see the sculpted ragged rocks that make Exile Island. Thank God that hasn’t changed since I’ve been gone. A bitterness I don’t expect sweeps over me, and I swallow past the sour feeling sinking in my gut.
Like the spine of a sleeping dragon, each peak of mountain looks like a vertebra carved from black stone and volcanic glass. The cliffs drop in jagged wings, folded against a sleeping dragon’s side as if it’s been slumbering here for centuries, waiting.
Of course that’s not true. Nothing of the sort is ever the size of this island, not even dragons, but that’s just how Exile looks. Widow’s Peak is a perfect ridge of a long skull and eye sockets dark and hollow, watching over the restless sea with a mouth that opens for the entrance of the caverns where the dragons sleep.
The demon continues walking, his boots crunching against loose shale. Red eyes glance back at me, patient but expectant.
Rolling my eyes, I continue forward, squashing every thought of Legend and his bullshit family that I just discovered.
The forest swallows us whole.
One step past the tree line and the temperature drops. Shadows writhe between twisted trunks and branches reach like skeletal fingers. No birds. No insects. Just the whisper of leaves that shouldn’t move in windless air.
My feet crunch over something hard. Probably bone. I don’t look down, keeping my focus on the back of this horned beast, just in case he decides to—I don’t know—turn around and fucking eat me.
Wouldn’t matter, obviously, I’d just come back and return the favor.
I trail my fingers along rough bark as I pass, and the tree shudders. Not in fear—in recognition. Like greeting an old friend. The path opens before me, shadows peeling back to letme through.
You’re home,the Island seems to say,where you belong.
Unlike the War Room, with its polished floors and crystal chandeliers. Unlike Rathe University, with its marble halls and students who looked at me like I was dirt on their expensive boots.
Unlike anywhere he tried to make me fit.
The dress catches on a branch. I rip it free, relishing the sound of fabric tearing. Let it shred. Let every piece of that night fall away until there’s nothing left but me and this goddamn island that never pretends to be anything other than what it is.
Violent. Hungry. Real.
Trees thin ahead, darkness giving way to flickering torchlight.
We emerge onto Main Street, if you can call it that. More like a strip of cottages and caves, each one bleeding firelight from gaps in rotted wood. Music drifts from a lone tavern, all drums and screaming strings. Something’s wrong, though.
No one is killing each other. There’s no blood splatter being sprayed across my face.
You were never my mate.
I bare my teeth at the memory. Fuck. I’m going to cut him from my brain if it’s the last thing I do.
Exiled move across the pathway, between the thick bush that hides the ocean and the dusted path. But they don’t act with the careless violence I grew up on. They act with purpose.Together. Lashing timbers into frames, tying handmade ropes, and shaping driftwood…into walls?
They’re…building.
“What the fuck?” I whisper out loud, forgetting all about the beast ahead of me.
They’re building a house. Not just some thrown-together shelter. It’s got real structure—actual walls, lifted off the ground like it’s meant for something. Or someone.
Exiles—the same bastards who’ve spent my whole damn life trying to gut one another before breakfast—are working side by side. No screaming. No blood. Just the steadythunkof stone meeting wood. Their movements so in sync it’s like they’ve been doing this for years.
