The Lightlark Saga
by Alex Aster

In this series by Alex Aster, there are six different realms, all with their own magical skills: Sunling, Skyling, Moonling, Starling, Wildling, and Nightshade.

Five-hundred years ago, a curse was cast, completely breaking the already fractured people of Lightlark apart. Now, every hundred years, the rulers of the realm come together to try to solve the riddle that will break the curse. But this year, something is different.

See all of her work at asterverse.com

Spoilers coming at you... By the time Grim was seven, he could barely call a shadow, only managing it when he was desperate. He was not allowed to talk or be friendly with any of his half siblings, they would later have to fight to the death to see who would become heir - as soon as the youngest was old enough. There’s not much time before that day comes. His sister Laila doesn’t care about the rules though. One year older than Grim, she already has command of the shadows and is the only one of their father’s kids to have a flair. She can become a bat. She even tore out a man’s throat once; it only made their father like her more. She and Grim often sneak out together and are often caught. Whenever that happens, she turns into a bat and flies away, leaving Grim to be punished alone, and she doesn’t feel sorry about doing it. He knows, because he has the rare gift to read the emotions of others. Maybe that should make Grim upset, but it just makes him admire her. She is never punished for breaking the rules and she is clearly their father’s favorite. Everyone expects her to win the Gauntlet and rule Nightshade one day. Grim wishes he could save her from that life of loneliness, but she wants to become the next ruler. Tonight, she sneaks them out of the winter palace and takes him to see the sky. It looks unnatural tonight with the stars swirling together. She is great at eavesdropping in her bat form and had heard it only happens once every fifty years. Grim thinks it’s beautiful. Laila tells him about the Infinite and points out the island the diamond is supposed to be hidden on. She eventually falls asleep and Grim carries her back. They’re caught by Guardian Asa; Laila wakes up and flies away. Asa pulls Grim inside to punish him. Everyone at the palace hates him, considers him a liability. At least Laila has said she will make his death quick when she kills him. Asa whips Grim until he almost passes out from blood loss and is carried to his room. They put him on the floor. When he wakes up, he wants to check on Laila. Maybe this time was different and she was punished too. But his door is locked from the outside. He has always felt trapped but right now, he feels it more than ever. He has to get out. He panics and suddenly, he is on the beach. He realizes that he must have a flair after all. The same flair that Cronan had. No one can know about this. If it gets back to his father, his father will want Grim as his heir. No. He will keep this his secret, and he will die with no one else knowing. It takes him hours, but he manages to portal back to his room. For five years he doesn’t use the power. But as the Gauntlet creeps closer, he wants to see the world before he dies. He starts to portal. To the mountain, the village. He has candy. Three days before the Gauntlet, his new Guardian named Sorsa tells him not to drink the tea. She’s actually nice to him, unusual for his Guardians. A bunch of his siblings die that day from poison one of his other siblings slipped in the tea. Laila visits that night and asks how he wants to die. She will miss him. She wishes he could stay. He decides to portal away from Nightshade that night. Not to leave, just to see what else is out there, but it’s treason either way. When he’s done visiting all the other realms, he is barely strong enough to make it back to Nightshade. He winds up in the garden before giving up and walking to his room. He wakes up to screaming. His door is locked again, so he portals out to the hallway where he sees the bodies of his siblings. His father is holding Laila by the neck. He knows Grim’s secret. Someone must have seen him in the garden yesterday and that was why his door was locked this morning. It was a test. He tells Grim to kill Laila but Grim will not do it. Their father releases Laila, who doesn’t hesitate. She becomes a bat and aims for Grim’s jugular. As soon as she touches him, his shadows really unleash themselves. He has no control over it; it lashes out at Laila and kills her. In his grief, his power unleashes again and turns the bodies of his siblings to ash. That night, Sorsa gives him a cup of hot chocolate. He hates his father, but he has to make this loss mean something. He decides that he will make his father proud as well. He becomes his father’s greatest weapon. His pain is infinite. As is his power now. Twenty years later and Nightshade is now at war with Lightlark. Grim’s father never comes out, Grim leads their army. He’s called ruthless, cruel. They’re not wrong. The other army is led by the Sunling king’s second son. He gives rousing speeches and his people fight not out of fear but of love for their people and land. Imagine. Grim tells his father it’s time to go for the Sunling king. That night, his father kills the king and his wife. Grim sees him and realizes why his father hasn’t fought at all. He’s weak - he can barely stand. Grim portals him away as the Sunling prince advances. He almost let the prince kill his father, but then Grim would have to rule. The prince is good, but Grim is better. But when the prince’s emotions wash over Grim, his grief opens up what Grim has painstakingly hidden away. And hiding the pain of killing Laila has not made it shrink but grow. He’s overwhelmed and the prince nearly kills him. He’s forced to portal away, but they both know that Grim lost that fight. Grim asks his father why he’s so weak. The king has been cursed by trying to take the Infinite. Grim is so tired of war and convinces his father to surrender to focus on finding a cure for now. The king does just that, turning Grim in as his bargaining chip. Grim is imprisoned on Lightlark as one of the terms of the treaty. Grim stays in the cell for years, his only visitor the Sunling prince, Oro. They started by hating each other, then not quite hating each other, then they went on a wild adventure together to save a child, and ended by being friends. Grim is moved to a room in the palace and though he is not liked, some people don’t mind being near him. It’s the most freedom he’s ever had and he’s almost happy. He has women for the night; he never sees them again. It’s the same for the Wildling woman who comes and demands he bring her a flower that grows on Nightshade. He does it and never sees her again. He hasn’t portaled to see his father in years. Then one day, he hears screaming just like the day his siblings were killed. He leaves his room and sees Skylings falling from the sky. Oro is there, crouched next to the girl they saved together. He thinks Grim caused this curse. Their friendship ends then. Grim portals to his father, who also did not lay the curse. He tells Grim that he killed the Prophet while Grim was gone and learned that the time has come for Grim to rule. He will claim the Infinite. He will bring Cronan’s bloodline back and rule them all. He hands Grim his crown and Grim portals his father to Lightlark. His father is dead by the end of the day. The last thing he told Grim was that these curses were brought about by love. Love kills kingdoms. He advised Grim to kill his heart. Nearly five hundred years later, Grim is again being told that he needs an heir. It’s not the first time, but it’s more important now that the dreks have been breaking through into Nightshade. If something happened to him, the entire realm would perish and everything he’s lived through would be for nothing. He has never wanted anything to do with the traditions he grew up with, but he agrees this time so he can have an heir. And as soon as he sees the women lined up waiting for him to choose one of them, everything changes. One of the women has an aura around her feelings so vibrant that he can’t look away. He chooses her and takes her to his own room, which he’s never done. He kisses her, which he’s never done. And he understands that she is a curse he will never forget, an addiction. Then she stabs him in the chest. He sees a flash of silver on her thigh as she runs from him and disappears. And all of a sudden, he realizes what he’s been missing in his empty life. Everything. He is healed but he keeps the scar as a reminder, and he grows angry at the woman. How dare she? When he finds out she was a Wildling, it all makes sense. She used her temptress powers - that’s why he acted that way. But he’s never seen a power like his own, like when she disappeared. He once made a relic with his power for his general who later went missing. That relic must have made its way to her. He tracks her down and watches her for days. She’s young, and she almost seems like she’s trapped herself. He wants to stop watching her, but he needs to find the relic first. He watches her again but this time he reveals himself. The woman feels a surge of remorse for stabbing him. But she isn’t afraid of him. Not when he puts a knife to her throat or pins her with his power. Instead, she stabs him again - this time in the thigh. He leaves but he will be back. When he returns, she isn’t in her room, and he searches it for the relic. When she returns, her room is destroyed. She panics and runs directly to the relic that is hidden in the floorboard. Bingo! He comes out and suddenly she is scared. Not of Grim but of losing the relic. He feels her loneliness and he lets her keep the relic. He hasn’t felt the Wildling curse around her, nor has he seen her eat a heart. Could she not have the curse? His general had a flair that made him immune to curses. Did his general not die, but betray him? Could this Wildling be his daughter? Grim takes blood to the auger. She may not be cursed but she has cursed him for sure. That’s why he can’t stop thinking of her. But the auger says he’s not cursed by anything new. Grim has stopped trying to create an heir after Isla was easily able to infiltrate his castle. His people are losing the battle with the dreks. The sword that Grim’s general was looking for with the relic is Cronan’s sword. It’s supposed to be able to control the dreks. Since the general never returned, Grim’s search for the sword has slowed dramatically. And if the general had not betrayed him, she would not exist. Grim feels mix of emotions at the thought. Happiness and anger. Grim’s counselors are getting more nervous that he isn’t even trying to make an heir, but he can’t stop thinking about her. And then she appears in his bathroom. She’s brought him a healing tonic, but he doesn’t want it. He wears the scar she gave him as a reminder. She would like to not be enemies but again, he’s not interested. She offers to duel him for it. If she wins, they’ll meet at the Centennial with no animosity between them. If he wins, she will never return to Nightshade. They fight in the woods where she holds her own and traps his feet in a sand pit. But he still wins, pulling her close to his chest with his knife to her heart. He feels a spark of desire within her, but it is nothing compared to his own. He tells her never to come back to his realm. But he can’t stay away from hers. He portals to Wildling to watch her while hiding in the shadows. He watches her dance, notices her loneliness. He knows now she’s part Nightshade, but he never sees her use any powers. She reminds him of his own youth. For a second he loses control over his shadows, and she sees him before he flees. She’s trouble, that has never happened to him. The dreks are coming through every few days. The only thing to help is Cronan’s sword. But there is a reason that Grim needed his general to find it. The sword is cursed so that any of Cronan’s descendants who hold it will die. His general could have broken that curse with his flair. He could ask the Wildling, who has her father’s flair, but there’s a chance it could kill her. When she portals to his realm again after being explicitly told not to and is thrown into a cell, he visits her. She wants the relic back that was taken from her when she was captured. He will return it to her if she helps him. They start their search and the blacksmith confirms what Grim thought about Isla’s ability to break the curse. After fighting dreks to exhaustion, he portals to Isla’s room but she’s not there. He can hear her Guardian yelling at her down the hall about her stupidity and carelessness. It reminds him of his own Guardians. He finds Isla and her ankle is injured. On her way back to her room, he helps her to brace it with his shadows. The Guardians have sealed her window, the one she could use to sneak out. Isla cries on the floor until she falls asleep. He lifts her to her bed and watches over her the whole night. They continue the search two weeks later when her ankle is healed. They track down thieves who may have seen the sword. Grim stays away from her as much as he can but can’t get her out of his head. He even calls women to spend the night with, but he sends them away. Isla shows up in his room bleeding and he portals to her room to get her healing elixir and helps her bandage herself up. He sits next to her and explains how pain can be useful. He tells her about his own barbaric training. When she asks about his lack of scars and guesses that he has Mooning help, he tells her she should leave. She gets upset but she goes. That night, he has to see her. He’s worried she may keep bleeding. But she’s fine when he sees her, already sleeping. She wakes up when he sits in the chair next to her bed. She explains that she didn’t mean to come to his castle the first day, when she stabbed him in the chest. The relic had taken her there. He comes back the next day to teach her how to use the relic. He teaches her as much as he can and then he does the same in swordplay. He asks Astria to find Isla a dress for the Cretan’s Crag celebration. When he sees her in it, he almost loses his mind. She’s dressed in Nightshade colors, and he can’t help but think that she looks like she could be his wife. Nightshade rulers don’t take wives. He’s never had a thought like that before. He’s consumed by jealousy as other people get to see her in that dress and he wants to claim her as his but instead, when they finish what they came to do, he portals her to her room and pushes her away from him. He’s obsessed with her and it takes everything in him not to give in to his borderline treasonous thoughts and make her just as obsessed with him. He stays away for a month. Partly because he’s exhausted from fighting dreks. Partly for other reasons. Then Astria finds Isla in his room. By the time he portals there, she’s gone. He’s torn between finding Isla because he wants to see her and not finding her because he wants to see her. He wonders if she is in trouble - and then he feels the dreks break through the seam. He hesitates for just a minute on whether to go to the dreks or after her before feeling intense shame. When he gets to the battlefield, he sees dead men he may have been able to save if not for that moment of hesitation. When the battle is done, he returns to his room and a portal opens. But it isn’t Isla, it’s a man. Isla was in the night market investigating the sword herself and now is surrounded by a group of men who are hurting her. Grim kills them all before picking her up and taking her to his room. He picks broken glass out of her skin and takes care of her wounds. She tells him she knows where the sword is. They just need to figure out how to beat the beast guarding it. The next day they face the cave with the dragon guarding it. They can see the sword but as soon as Isla gets too close, arrows shoot at her. The cave is boobytrapped. One arrow hits her in the thigh, but Grim protects her with his own body and takes the other twelve arrows in his chest. Now it’s her turn to take care of him. They walk far enough away (he can’t use his power close to the sword or it will disappear again) and he portals them to his room. She pulls the arrows out and tends to his wounds. They go back to the cave repeatedly, and repeatedly he tries to protect her, but they both end up getting injured. The latest day, he pours a bath and includes a Moonling potion that will help heal and prevent scarring. He invites Isla to sit with him in the bath and she does. When he’s around her, he feels again. And it doesn’t feel wrong to do it. But he fights it still and leaves her in the bath alone before he can second guess himself. There’s a ball in Nightshade to boost morale (it’s getting low with all the dreks), but Grim tells Isla she cannot come. He’s bored the entire time he’s at the ball, until she shows up anyway. He should have known. He watches rapt as a man gives Isla a drink and dances with her. Leads her off the ballroom floor. Grim is gripped by jealousy but does nothing. If this is what she wants, then he will let her have it - as much as he hates it. Then he catches a glimpse of Isla in the hall - her neck and face have turned red. He realizes that she’s been poisoned. The man gave her a paralytic so he could have his way with her. Grim stabs the man in the stomach but doesn’t kill him. Grim will make him pay later. He gives Isla the antidote and they get into a little spat. Isla says she hates him and he will never be in her bed. Grim disagrees. One day she will beg for his hands to be on her. He fights the dreks again but this time one gets the better of him while he was distracted by imagining a future with Isla. He portals to her - so he can see her before he dies. He asks for the Wildling elixir and passes out. He wakes up in his own bed with her nearby, she healed him. He finally tells her about the dreks and why he needs the sword. She asks him more questions and guesses that he was trying for an heir the night they met, though he says he no longer is. He tells her how Nightshade rulers don’t have spouses, don’t even sleep with the same person twice. He never knew his mother, they do not help raise the heirs. She says that must be very lonely and he disagrees. He’s never been lonely in his life; he knows he’s lying as he says it. She wonders if he wasn’t lonely because he never knew what it was like to have someone to miss. That hits too close to home. He insists that love is a weakness and he will not be its fool. He cherishes the time they are together even as he becomes Isla’s shield and takes wound after wound for her, trying to get to the sword. As he patches himself up one day, she asks what someone else’s emotions feel like and he gets honest. He nearly kisses her again, but he doesn’t. He walks away but that night he whispers the truth to her as she sleeps. If he had any right to happiness, it would be with her. She whispers his name. The next time he sees her, she asks him to kiss her. He is nearly there when he feels the dreks rip through the scar and he has to leave. He thinks about her as he fights. He always thinks about her. When he returns to his room, she’s waiting for him. She wanted to make sure he was okay and she finally asks him to touch her. They have a plan to get past the dragon, and they train in a special room made by Grim. He will lure the dragon out and Isla will get past the obstacles. When she can beat the room, she wants to celebrate by going to a Skyling festival. He begrudgingly takes her and faces his fear of heights to be in a hot air balloon with her. She drinks a bit and he portals them to her room, but he convinces her just to sleep next to him. He doesn’t want the wine to cloud her judgement. He decides to tell her the truth. That claiming the sword will probably kill her. But when he sees her, he can’t. They look for something in the market to distract the dragon with. Afterward, Grim scours the library for a way to save her but finds nothing. Either she dies claiming the sword or his realm and everyone in it is destroyed by the dreks, or when he dies fighting them. He can’t let that happen. Not even for her. He must go through with the plan. They go to the cave, and the dragon comes after him, chases him while Isla goes through the traps. But then Grim hears a new sound and realizes it must be a trap they hadn’t accounted for. Now the dragon is running toward Isla. He runs too, trying to get there first. The dragon prepares to breathe fire and Grim realizes that he would choose to save her over everyone else, every time. He portals to save her and as soon as he reaches for his power, the sword disappears. He takes Isla to her room and leaves without talking. He needs to think about what he’s done. But when he does, he’s not sorry. He doesn’t feel guilty at all for saving her. When he returns to her, she’s furious. But he tells her that things have changed. His realm does need the sword, but he will always pick her. She begins to tell him her secrets but there’s no need. He already knows that she isn’t subject to the curses and can’t use power. Then they finally have sex. They spend every night together. Isla finds Wraith and the dragon starts living in Grim’s room. And then Isla finds the sword. She asks what he needed to tell her before, the thing he didn’t get to finish. He thinks she already knows. She says she never wants to see him again and he leaves, he can’t say no to her. Then the scar rips open worse than ever before - next to a village. He can feel how bad it is and has no illusions that he will survive this battle. Both he and his realm will die today. He takes Wraith to Isla’s room and tells her what he’s about to do. He also tells her that she changed his life, and he will find her in the next life. He will always find her. She wants to go fight with him and he calms her. He tells her she can come, but he’s lying. He won’t let her put herself at risk, he takes the relic with him so she can’t follow him. The sky is filled with dreks. He thinks of her as he fights, filling the last moments of his life with her. Then he feels her there. If she portaled here it means that she used his flair. This feeling he didn’t know how to describe must be love. He reaches out with his power to portal here back to her room but a drek puts its talons through his chest. Isla screams his name as she finally accesses her power. But she uses her pain to reach too far, she explodes like Grim did when he killed Laila. She uses everything up and she dies just as he reaches her. He begs her to stay, he can still feel just a little sliver of her power. He ties his own life to hers. She wakes up and he explains what he’s has done. They share a life now. She’s stunned, but he explains that his life is nothing without her anyway. After a few days of ruminating, she tells him that she loves him, and he responds that love is not anywhere strong enough to explain how he feels. He asks her to marry him and she says yes. They pushed the wedding date a couple of times but now it’s finally time. Grim has told Astria everything and she serves as their witness; she will also make sure that Grim’s court gets on board with his marriage… or else. Grim and Isla say their vows and they bind themselves fully to each other.

Grim

Lightlark

All the spoilers ahead... When the inhabitants of the island of Lightlark were cursed, the leaders of each realm took a few of their people and left the island, except for the Sunling ruler who stayed on the island as King of Lightlark. Until the prophecy that will break the curse is fulfilled, the island disappears in a terrible storm, reappearing every one-hundred years for one-hundred days only, giving the rulers a chance to break the curse before disappearing again. Isla (isss-la, not eye-la) Crown, the ruler of the Wildlings, has a starstick that allows her to travel great distances in seconds, and no one knows she has it. If they, her guardians (Poppy, her charm teacher and Terra, her fighting teacher) would take it from her. In fact, Isla has been kept enclosed in her rooms with no one but Poppy and Terra for company, for the safety of everyone around her. She isn’t even allowed to speak to her own people, the Wildlings. Since the curse of Lightlark was cast, Wildling people must eat hearts to survive, and they kill anyone they fall in love with. Since girls have always been more prevalent and there is so much death involved with their curse, the Wildlings have become a mostly female, warrior society. Now it’s time for the Centennial to start, and Isla must travel to Lightlark alone. She promises to follow the orders of Terra and Poppy during the Centennial, to use their strategy to try to break the curse, and then goes through a portal to the island. She takes her starstick with her. Isla is the first ruler to appear, quickly followed by Grimshaw, or Grim, of Nightshade. Nightshade has not been invited to any Centennial before this year, they can spin curses and are a prime suspect of who cast the curse. Seems like the other rulers are getting desperate in order to invite Grimshaw this year. Azul of Skyling shows up next. Both Azul and Grim were alive when the curse was cast five-hundred years ago and have ruled their realms since then. Cleo of Moonling comes next, the oldest of them all, not that she looks it. Last to portal through is Celeste of Starling. The island of Lightlark used to be the home of all these peoples, each claimed its own area of the island with the Mainland in the center, where they all gathered and where Lightlark royalty lived. There’s a castle on the Mainland where the Sunling ruler, and King of Lightlark, lives. The Sunling ruler also happens to be the last Origin and can wield the powers of all the realms still inhabiting Lightlark: Sunling, Starling, Skyling, and Moonling. The realms of Wildling and Nightshade have completely left Lightlark, and so he has no powers from those realms. He’s also said to be paranoid. The five rulers go to the palace and are met by a personal attendant for each of them, Isla’s is a Starling girl. She is taken to her rooms, where the girl stokes the fire even though it’s already warm, explaining that the king has commanded the fires be kept burning at all times. After the Starling, the Starling ruler, Celeste, shows up to Isla’s rooms. Turns out, she and Isla know each other already. When Isla had found the starstick in her mom’s things five years ago, it had eventually taken her to Celeste, and the two of them became friends. Both of them young women, rulers, and desperate to end the curse for their people. Celeste’s curse may be the worst of them all, all Starling die by the time they turn twenty-five years old. Celeste only visits a moment before returning to her own room, they want to keep their friendship a secret from the others. Isla goes to her balcony to sing and is surprised by someone on their own balcony a few yards away, she falls off the balcony and down to the ocean below. She wakes up soaking wet and choking on salt water, but safe on her own balcony and alone. The person who scared her must have done so and then left. But why would they bother saving her at all? When the curse was laid, the six rulers of the realms killed themselves to provide their heirs with a prophecy that would instruct them on how to break the curse. Their deaths fueled power to their realms which made the Centennial possible at all, otherwise the island would constantly be consumed by a terrible storm which cannot be traveled. The prophecy the heirs were given has three parts. 1. The six realms must be joined in some way. 2. The original offense will be committed again. 3. A ruling line must come to an end, meaning that one of the rulers must die. Only then will one of the six rulers win, and the curses will be broken, which honestly seems like a win for all of them. So why would someone save Isla? Seems like an easy way to fulfill a portion of the prophecy. Isla goes to dinner, still recovering from her near death, and realizes that the person who saved her is the King of Lightlark, Oro. At dinner she is served a heart, as a Wildling should be, but asks to have it sent to her room out of respect of the others. Turns out, she was born without the curse, or the power, of Wildling. It’s part of the reason she was locked away and kept in seclusion, so no one would know. Terra and Poppy believe that Isla has no power because her mother fell in love but failed to kill the man. Instead, he killed her only minutes after Isla was born. I’m sorry, is this curse not compulsory? Because Isla has no power, she cannot infuse her realm with power, and it is dying. More than that, she has no power to draw in at the Centennial, making her easy prey. And if she dies without an heir, her realm and all of its people die with her. The next morning, the rules of the Centennial are laid out. Assassinations may not be attempted until halfway through. On day twenty-five, they’ll be paired up. You cannot kill your partner, ever. No matter how much you may want to. Each ruler must attend all the events. And none of the rulers may have an heir. Isla befriends her attendant, Ella, by giving her a healing ointment for Ella’s injured leg, and Ella agrees to bring her food daily. Then Isla goes to the agora, the city center, and runs into Grim on the way. A few decades before the curse, Nightshade and Lightlark had gone to war. Grim had been one of Nightshade’s fiercest warriors then. Lightlark had won and a treaty brokered between the two, but there are still some hard feelings between the two realms. Grim’s father had been the ruler of Nightshade when the curse fell. Grim and Isla walk to the agora together and Grim tells her he can read flashes of emotion. She asks if he has a flair, a rare power that is not attributed to their realm. He does, but he doesn’t tell her what it is. But it’s not mind reading, or anything else he could use on her without her knowing. The two go to a chocolate shop, then to the tailor where Isla gets a new wardrobe started. She also asks the tailor to make her clothes she can fight in, and armor. Grim recommends she get a weapon as well. Isla and Celeste have a plan to break the curse, the bondbreaker. Celeste had read about it in a book, it can break any bond… including a curse. It demands blood in order to work, enough to kill someone, so they want to split the cost between them and hope that it breaks their curses but doesn’t kill them. But they have to find it first, it’s supposed to be in a library. Each ruler gets to plan a trial, called a demonstration, designed to test the other rulers. Grim’s trial is first, a duel. He gives them an hours’ notice and invites all of Lightlark to watch. No wonder he recommended Isla get a weapon; he was helping her. But why? He pits ruler against ruler and none of their special powers are allowed. Oro beats Azul quickly and easily, Cleo beats Celeste but not as quickly, then Isla, dressed in her new armor and with her new sword, faces Grim. He’s a tough opponent but she beats him, and he’s delighted for some reason. Then Cleo and Oro duel, Oro wins but Cleo wounds his arm. Last, Isla and Oro face off and she changes her tactic for their fight. She almost defeats him but at the last second remembers herself, and her plan to not draw attention so she can try to find the bondbreaker and lets him win. Oro is not fooled, she can tell. That night Isla speaks to Celeste, who knows Isla’s secret and is worried that Isla put a target on her own back. Celeste searched the Star Isle library for the bondbreaker, but she did not find it. Isla will search the libraries on the other isles, she’s already stolen clothing from the tailor so she can blend in on the other isles. Except Sunling clothing, she couldn’t find any at the tailor. Celeste has heard a rumor that Sunling is withdrawing from the other isles. And that Moon Isle has posted guards on their bridge so only Moonlings can enter. Something strange is going on. Celeste plans on getting a special type of glove that can hold a slight amount of magic in them from one of the other realms. It will help Isla with her searches. When Isla goes to the next group dinner, she walks into another demonstration where all of Lightlark’s nobles have been invited. Azul asks each of the rulers to show off their powers. Not great, since Isla doesn’t have any. Grim goes first, causing the entire room to have the same vision. Cleo gathers all the wine in the room and creates an actual shark, which tries to eat her, but she turns it to ice before it succeeds. Celeste makes fireworks explode throughout the room. Azul conjures three storm clouds, complete with lightning, before calming and releasing them. Now it’s Isla’s turn. She asks Oro for help, pulls a small Morningstar from her hair, blindfolds herself, and knocks the crown off of Oro’s head from across the room. Wildlings are supposed to be fierce warriors as well as able to manipulate nature. No one says anything, shocked at her performance. Oro goes last, turning the marble table to gold. An impressive display of power that not even his people knew he possessed. He wins this demonstration as well. Isla meets Juniper, a barkeep who deals in information. She trades him one of her secrets (that she beat could have beat the king in their duel) for information on how to get past the Moon Isle guards (on full moon nights, there will be no guards, since their curse makes the sea deadly during the full moon). Celeste hosts her demonstration next, in the Hall of Glass, the rulers must conquer their greatest fear. Whoever does so quickest will win. She reveals a Starling relic, a mirror that will show them their greatest fear when it’s touched, trapping them until the fear has been conquered. People have been trapped unable to conquer their fears for so long that they’ve died. Oro goes first. He conquers his fear in three minutes, but they aren’t able to see what it was that he saw. Azul manages five minutes, as does Celeste. Grim comes in at just under three minutes, Cleo does it in only two. When Isla reaches the mirror, it shows her back in her room, locked away from the real world, as the room closes in on her. Her world gets smaller and smaller. She breaks out in six minutes. After everyone leaves, Celeste shows Isla the handprints and essences of each of the rulers that the mirror had collected on its surface. Celeste uses the new gloves to store those essences so that Isla will be able to go into the restricted parts of each isle’s library. Celeste dresses in Skyling clothes and uses a Wildling potion to temporarily dye her hair blue, in order to sneak into the Sky Isle library. She finds the secret area but no bondbreaker and is reckless in her disappointment as she walks back to the palace, she’s spotted by Cleo. Cleo follows her and Isla runs for it, right into Grim. He causes the two of them to disappear until Cleo gives up her search and leaves. Isla ignores all of Grim’s questions, thanks him, and leaves. She gets a notice in her room that her demonstration is next. She goes to find Grim, to apologize for running off, but runs into Azul instead. He explains how hard the past Centennials have been, for various reasons, and shows her a cave system he can use as an instrument, and the two of them spend the afternoon listening to the music. She finds Grim that evening and offers him a thank you for helping her, she tells him what her demonstration will require. Her trial invites all of Lightlark and asks each ruler to show what their realm can create that benefits Lightlark as a whole. The audience will vote for the winner, they are not allowed to vote for their own ruler. Skyling has been working on a form of communication that uses the wind. Moonling has built many ships. The Starling found a way to create tools and weapons using their power only. Sunling has a way to spread light and heat throughout the island. Grimshaw walks in and announces that Nightshade has nothing to offer the rest of them. Isla shows them the Wildling healing remedies. To demonstrate, she puts her arm in a flame until it is badly burnt, then pours a remedy over the skin, returning her arm to normal as if it had never been injured at all. Although it does still hurt, but not as badly as it should, the arm does not look damaged. Grim comes to Isla that night, explaining that he has no interest in making allies or winning the Centennial at all. Of course, he doesn’t tell her why he is on the island if he doesn’t want to take part in the Centennial, but he does give her a history lesson. Lightlark was not created by only Oro’s ancestor, as most think, but by Grim’s ancestor as well. Then they both got greedy and fought until Grim’s father signed the treaty, ending their war. Cleo’s demonstration comes before Isla’s arm is fully healed again. They have to jump into freezing cold water and their hearts will lead them to their greatest desire. Whoever listens and gets to their desire first wins. Before they start, Isla recognizes a rash in Oro’s wrist. She correctly diagnoses it and tells him how to treat it. They enter the water and at first Isla is not sure which way to go. One side feels like her people, the other feels like more. She finally follows her heart to the more side and makes it out, but barely. She doesn’t even see what the plaque that indicates her desire says before being rushed to her room to warm up. Cleo wins this demonstration as well. Of course, even though her arm is still mending and she’s is now suffering from hypothermia, the next night is the full moon and Isla has to break into the Moonling library. She finds a way into the Moonling palace, having to scale the walls and go through a window. As she tries to find the library, she is spotted and fights three guards, knocking them unconscious. She runs to the library, which is completely disguised, more guards following her. She can’t find the Moonling relics but can hear the guards outside. She realizes that Cleo is building an army. Isla trips and hits her head on the floor, in doing so she realizes that the relics are below the floor floating in water. She doesn’t see the bondbreaker among them but realizes that her head is bleeding. The guards outside yell that the entire legion is outside the library and Cleo is coming, Isla uses her starstick to portal out before they can get in. Now we know that the bondbreaker is not on Star Isle, Sky Isle, or Moon Isle, there is no isle for the Wildling or the Nightshade, which leaves only Sun Isle, but Isla has no way to get clothes to be able to sneak in. They are all invited to afternoon tea, where they sample three different kinds of tea. After they’re done drinking, Oro announces that this is his demonstration, a truth tea. Together the dregs of the three cups spell out their greatest secret. Whoever shares their secret first wins. First Celeste, then Azul, Isla, Grim, and finally Cleo breaks their glasses. Oro wins as he tells them his secret: that he is dying. He tells them that the island has been weakening since the last Centennial. He believes this is the last chance they have to break the curse. The torches and fires he demands stay lit are to mask that he is weakening, he should be able to keep the island comfortable with his power. For the second part of the Centennial, the rulers break into teams to fulfill part of the prophecy. Now that Oro has won the demonstrations, he gets to match the rulers up. He puts Celeste with Cleo. He chooses Isla as his own partner. Oro visits Isla that night and explains that he has a theory about the curse, and he needs her help to test it. It requires a knowledge of nature that she has, and in return, he would try to protect her from the other rulers. She agrees on one condition, she can save a second realm from being wiped out when they chose which ruler to kill. They start right away, but Oro tells her that she can’t look like the Wildling ruler while they’re searching. There are ancient creatures that believe the Wildlings abandoned them when they left Lightlark, and they will exact revenge on Isla if they find her. So, she needs to dress down, and continue to “mask” her powers. He takes her to the edge of the island, where the storm is waiting for the Centennial to end so it can cover the island again. The two of them take a bridge over the water to a smaller section of the island and go into a cave, the entrance of which is in the ground, and you have to blindly jump in, landing in some water. Oro tells Isla that he is looking for the island’s heart. It blooms every hundred years during the Centennial, it has to be nourished by and protected by a plant. This cave has a sample of all of Lightlark’s plant life, Isla finds three possible types of plants that the heart could be attached to. Oro knows of two areas in Lightlark that has a large quantity of said plants, one in Skyling and one on the Mainland. The search the Skyling field over several days but find nothing. Isla has a spicy dream about Grim and wakes up deciding to take a sleeping potion that will hopefully prevent any more dreams, even if she isn’t really hating them. On her way to the kitchen for ingredients, she hears Oro and Azul talking. It sounds like Azul has a dangerous plan that Oro is not in favor of, but Isla doesn’t hear much else. They start to search the Mainland area that night. Isla asks Oro about his talk with Azul, but Oro insists that Azul is no threat to her. She asks about kids who have parents from different realms, they only get power from one. Oro tells her they are near the Wild Isle, but everything on there is dead since the Wildlings left. He told her the Wildlings were once his favorite realm behind his own, long ago. Now they are as bad as they’re described to be. Over the next few days, she asks Oro more questions as they search. He tells Isla that Cleo puts the good of her realm before all else. That killing one of the other rulers is the easy part of the curse. Deciding which realm to get rid of is hard, they have to make the right choice. It can’t be Grim, he is the only thing between them and something even more dangerous, delightful. Once they’ve checked all the possible places in the second location, Isla walks deeper. She ends up finding a wall of plants with thorns and barbs. She calls to Oro, thinking that this plant has something serious to hide, and what’s more important than the island’s heart. But when she calls, the plant attacks her, and Oro has to rescue her. When Isla is safe and removing the large barbs from her back, which is incredibly painful, Oro checks for the heart but finds nothing there. There are other places the plants grow in, but not so many in one place. He decides they need to talk to an ancient creature to get help, one of the ones with a grudge against Wildling. Five days of rest later and Isla plans to meet with Celeste in the agora, but she is interrupted by a Moonling that passes her a note, she’s in danger. Isla pursues the Moonling and walks right into a trap, several Moonling nobles who are prepared to kill her. Luckily, Celeste followed her and frees Isla, together they kill the nobles and leave a message in blood for Cleo: try harder. Grim seeks Isla out after weeks of not seeing her. He asks if she wants to see him or be left alone, she says consistently left alone, but she’s lying, and he probably knows it. He tells her that he should not see her, for the good of them both. She asks about what Oro said about Grim protecting them from something worse than the curse and Grim does not deny it, but doesn’t tell her more, not wanting to distract her from the Centennial. So, she asks him to take her to the Wild Isle instead, she wants to see it for herself. When they arrive, everything is dead as Oro had said, but there is a palace still standing. It’s called the Place of Mirrors. Isla goes in and sees something she recognizes. She goes back that night without Grim, it’s a symbol that she recognizes as a hidden door, since there’s one in her chambers in the Newlands. But this one won’t open, it needs some sort of key that she cannot find. She asks Juniper for information, and he doesn’t have any about a hidden room, but he does know that only Wildling power can be used within the Place of Mirrors. Interesting. On her way out of Juniper’s bar, Grim sees her again. They share a tension riddled rainstorm together and Isla realizes that maybe she judged the Wildlings that fell in love more harshly than she should have. It is eight days before Oro fetches Isla again. She and Celeste use this time to investigate the Sun Isle library, which they discover is heavily guarded and always full. No way they’re getting in unnoticed. Oro said it took several days to find the ancient being and then more to broker a deal, but he managed it. They go together to Star Isle, where they meet a specter. Something the king did not mention, the specter wants to possess the body of the most beautiful woman on the island for a few moments before she will help them. After some yelling, and Oro agreeing to take Isla to his library, Isla agrees to being possessed. She wakes up once the specter is out of her body, in Oro’s arms. The specter tells them that the heart is not on this isle, and that the darkness below is awakening. As if they don’t have enough to deal with already. Isla wants to go to the library right then but Oro refuses to take her, she didn’t specify when they’d go when they made their deal. Instead, she waits three days and goes to the library by herself, not trying to hide who she is. Joke is on her, Oro has someone waiting to lead her to the library and he’s closed it all week, so she can be there alone. She quickly finds the secret spots where the relics are hidden but there is no bondbreaker. And that’s the last library they have to search. Her plan with Celeste is a bust. The ball that indicates the halfway point of the Centennial is held; at midnight the rulers are allowed to kill each other as long as they are not paired together. Isla shares a moment with Grim and he gifts her a necklace that will summon him if she touches it (he makes it invisible after she’s wearing it) before he disappears. He says he will be back at the ball before midnight. When Isla returns to the main ballroom, everything falls apart. Literally. As in, the island itself starts to fall apart. Oro is in great pain but is able to stop the ballroom floor from rupturing any more than has already happened, but barely. Part of the palace is ruined, and the islanders are afraid to leave their houses. Oro and Isla visit the next ancient creature, a blue bee man who lives in a hive of other blue bee people. He captures Isla (that was the plan) but when Oro comes in after her, bee man slices his throat. Not enough to kill Oro right away, but he will die soon. Blue bee man tells them that he doesn’t not know where the heart is this time, but he has seen it before, and it always grows where light and dark meet. Isla is in a hurry to get Oro to water so he can heal his throat, but he passes out before they make it. She’s able to drag him the rest of the way, throwing his body in a shallow river and allowing the magic to do its thing while she keeps him from drowning. Before he’s completely healed, and before he’s awake, the sun is going to come up. If he’s caught in the sun, he will die as part of the Sunling curse. She drags him to a cave for safety. When he wakes around noon, he has some ideas. There are eight places on the island that would match the riddle. They have to wait in the cave until the sun goes down. Or Oro does, and Isla chooses to wait with him. They ask each other questions to pass the time, answering each question honestly. What’s life like where Isla is from (terrible), what’s his favorite place on the island, did she know Grim before the Centennial (no), has he ever been in love (no), is there a bondbreaker on the island (no), how long has he been able to gild (since he was a kid). He asks what her secret is, and she doesn’t answer. She asks what his flair is, and he doesn’t answer. He says he will tell if she does, but still no. Then he offers that if she tells him her secret, he will let her win the Centennial. He believes that the heart has some Sunling and Nightshade power stored in it and that the original offense mentioned in the prophecy is that someone used the heart to set the curses, used the Nightshade power in it specifically. He thinks finding the heart will free them and whoever does so will receive great power. He doesn’t want that power; she can have it if she tells him her secret. She still says no. They search all the places they can easily but find the heart at none of them. Oro believes it must be on Moon Isle. They go to a block of ice on the isle where Isla sees three women frozen, Oracles. Oro unfreezes one of them and the Oracle tells them that she’s been warned not to speak to them (by whom?) but she’s intrigued, so she will anyway. The heart is on Moon Isle, closer than they think, but they have to find it on their own. She warns Isla that she is surrounded by lies and liars, and that one of the rulers will die before the Centennial is over. Then she freezes again. Oro says there are three places on Moon Isle, but they don’t have time to check them that night. They will search the first spot tomorrow. In the morning, she uses her Starstick to look at Wildling, and it is dying. The land is dead and pulling the magic from the people themselves, killing them. There’s nothing she can do to help them, powerless as she is, and she realizes she does need to win the Centennial to save her realm. She tells Oro her secret, then leaves the room. That night he calls a meeting of all the rulers to share progress and tells the other rulers what he and Isla have been doing. He wants to change partners, choosing Cleo as his own, asking that they be able to search Moon Isle freely, and putting Isla with Grim. When Cleo questions his motives, he doesn’t hesitate to tell everyone that Isla has no powers. Before any of them can kill her, Grim grabs her hand and they disappear together. Turns out, he doesn’t just turn invisible like she thought. He can actually move to other places, his flair, and he’s risking letting everyone else know he has this ability in order to protect her. He tells her that he already knew she had no power. Nightshades can read curses so he knew she wasn’t affected, and he kept her secret for her. If anyone hurts her, even attempts to, he will destroy them. She believes him. Grim helps Isla move into the Place of Mirrors, where the other magics cannot be wielded. Celeste knows where she is, as does Ella, who brings Isla food and water. Celeste continues to look for the bondbreaker. Celeste comes one day and tells Isla to snap out of it, the game is not done yet. They have a month left! She can’t just hide on Wild Isle until the Centennial is done. Isla sends Ella to see Juniper, offering details about her biggest secret in exchange for his own. He responds few days later saying that he knows who cast the curses. When Isla and Celeste go to meet him, they only find his dead body in the empty agora, the words “hard enough” scrawled in blood. Isla goes on a run while hiding on Wild Isle and gets near the Mainland, where she sees Cleo skulking around. She apparently decides that Celeste was right and follows Cleo into Moon Isle. She watches Cleo move a bunch of ice to reveal a hole, just as Isla is discovered. Isla yells that she knows Cleo cast the curses and killed Juniper. Cleo retorts that Isla is a fool and doesn’t know what she thinks she does, trapping Isla in a giant block of ice before going down the hole. Isla can’t get out of the ice and can’t call for help, she eventually loses consciousness. Lucky for her, Oro finds her and rescues her. He takes her to his rooms and explains that there was a place on Moonling that he could not access without Cleo. That’s why he needed to bring Cleo in and to partner with her. He couldn’t tell Isla his plan, she needed to genuinely react like she’d been betrayed. He told Isla’s secret because it made sense that he would want to be re-paired but also because Cleo thinks Starling should be the realm to go. While she was paired with Celeste, Cleo could not kill Celeste, but revealing Isla’s secret made Cleo rethink her choice of which ruler should be killed. Because Oro believes that Starling is essential. But now that Oro and Cleo have checked that one location, the heart was not there, he and Isla can work together again to check the other two. By the way, he knew she had been lying to him. He knew every time she lied to him. His flair, he can tell when someone is lying. They decide to work together again. But first: Carmel. Carmel is a twenty-four-hour carnival to mark the seventy-fifth day of the Centennial. Isla goes for part of the celebration; the rulers are not allowed to miss a Centennial event. Isla accidentally gets drunk and when she makes it back to the palace, is escorted to her rooms by Oro. It turns out, he commanded the Sunling armies and fought against Grim, who commanded the Nightshade. It’s why he hates Grim. Oro leaves to go to Carmel once the sun goes down and Isla is interrupted by a pounding at her door. It’s Ella. Celeste has been attacked. When Isla runs out of the palace, she finds Celeste floating, surrounded by a silver fog and thin string. Oro is also there when Isla arrives. This is an old enchantment that he hasn’t seen for a long time, one that should have killed her but was interrupted. A poison that Celeste has to fight on her own. If they try to heal her with Moonling magic, it will only make the poison kill her faster. It could be weeks before she wakes up, if she wakes up at all. Isla calls to Grim and asks him to hide Celeste until she wakes up, afraid that whoever was interrupted will come back to finish the job. Isla goes back to Wild Isle, intent on opening the hidden door but gets absolutely nowhere before she has to return to the palace to search for the heart with Oro. She almost gets killed by a dark mer creature, but they don’t find the heart in the first place they look. Which leaves one last location to search, in the center of Vinderland territory. The Veinderlands are Wildlings who renounced their power and realm before the curses, who already tried to kill Isla when she was trapped in ice. She and Oro will go the next night, but they take a visit to the armory first. When they get to the Vinderland territory, there’s a fight and they kill a bunch of Vinderland cannibals. They search a giant ice tree but find nothing. They decide to go back to the beginning. Oro had read about the heart in a secret library, he takes Isla there and reads the passage to her. One thing first, the island was created by his ancestor Horus Rey, Grim’s ancestor Cronan Malvere, and Isla’s ancestor, Lark Crown. Lark made the land itself; the island is named after her. Only one of their three realms can use the heart. Which means that Cleo did not cast the curse. It was either Sunling, Nightshade, or Wildling. They go through the book until they’re exhausted and decide to take a break. Isla goes to see Celeste, who is still floating, hidden where only Grim and Isla know where she is. Isla grabs Celeste’s hand, and a blue diamond ring falls out of Celeste’s hand. A blue diamond ring that Isla gave to Azul when they first met. Isla goes to the Place of Mirrors and pulls the pendant that Grim gave to her, he comes to her in a panic since he thinks she’s in danger. She asks him about Lark Crown, he confirms the story, telling her that he thought she should find out in her own time. She asks if he’s hiding anything else from her, he is. Like how he thinks about her all the time. They get romantic and it feels familiar to Isla somehow, and she notices a large scar on his chest. She and Oro continue looking for clues about where the heart is, and Isla wonders if it only blooms when light meets dark. Where they meet but also only when they meet: dusk and dawn. Suddenly, she believes she knows where the heart is. She goes with Oro to where she believes the heart will be and they wait in a cave so that he won’t be hurt when the sun rises. While they’re in the cave, Oro has painful tremors again as the island shakes and heaves, but she is able to help him by singing. When the sun begins to rise, the heart reveals itself as an egg. Isla goes out to grab it, and just as she does, Vinderland comes for revenge and shoots her through the chest. Oro kills them but can’t get to her to heal her since the sun is out. She pulls her necklace and Grim shows up. Isla loses consciousness as she drops the heart. She wakes up with Grim at her side, he took her to her room in the palace. He doesn’t know how she lived but she did. He also tells her that he found an ancient Wildling elixir that was able to wake Celeste. Isla goes to Celeste, and Celeste confirms that it was Azul who attacked her. Isla tells Celeste everything that happened has happened since she was poisoned, and runs back to her room, not stopping even when Celeste calls to her. Oro brings Isla the heart and asks her to meet him in the library. Once there, he tells her to pick the realm she will save. She chooses Starling, and he tells her that Nightshade has to go. He has Azul and Cleo backing him. Isla runs away from him with the heart, and she makes a plan. One that will save her realm, her friend, and Grim. It involves the bondbreaker. Isla tells Celeste where the hidden library is and Celeste sneaks in to get the bondbreaker, they will meet at the Place of Glass. Isla then calls Grim, and he teleports himself and Isla as close as he can. Once they get there, he reveals another secret. These dreams of hers, they are actually memories. She’s been visiting him using the starstick for a year. They’re in love, but he had to take her memories of him away before the Centennial started. That’s why he feels so familiar to her, and he’s been in love with her the whole time. She feels betrayed and runs to meet Celeste, they use the bondbreaker together. As it works its magic, Oro shows up to the Place of Glass as well, neither he nor Grim can get to Isla. And she has been betrayed! It’s not a bondbreaker but a bondmaker! Celeste isn’t Celeste at all, but Aurora, the ruler of Starling from the night the curses were cast, who should have died with the rest of them. She had been set to marry Oro’s brother Egan, but he fell in love with Violet Crown instead, Aurora’s best friend. She used her shape shifting flair to turn into a Wildling and approached Grim, convincing him to bring her the heart (he didn’t know what it was at the time). Aurora couldn’t use it the way she wanted since she is not Sunling, Wildling, or Nightshade, but she was able to curse everyone else, the curse did not touch her since she was the one who cast it. Then she used the heart to create an illusion, where she killed herself like the other rulers, and she took the identity of her younger sister. She has ruled Starling this whole time, changing her identity every few years. She bided her time, having been told about the bondmaker by Egan, but you can only use it once and she wants the powers of all six realms. When people from two realms have a child, that child only has power from one realm, or so they think. But Celeste tells Isla that her father was a Nightshade general, and she has the power of both. Nightshade was just shadowing the Wildling powers, making it invisible so that Isla thought she was powerless. But Isla let something slip to Grim one of the times she visited him with the starstick, and when he sought out Celeste, Grim recognized her for who she really was. Celeste convinced him that she would not rest until Egan’s family line was wiped out, that the original transgression was Sunling falling in love with Wildling, to break the curse Oro would need to fall in love with Isla. But that would never happen, because Isla and Grim were already in love, Isla wouldn’t allow it. So, Celeste convinced Grim to take Isla’s memories. It’s why he has stayed away from her, even encouraging her to befriend Oro. Then once Oro loved Isla, Aurora could kill Oro, they could break the curse and Grim would return Isla’s memories to her, and he and Isla could rule Lightlark together. But when a ruler falls in love with another ruler, they relinquish some of their power to the one they love. Oro, as King of Lightlark, has power from all the realms on Lightlark (Sun, Moon, Star, and Sky). And he is in love with Isla. When Celeste took Isla’s blood, she took the all the power that Isla, Grim, and Oro had. The power of all six realms. But Isla has always thought she was powerless, that doesn’t mean she is without power. She pulls out the starstick from where she keeps it against her back and portals to the Wildling Newland. The betrayal doesn’t stop with Celeste/Aurora. She had called Isla a nickname only Poppy and Terra ever used, and Isla knows they’re in on the plan somehow. When she gets to the Newland and sees Poppy, Poppy confirms her suspicions. She and Terra killed Isla’s parents to make Isla the ruler of Wildling in time for the Centennial, Celeste had said it was that or she would destroy all of Wildling herself. Isla doesn’t have time for retribution on Poppy, not yet. She dons her armor and arms herself with blades, then goes back to save the only person who has never lied to her: Oro. She portals back to fight Aurora using the starstick. Aurora has the power of all six realms and no curse to keep her in check. She can’t leave the Place of Glass, even if killing her means Isla isn’t leaving either. As Isla and Aurora fight, Grim gets Isla’s attention and reminds her of her heart. Her heart that was pierced with an arrow and healed by Lightlark’s heart. Using the power within her heart, she calls the island’s heart to her. She is infused with its power, grabs the bondmaker, and pierces Aurora’s heart with it, pulling all the power from Aurora and killing her. This the first offense, the murder of a friend: Isla kills Celeste as Aurora killed Violet. The Starling line is now at an end. A ruler has won. And as the curse is broken, so does Lightlark. A giant fissure cracks underneath Isla, and she drops the heart into the center of Lightlark as she falls into the chasm after it. She now knows she has all this power but doesn’t know how to use it, and neither Grim nor Oro can access their own power while in the Place of Mirrors. But she is caught by a vine, someone above is using her Wildling power, transferred to them by the love that Isla feels. Grim had tried and had not been able to help her because her love for him had been broken by his betrayal, Oro had saved her. Grim is furious at what this means. He disappears into the night. All the spoilers ahead... When the inhabitants of the island of Lightlark were cursed five-hundred years ago, the leaders of each realm took a few of their people and left the island, except for the Sunling ruler who stayed on the island as King of Lightlark. Until the prophecy that will break the curse is fulfilled, the island disappears in a terrible storm, only reappearing for one-hundred days every one-hundred years, giving the rulers of the isles a chance to break the curse before disappearing again. Isla (isss-la, not eye-la) Crown, the ruler of the Wildlings, has a starstick that allows her to travel great distances in seconds, and no one knows that she has it. If her guardians (Poppy, her charm teacher and Terra, her fighting teacher) knew, they would take it from her. In fact, Isla has been kept sequestered in her rooms with only Poppy and Terra for company, for the safety of everyone around her. She isn’t even allowed to speak to her own people, the Wildlings. Since the curse of Lightlark was cast, the Wildling people must eat hearts to survive, and they kill anyone they fall in love with. Since girls have always been more prevalent for the Wildlings and there is so much death involved with their curse, the Wildlings have become a mostly female, warrior society. Now it’s time for the Centennial to start, when travel to the island becomes possible and Isla must go to Lightlark alone to try to break the curse with the other rulers. She promises to follow the orders of Terra and Poppy during the Centennial, to use the strategy they’ve come up with to try to break the curse, and then she goes through a portal to the island. She takes her starstick with her. Isla is the first ruler to appear, quickly followed by Grimshaw, or Grim, of Nightshade. Nightshade has not been invited to any of the Centennials before this year. Since they can spin curses and are the prime suspect for who cast the curse. Seems like the other rulers are desperate to break the curse if they’re willing to invite Grimshaw this year. Azul of Skyling shows up next. Both Azul and Grim were alive when the curse was cast five-hundred years ago and have ruled their realms since then. Cleo of Moonling comes next, the oldest of all the rulers, not that she looks it. Last to portal through is Celeste of Starling. The island of Lightlark used to be a home for all their people, each claimed their own area of the island with the Mainland in the center where they all gathered and where Lightlark royalty lived. There’s a castle on the Mainland where the Sunling ruler, and King of Lightlark, lives. The Sunling ruler also happens to be the last Origin and as such, can wield the powers of all the realms still inhabiting Lightlark: Sunling, Starling, Skyling, and Moonling. The realms of Wildling and Nightshade have completely left Lightlark and so he has no powers from those realms. The Sunling king is also said to be paranoid. The five rulers go to the palace and are met by a personal attendant who’s been assigned to each of them, Isla’s is a Starling girl. Isla is taken to her rooms, where the girl stokes the fire even though it’s already warm, explaining that the king has commanded the fires be kept burning at all times. After the Starling attending Isla leaves, the Starling ruler, Celeste, shows up to Isla’s rooms. Turns out, she and Isla secretly know each other already. When Isla had found the starstick in her mom’s things five years ago, it had accidentally taken her to Celeste, and the two of them became friends. Both of them young women, rulers, and desperate to end the curse for their people. Celeste’s curse may be the worst of them all, all Starling die by the time they turn twenty-five years old. Celeste only visits Isla for a moment before returning to her own room, they want to keep their friendship a secret from the others. Isla goes to her balcony to sing and is surprised by someone listening from their own balcony a few yards away, she falls off the balcony and down to the ocean below. She wakes up alone, soaking wet, and choking on salt water, but safe on her own balcony again. The person who scared her must have saved her and then left. But why would they bother saving her at all? When the curse was laid, the six previous rulers of the realms killed themselves to provide their heirs with a prophecy that would instruct them on how to break the curse. Their deaths fueled power to their realms which made the Centennial possible at all, otherwise the island would constantly be consumed by a terrible storm which cannot be traveled through. The prophecy the heirs were given has three parts. 1. The six realms must be joined in some way. 2. The original offense will be committed again. 3. A ruling line must come to an end, meaning that one of the rulers must die. Only then will one of the six rulers win, and the curses broken, which honestly seems like a win for all of them. So why would someone save Isla? Accidental drowning seems like an easy way to fulfill a portion of the prophecy. Isla goes to dinner, still recovering from her near death, and realizes that the person who saved her is the King of Lightlark himself, Oro. At dinner she is served a heart, as a Wildling should be, but she asks to have it sent to her room out of respect for the others. Isla doesn’t actually need to heat human hearts. Her secret: she was born without the curse, or the power, of a Wildling. It’s part of the reason she was locked away and kept in seclusion, so no one would know her terrible secret. Terra and Poppy believe that Isla has no power because her mother fell in love but failed to kill the man as the curse requires. Instead, he killed her only minutes after Isla was born. Apparently, this curse is not compulsory. Since Isla has no power, she cannot infuse her realm with power, and it is dying. More than that, she has no power to draw on at the Centennial, making her easy prey. And if she dies without an heir, her realm and all its people die with her. The next morning, the rules of the Centennial are laid out. Assassinations may not be attempted until halfway through. On day twenty-five, they’ll be paired up. You cannot kill your partner, ever. No matter how much you may want to. Each ruler must attend all the events, no exceptions. And none of the rulers may have an heir. Isla befriends her attendant, Ella, by giving her a healing ointment for Ella’s injured leg, and Ella agrees to bring her food daily to hide the fact that she doesn’t eat human hearts. Then Isla goes to the agora, the city center, and runs into Grim on the way. A few decades before the curse, Nightshade and Lightlark had gone to war. Grim had been one of Nightshade’s fiercest warriors then. Lightlark had won the war, and a treaty brokered between the two realms, but there are still some hard feelings between the two. Grim and Isla walk to the agora together and Grim tells her he can read flashes of emotion. She asks if he has a flair, a rare power that is not attributed to their realm. He does, but he doesn’t tell her what it is, but admits that it’s not mind reading, or anything else he could use on her without her knowing. The two go to a chocolate shop, then to the tailor where Isla gets a new wardrobe started. She also asks the tailor to make her clothes and armor she can fight in. Grim recommends she get a weapon as well. Isla and Celeste have a plan to break the curse, and it revolves around the bondbreaker. Celeste had read about it in a book, it can break any bond (name makes sense) … including a curse. It demands blood to work, enough to kill someone, so they want to split the cost between the two of them and hope that it breaks their curses but doesn’t kill them in the process. But they must find the bondbreaker first, it’s supposed to be in a library. During the Centennial, each ruler gets to plan a trial, called a demonstration, designed to test the other rulers. Grim’s trial is first, a duel. He gives them one hour’s notice and invites all of Lightlark to watch. No wonder he recommended Isla get a weapon; he was helping her. But why? He pits ruler against ruler and none of their special powers are allowed. Oro beats Azul quickly and easily, Cleo beats Celeste but not as quickly, then Isla, dressed in her new armor and with her new sword, faces Grim. He’s a tough opponent but she beats him, and he’s delighted for some reason. Then Cleo and Oro duel, Oro wins but Cleo manages to wound his arm. Last, Isla and Oro face off and she changes her tactic for their fight. She almost defeats him but at the last second remembers herself and her plan to not draw attention so she can try to find the bondbreaker and she lets him win. But she can tell that Oro is not fooled. That night Isla speaks to Celeste, who knows Isla’s no power secret and is worried that Isla has put a target on her own back. Celeste searched the Star Isle library for the bondbreaker, but she did not find it. Isla will search the libraries on the other isles, she’s already stolen clothing from the tailor so she can blend in on the other isles. Except Sunling clothing, she couldn’t find any at the tailor. Celeste has heard a rumor that Sunling is withdrawing from the other isles and that Moon Isle has posted guards on their bridge so only Moonlings can enter. Something strange is going on. Celeste plans on getting a special type of glove that can hold a slight amount of magic in them from one of the other realms. It will help Isla with her searches. When Isla goes to the next group dinner, she walks into another demonstration – this time only Lightlark’s nobles have been invited. Azul asks each of the rulers to show off their powers. Not great, since Isla doesn’t have any. Grim goes first, causing the entire room to have the same vision. Cleo gathers all the wine in the room and uses it to create an actual shark, which tries to eat her, but she turns it to ice before it succeeds. Celeste makes fireworks explode throughout the room. Azul conjures three storm clouds, complete with lightning, before calming and releasing them. Now it’s Isla’s turn. She asks Oro for his help with her demonstration, pulls a small morningstar from her hair, blindfolds herself, and uses the morningstar to knock the crown off Oro’s head from across the room. Wildlings are supposed to be fierce warriors as well as able to manipulate nature, no one said which power she needed to show off. Everyone stands quietly, shocked at her performance, until Oro performs. He is the last to demonstrate, turning the marble table to gold. An impressive display of power that not even his people knew he possessed. He wins this demonstration as well. Isla meets Juniper, a barkeep in the agora who deals in information. She trades him one of her secrets (that she beat could have beat the king in their duel) for information on how to get past the Moon Isle guards (on full moon nights, there will be no guards, since their curse makes the sea deadly during the full moon). Celeste hosts her demonstration next, in the Hall of Glass where the rulers must conquer their greatest fear. Whoever does so quickest will win. She reveals a Starling relic, a mirror that will show them their greatest fear when it’s touched, trapping their minds until the fear has been conquered. People have been trapped unable to conquer their fears for so long that they’ve died. Oro goes first. He conquers his fear in three minutes, but they can’t see what it was that he saw. Azul manages five minutes, as does Celeste. Grim comes in at just under three minutes, Cleo does it in only two, breaking Oro’s winning streak. When Isla reaches the mirror, it shows her back in her room, locked away from the real world, as the room closes in on her. Her world getting smaller and smaller. She breaks out in six minutes. Last place, but not too bad a showing. After everyone leaves, Celeste shows Isla the handprints and essences of each of the rulers that the mirror had collected on its surface. Celeste uses the new gloves to store those essences so that Isla will be able to go into the restricted parts of each isle’s library. Celeste dresses in Skyling clothes and uses a Wildling potion to temporarily dye her hair blue, in order to sneak into the Sky Isle library. She finds a secret area in the library but no bondbreaker and her disappointment makes her reckless as she walks back to the palace. She’s spotted by Cleo. Cleo follows her and Isla runs for it, right into Grim. He causes the two of them to disappear until Cleo gives up her search and leaves. Isla ignores all Grim’s questions, thanks him, and leaves. She gets a notice in her room that her demonstration is next. She goes to find Grim to apologize for running off but runs into Azul instead. He explains how hard the past Centennials have been, for various reasons, and shows her a cave system that he can use to make music, and the two of them spend the afternoon listening to the melody. She finds Grim that evening and offers him a thank you for helping her, she tells him what her demonstration will require. Isla’s trial invites all of Lightlark and asks each ruler to show what their realm can create that will benefit Lightlark as a whole. The audience will vote for the winner, but they are not allowed to vote for their own ruler. Skyling has been working on a form of communication that uses the wind. Moonling has built many ships. The Starling found a way to create tools and weapons using their power only. Sunling has a way to spread light and heat throughout the island. Grimshaw walks in and announces that Nightshade has nothing to offer the rest of them. Isla shows them the Wildling healing remedies. To demonstrate, she puts her arm in a flame until it is badly burnt, then pours a remedy over the skin, returning her arm to its normal appearance as if it had never been injured at all. Although it does still hurt, but not as badly as it should, the arm does not look damaged. Grim comes to Isla that night, to explain his answer at her trial. He has no interest in making allies or winning the Centennial at all. Of course, he doesn’t tell her why he is on the island if he doesn’t want to take part in the Centennial, but he does give her a brief history lesson. Lightlark was not created by Oro’s ancestor only, as most think, but by Grim’s ancestor as well. Then they both got greedy and fought until Grim’s father finally signed the treaty, ending their war. Cleo’s demonstration comes before Isla’s arm is fully healed again. They must jump into freezing cold water where their hearts will lead them to their greatest desire. Whoever listens and gets to their desire first wins. Before they start, Isla recognizes a rash in Oro’s wrist. She correctly diagnoses it and tells him how to treat it. They enter the water and at first Isla is not sure which way to go. One side feels like her people, the other feels like … more. She finally follows her heart to the more side and makes it out, but barely. She doesn’t even see what the plaque that indicates her desire says before being rushed to her room to warm up. Cleo wins this demonstration as well. Of course, even though Isla’s arm is still mending and she’s now suffering from hypothermia, the next night is the full moon, and Isla needs to break into the Moonling library. She finds a way into the Moonling palace, having to scale the walls and go through a window. As she tries to find the library, she is spotted and fights three guards, knocking them unconscious. She runs to the library, which is completely disguised, while more guards follow her. She can’t find the Moonling relics in the library but can hear even more guards outside. She realizes that Cleo is building an army. Isla trips and hits her head on the floor, in doing so she realizes that the relics are below the floor floating in water. She doesn’t see the bondbreaker among them and realizes that her head is bleeding. The guards outside yell that the entire legion is outside the library and Cleo is coming, so Isla uses her starstick to portal out before they can get in. Now we know that the bondbreaker is not on Star Isle, Sky Isle, or Moon Isle, there is no isle for the Wildling or the Nightshade, which leaves only Sun Isle, but Isla has no way to get clothes to be able to sneak into the library there. All the rulers are invited to afternoon tea, where they sample three different kinds of tea. After they’re done drinking, Oro announces that this is his demonstration, a truth tea. Together the dregs of the three cups spell out their greatest secret. Whoever shares their secret first wins. First Celeste, then Azul, Isla, Grim, and finally Cleo breaks their glasses. Oro wins as he tells them his secret: that he is dying. He tells them that the island has been weakening since the last Centennial. He believes this is the last chance they will have to break the curse. The torches and fires he demands stay lit are to mask that he is weakening, he should be able to keep the island comfortable with his power alone. For the second part of the Centennial, the rulers break into teams to fulfill part of the prophecy. Since Oro has won the most demonstrations, he gets to match the rulers up. He puts Celeste with Cleo. He chooses Isla as his own partner, which leaves Azul with Grim. Oro visits Isla that night and explains that he has a theory about the curse, and he needs her help to test it. It requires a knowledge of nature that she has and in return, he would try to protect her from the other rulers. She agrees on one condition, she can save a second realm from being wiped out when they chose which ruler to kill. They start right away, but Oro tells her that she can’t look like the Wildling ruler while they’re searching. There are ancient creatures that believe the Wildlings abandoned them when they left Lightlark, and they will exact revenge on Isla if they find her. So, she needs to dress down and continue to “mask” her powers. He takes her to the edge of the island, where the storm is waiting patiently for the Centennial to end so it can cover the island again. The two of them take a bridge over the water to a smaller section of the island and go into a cave, the entrance of which is in the ground. You must blindly jump in and will land in some water. Oro tells Isla that he is looking for the island’s heart. It blooms every hundred years during the Centennial, and it has to be nourished by and protected by a plant. This cave has a sample of all Lightlark’s plant life, Isla finds three possible types of plants that the heart could be attached to. Oro knows of two areas in Lightlark that has a large quantity of those three plants, one in Skyling and one on the Mainland. They search the Skyling field over several days but find nothing. Isla has a spicy dream about Grim and wakes up deciding to take a sleeping potion that will hopefully prevent any more dreams, even if she isn’t really hating them. On her way to the kitchen for ingredients, she hears Oro and Azul talking. It sounds like Azul has a dangerous plan that Oro is not in favor of, but Isla doesn’t hear much else. Oro and Isla start to search the Mainland area that night. Isla asks Oro about his talk with Azul, but Oro insists that Azul is no threat to her. She asks about kids who have parents from two different realms and learns that they only get power from one. Oro tells her they are near the Wild Isle, but everything there has been dead since the Wildlings left. He told her the Wildlings were once his favorite realm (besides his own) long ago. But now, the Wildlings are as bad as they’re described to be. Over the next few days, she probes Oro with more questions as they search. He tells Isla that Cleo puts the good of her realm before all else. That killing one of the other rulers is the easy part of the curse but deciding which realm to get rid of is hard, they have to make the right choice. It can’t be Grim, he is the only thing between them and something even more dangerous, delightful. Once they’ve checked all the possible places in the second location, Isla keeps exploring and finds a wall of plants with thorns and barbs. She calls Oro, thinking that this plant has something serious to hide, and what could be more important than the island’s heart. But when she calls out, the plant attacks her, and Oro has to rescue her. When Isla is safe and removing the large barbs from her back (which is incredibly painful), Oro checks for the heart but finds nothing there. There are other places where the plants grow, but not so abundantly. He decides they need to talk to an ancient creature to get help, one of the ones with a grudge against Wildling. Five days of rest later and Isla plans to meet with Celeste in the agora but she is interrupted by a Moonling that passes her a note: she’s in danger. Isla pursues the Moonling delivery person and walks right into a trap of several Moonling nobles who are prepared to kill her. Luckily, Celeste followed her and frees Isla, together they kill the nobles and leave a message in blood for Cleo: try harder. Grim seeks Isla out after weeks of not seeing her. He asks if she wants to see him or be left alone, she says consistently that she wants to be left alone but she’s lying, and he probably knows it. He tells her that he should not see her, for the good of them both. She asks about what Oro said about Grim protecting them from something worse than the curse and Grim does not deny it, but doesn’t tell her more either, not wanting to distract her from the Centennial. So she asks him to take her to the Wild Isle instead, she wants to see it for herself. When they arrive, everything is dead as Oro had said, but there is a palace still standing. It’s called the Place of Mirrors. Isla goes in and sees something she recognizes. She goes back that night without Grim to investigate further, it’s a symbol that she recognizes as a hidden door, since there’s one in her chambers in the Newlands. But this one won’t open, it needs some sort of key that she cannot find. She asks Juniper for information. He doesn’t have any about a hidden room, but he does know that only Wildling power can be used within the Place of Mirrors. Interesting. On her way out of Juniper’s bar, Grim sees her again. They share a tension riddled rainstorm together and Isla realizes that maybe she judged the Wildlings that fell in love a little more harshly than she should have. It is eight days before Oro fetches Isla again. She and Celeste use this time to investigate the Sun Isle library, which they discover is heavily guarded and always full of people. No way they’re getting in unnoticed. When Oro calls for her, he reveals that it took several days to find the ancient being and then more to broker a deal, but he managed it. They go together to Star Isle, where they meet a specter. Something the king did not mention, the specter wants to possess the body of the most beautiful woman on the island for a few moments before she will help them. After some yelling, Oro agrees to take Isla to his library, Isla agrees to being possessed. She wakes up once the specter is out of her body, in Oro’s arms. The specter tells them that the heart is not on this isle. That the darkness below is awakening. As if they don’t have enough to deal with already. Isla wants to go to the library right then but Oro refuses to take her, she didn’t specify when they’d go when they made their deal. Instead, she waits three days and goes to the library by herself, not trying to hide who she is. Joke is on her, Oro already has someone waiting to lead her to the library and he’s closed it to the public all week, so she can be there alone. She quickly finds the secret spots where the relics are hidden but there is no bondbreaker. And that’s the last library they know of. Her plan with Celeste is a bust. The ball that indicates the halfway point of the Centennial is held; at midnight the rulers are allowed to kill each other as long as they are not paired. Isla shares a moment with Grim and he gifts her a necklace that will summon him if she touches it (he makes it invisible after she’s wearing it) before he disappears. He says he will be back at the ball before midnight. When Isla returns to the main ballroom, everything falls apart. Literally. As in, the island itself starts to fall apart. Oro is in great pain, but he is able to stop the ballroom floor from rupturing any further. Barely. Part of the palace is ruined, and the islanders are now afraid to leave their houses. Oro and Isla visit the next ancient creature, a blue bee man who lives in a hive of other blue bee people. He captures Isla (that was the plan) but when Oro comes in after her, bee man slices his throat. Not enough to kill Oro right away, but he will die soon. Blue bee man tells them that he doesn’t know where the heart is this time, but he has seen it before, and it always grows where the light and the dark meet. Isla is in a hurry to get Oro to water so he can heal his throat (healing is a Moonling power), but he passes out before they make it. She’s able to drag him the rest of the way, throwing his body in a shallow river and allowing the magic to do its thing while she keeps him from drowning. Before he’s completely healed, and before he’s awake, the sun is going to come up. If he’s caught in the sun, he will die as part of the Sunling curse. She drags him to a cave for safety. When he wakes around noon, he has some ideas. There are eight places on the island that would match the riddle – where light and dark meet. They have to wait in the cave until the sun goes down. Or Oro does, and Isla chooses to wait with him. They ask each other questions to pass the time, answering each question honestly. What’s life like where Isla is from (terrible), what’s his favorite place on the island, did she know Grim before the Centennial (no), has he ever been in love (no), is there a bondbreaker on the island (no), how long has he been able to gild (since he was a kid). He asks what her secret is, and she chooses not to answer instead of lie. She asks what his flair is, and he doesn’t answer. He says he will tell if she does, but still no. Then he offers her something more. If she tells him her secret, he will let her win the Centennial. He believes that the heart has some Sunling and Nightshade power stored in it and that the original offense mentioned in the prophecy is that someone used the heart to set the curses, used the Nightshade power in it specifically. He thinks the heart will free them from their curses and whoever finds it will receive great power. He doesn’t want that power; she can have it if she tells him her secret. She still says no. They search all the places they can easily access but find the heart at none of them. Oro believes it must be on Moon Isle. They go to a block of ice on Moon Isle where Isla sees three women frozen, Oracles. Oro unfreezes one of them and the Oracle tells them that she’s been warned not to speak to them (by whom?) but she’s intrigued, so she will talk anyway. The heart is on Moon Isle, closer than they think, but they must find it on their own. She warns Isla that she is surrounded by lies and liars, and that one of the rulers will die before the Centennial is over. Then she freezes again. Oro says there are three places on Moon Isle, but they don’t have time to check them that night. They will search the first spot tomorrow. In the morning, Isla uses her Starstick to look at Wildling, and it is dying. The land is dead and pulling the magic from the people themselves, killing them. There’s nothing she can do to help them, powerless as she is, and she realizes she does need to win the Centennial to save her realm. She finds Oro and tells him her secret, then leaves the room. That night he calls a meeting of all the rulers to share progress and tells the other rulers what he and Isla have been doing. He wants to change partners (choosing Cleo as his own) asking that they be able to search Moon Isle freely, and putting Isla with Grim. When Cleo questions his motives, Oro doesn’t hesitate to tell everyone that Isla has no powers. Before any of them can kill her, Grim grabs Isla’s hand and they disappear together. Turns out, he doesn’t just turn invisible like she was thinking his flair was. He can move to other places and he’s risking letting everyone else know he has this ability to protect her. He tells her that he already knew she had no power. Nightshades can read curses, so he knew she wasn’t affected, and he kept her secret for her. If anyone hurts her, or even attempts to, he will destroy them. She believes him. Grim helps Isla move into the Place of Mirrors, where the other magics cannot be wielded. Celeste knows where she is, as does Ella, who continues to bring Isla food and water. Celeste keeps looking for the bondbreaker. She comes one day and tells Isla to snap out of it, the game is not done yet! They have a month left! She can’t just hide on Wild Isle until the Centennial is done. Isla sends Ella to see Juniper, offering details about her biggest secret in exchange for his own. He responds few days later saying that he knows who cast the curses. When Isla and Celeste go to meet him, they only find his dead body in the empty agora, the words “hard enough?” scrawled in blood. Another message from Cleo. Isla goes on a run while hiding on Wild Isle and goes near the Mainland, where she sees Cleo skulking around. She decides that Celeste was right about Cleo killing Juniper and decides to follow Cleo onto Moon Isle. She watches Cleo move a bunch of ice to reveal a hole, just as Isla is discovered. Isla yells that she knows Cleo cast the curses and killed Juniper. Cleo retorts that Isla is a fool and doesn’t know what she thinks she does, trapping Isla in a giant block of ice before continuing down the hole. Isla can’t get out of the ice and can’t call for help; she eventually loses consciousness. Lucky for her, Oro finds her and rescues her. He takes her to his rooms and explains that there was a place on Moonling that he could not access without Cleo’s help. That’s why he needed to bring Cleo in and to partner with her. He couldn’t tell Isla his plan, she needed to genuinely react like she’d been betrayed. He told Isla’s secret because it made sense that he would want to be re-paired if he had discovered it, but also because Cleo thinks Starling should be the realm to go. While she was paired with Celeste, Cleo could not kill Celeste, but revealing Isla’s secret made Cleo rethink her choice of which ruler should be killed. Because Oro believes that Starling is essential. But now that Oro and Cleo have checked that location (the heart was not there), he and Isla can work together again to check the other two. By the way, he knew she had been lying to him. He knew every time she lied to him. It’s his flair, he can tell when someone is lying. They decide to work together again. But first: Carmel. Carmel is a twenty-four-hour carnival to mark the seventy-fifth day of the Centennial. Isla goes for part of the celebration, since the rulers are not allowed to miss a Centennial event. Isla accidentally gets drunk and when she makes it back to the palace, she is escorted back to her rooms by Oro. It turns out, he commanded the Sunling armies during the Sunling/Nightshade War and fought against Grim, who commanded the Nightshade. It’s why he hates Grim. Oro leaves to go to Carmel once the sun goes down and Isla is interrupted by a pounding at her door. It’s Ella. Celeste has been attacked! When Isla runs out of the palace, she finds Celeste floating, surrounded by a silver fog and thin string. Oro is also there when Isla arrives. This is an old enchantment that he hasn’t seen for a long time, one that should have killed her but was interrupted. A poison that Celeste must fight on her own. If they try to heal her with Moonling magic, it will only make the poison kill her faster. It could be weeks before she wakes up… if she wakes up at all. Isla calls to Grim and asks him to hide Celeste until she wakes up, afraid that whoever was interrupted will come back to finish the job. Isla goes back to Wild Isle, intent on opening the hidden door she’d found but gets absolutely nowhere before she must return to the palace to search for the heart with Oro. While looking in the next location, she almost gets killed by a dark mer creature, but they don’t find the heart. Which leaves one last location to search, in the center of Vinderland territory. The Vinderlands are Wildlings who had renounced their power and realm before the curses, and who already tried to kill Isla when she was trapped in ice. She and Oro will go the next night to the Vinderland territory, but they take a visit to the armory first. When they get to the Vinderland territory, there’s a fight and they kill a bunch of Vinderland cannibals. They search a giant ice tree but find nothing. They are out of places to look. They decide to go back to the beginning. Oro had read about the heart in a secret library, he takes Isla there and reads the passage to her. One thing she needs to know first, the island of Lightlark was created by his ancestor Horus Rey, Grim’s ancestor Cronan Malvere, and Isla’s ancestor, Lark Crown. Lark made the land itself; the island is named after her. Only one of their three realms can use the heart. Which means that Cleo did not cast the curse. It was either Sunling, Nightshade, or Wildling. Isla and Oro go through the book until they’re exhausted and decide to take a break. Isla goes to see Celeste who is still floating, hidden where only Grim and Isla know where she is. Isla grabs Celeste’s hand, and a blue diamond ring falls out. A blue diamond ring that Isla gave to Azul when they first met. Isla goes to the Place of Mirrors and pulls the pendant that Grim gave to her, he comes to her in a panic since he thinks she’s in danger. She asks him about Lark Crown. He confirms the story, telling her that he thought she should find out in her own time. She asks if he’s hiding anything else from her, he confirms that he is. Like how he thinks about her all the time. They get romantic and it feels familiar to Isla somehow. She notices a large scar on his chest. She and Oro continue looking for clues about where the heart is, and Isla wonders if it only blooms when light meets dark. In the place where they meet but only revealing itself when they meet: dusk and dawn. Suddenly, she believes she knows where the heart is. She goes with Oro to where she believes the heart will be and they wait in a cave so that he won’t be hurt when the sun rises. While they’re in the cave, Oro has painful tremors again as the island shakes and heaves, but she is able to help by singing to him. When the sun begins to rise, the island’s heart reveals itself as an egg. Isla grabs it, but just then the Vinderlands comes for revenge and shoots her through the chest. Oro kills the attackers but can’t get to her to heal her since the sun is out. She pulls her necklace and Grim shows up. Isla loses consciousness and she drops the heart. She wakes up with Grim at her side, back in her room in the palace. He doesn’t know how she lived but she did. He also tells her that he found an ancient Wildling elixir that was able to wake Celeste. Isla goes to Celeste, and Celeste confirms that it was Azul who attacked her. Isla tells Celeste everything that has happened since Celeste was poisoned and runs back to her room, not stopping even when Celeste calls to her. Oro brings Isla the heart, which he had retrieved after she dropped it, and asks her to meet him in the library. Once there, he tells her to pick the realm she will save. She chooses Starling, and he tells her that Nightshade has to go. He has Azul and Cleo backing him. Isla runs away from Oro with the heart, and she makes a plan. One that will save her realm, her friend, and Grim too. It involves the bondbreaker. Isla tells Celeste where the hidden library is and Celeste sneaks in to get the bondbreaker, they will meet afterward at the Place of Glass. Isla then calls Grim, and he teleports himself and Isla as close as he can. Once they get there, he reveals another secret. These dreams of hers, the ones involving the two of them, are actually memories. She had been visiting him using the starstick for a year. They’re in love, but he had to take her memories of him away before the Centennial started. That’s why he feels so familiar to her, and he’s been in love with her this whole time. She feels betrayed and runs to meet Celeste, they use the bondbreaker together. As it works its magic, Oro shows up to the Place of Glass as well, but neither he nor Grim can get to Isla. And she really has been betrayed! But not by either Oro or Grim! It’s not a bondbreaker but a bondmaker! Celeste isn’t Celeste at all, but Aurora, the ruler of Starling from the night the curses were cast, who should have died with the rest of them. She had been set to marry Oro’s brother Egan – Sunling’s previous ruler, but he fell in love with Violet Crown instead, Aurora’s best friend. Aurora/Celeste used her shape shifting flair to turn into a Wildling and approached Grim, convincing him to bring her the heart (he didn’t know what it was at the time). Aurora couldn’t use it the way she wanted since she is not Sunling, Wildling, or Nightshade, but she was able to curse everyone else. The curse did not touch her since she was the one who cast it. Then she used the heart to create an illusion where she killed herself like the other rulers, and she took the identity of her younger sister. She has ruled Starling this whole time, changing her identity every few years. She bided her time, having been told about the bondmaker by Egan. But you can only use it once and she wants the powers of all six realms, she had to wait for the circumstances to be exactly right. When people from two realms have a child, that child only has power from one realm… or so they think. But Celeste tells Isla that her father was a Nightshade general, and she actually has the power of both. The Nightshade powers were just shadowing the Wildling powers, making them invisible so that Isla thought she was powerless. But Isla let something slip to Grim one of the times she visited him with the starstick, and when he sought out Celeste, Grim recognized Celeste for who she really was. Celeste convinced him that she would not rest until Egan’s family line was wiped out, that the original transgression was really a Sunling falling in love with Wildling, that to break the curse Oro would need to fall in love with Isla. But that would never happen, because Isla and Grim were already in love and Isla wouldn’t allow it. So, Celeste convinced Grim to take Isla’s memories. It’s why he has stayed away from Isla, even encouraging her to befriend Oro. Then once Oro loved Isla, Aurora could kill Oro, they could break the curse and Grim would return Isla’s memories to her, and he and Isla could rule Lightlark together. But when a ruler falls in love with another ruler, they relinquish some of their power to the one they love. Oro, as King of Lightlark, has power from all the realms on Lightlark (Sun, Moon, Star, and Sky). And he is in love with Isla. So, when Celeste took Isla’s blood, she took the all the power that Isla, Grim, and Oro had. The power of all six realms. Isla has grown up believing that she did not have power, but that doesn’t mean she is powerless, and she won’t take this sitting down. She pulls out the starstick from where she keeps it against her back and portals to the Wildling Newland – off the island. The betrayal doesn’t stop with Celeste/Aurora. Celeste had called Isla a nickname only Poppy and Terra ever used, now Isla knows that the two of them are in on the plan somehow. When she gets to the Newland and sees Poppy, Poppy confirms her suspicions. She and Terra killed Isla’s parents to make Isla the ruler of Wildling in time for the Centennial, Celeste had threatened them. She would destroy all of Wildling herself if they did not comply with her demands. Isla doesn’t have time for retribution against Poppy or Terra, not yet. Instead, she dons her armor and arms herself with blades, then goes back to save the only person who has never lied to her: Oro. She portals back to fight Aurora using the starstick. Aurora now has the power of all six realms and no curse to keep her in check. Isla can’t let her leave the Place of Glass where most of her power is negated, even if killing her means Isla doesn’t make it out alive either. As Isla and Aurora fight, Grim gets Isla’s attention and reminds her of her heart. Her heart, which was pierced with an arrow and healed by Lightlark’s heart. Using the power within her heart, Isla calls the island’s heart to her. She is infused with its power, grabs the bondmaker, and pierces Aurora’s heart with it, pulling all the power from Aurora and killing her. This is the real first offense, the murder of a friend: Isla kills Celeste as Aurora killed Violet. The Starling line is now at an end and a ruler has won. As the curse breaks, so does Lightlark. A giant fissure cracks underneath Isla. She drops the heart into the center of Lightlark and she falls into the chasm after it. She now has all this power but doesn’t know how to use any of it, and neither Grim nor Oro can access their own power while in the Place of Mirrors. But she is caught by a vine, someone above her is using her own Wildling power, transferred to them by the love that Isla feels. Grim had tried and had not been able to help her because her love for him had been broken by his betrayal, Oro had saved her. Grim is furious, knowing that this means that Isla loves Oro, and he disappears into the night. Now that the curse is broken the storm that hides the island is dissipates. Cleo cuts down her bridge, separating her isle from the Mainland. Isla infuses the Wildling Newland with power to keep it alive before returning to her room on Lightlark. She now has the power of Starling as well, having taken it from Aurora with the bondmaker. In doing so, she saved the Starling realm though she killed Aurora. Grim retreats to Nightshade but speaks to Isla’s mind, imploring her to remember their time together. If she does, he knows that she will come back to him. Isla has not seen Oro since he brought her back to the palace… until now. She’s willing to give this thing between them a shot but she is no longer the reckless girl that she was with Grim. She goes back to the Place of Glass, which was mostly destroyed in the battle with Celeste, and uses her crown to finally open the secret door.

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Get ready... Oro is convinced that his father doesn’t care about him. He only cares about Oro as an insurance policy in case something happens to the first son, Egan. When Oro’s mother assures him that’s not true, she doesn’t meet his eyes and Oro knows that he’s right. But Egan cares. No one wasted their time training Oro, but Egan sneaks to his room at night and teaches Oro everything that he learned that day. It’s been a little while since Egan has been so busy, but he comes again tonight. Oro never wants to be king because he doesn’t want anything to happen to Egan. When Oro was a baby, his mom found him in a room consumed by fire he’d created. He was very powerful, especially for a second son. She took him to someone who could teach him to control the fire and told him to hide it from his father - who is greedy and wants to amass power. He would use Oro’s power if he knew. When Oro’s father finds out that Oro can gild, it was because he accidentally gilded a man. The man died yet Oro’s father couldn’t have been more proud. He notices his son. But when Oro cannot, or will not, recreate the process, his father quickly loses interest again. Ever since, Oro can’t use his power at all. His mom visits. She’s worried if he doesn’t use it, the power will overwhelm him. She decides to send him to train earlier than normal, he will be trained to use Sunling, Skyling, Moonling, and Starling powers as a member of the ruling family. As she drops him off, his mom gives him a small rose like she used to leave for him to find when he was growing up. She tells him to find his fire and balls up her fist, a silent gesture with meaning for the two of them. To remind him where his strength is found – not in his fire but in his heart. He is met by Enya, his best friend and daughter of his mom’s best friend. Oro and Enya don’t make friends. The two of them band together as others target Oro, pinning him down and hurting him. Oro only fights back when Enya tries to defend him and gets hurt in the process. They run from the others and come across a gap they need to jump across. It’s big. Enya reveals that she knows when she will die. Her mother found out from one of the Oracles. Oro wants her to tell him so they can avoid it, but she doesn’t want to do that. Besides, it’s a glorious death. And it’s not today. She jumps the gap, he follows her. Weeks later, he still can’t call his power. The teachers lock him in a dark hole - if he wants light, he will need to make it himself. But anytime he tries, he just sees the man he gilded. His father had ignored him again that day as his parents and Egan went out for the night, leaving Oro behind alone. Enya had found him in the armory destroying his father’s armor. Concern for her getting in trouble made him regild the armor so you couldn’t tell it had been damaged, Enya was impressed and wanted to experiment. She tossed things at him; he caught them and gilded them. Bread, knife, cup. Then the servant Albert came in and startled Oro. He gilded Albert before he even realized what was happening. There was no undoing it. Oro is still consumed by the guilt. By the time they pull Oro out of the hole, he’s weak and still hasn’t used his power. Enya takes him to a cliff. If he doesn’t use the power, it will burn him from the inside. It’s time to release it. She knows he won’t hurt her. He can tell with his flair that she believes this absolutely. She believes in him. And she knows she doesn’t die today. He releases his fire and when he’s done, the water is on fire too. Fast forward to the last year of their Sunling training. They spend the day together at a beach that Oro has found but no one else goes to. They’re both very comfortable in their role of best friend, there is zero interest on either side, but Oro always feels far away now that Enya knows when she will die but refuses to tell him. She tells him then that they will have centuries together and that makes him feel better. They graduate and he moves on to train with Moonling powers as Enya stays in Sunling. Oro arrives in Moonling and it is so cold that it freezes his fire. His trainer is the leader’s sister, Cleo, and she’s known to be ruthless. Even inside it’s so cold he can see his breath, and he is forbidden to use his fire - even if he could. Clea will kick him out of training if he uses his fire. The next morning, she tells all of the trainees that they will be living in the Vinderland for the next month. They can keep their cloak, everything else they must provide for themselves in the harsh, unforgiving Vinderland. They will work in pairs with their roommate. Oro meets his roommate Calder. He’s huge and also happens to be the son of the leader of the biggest resistance Lightlark has seen in centuries. The same man that Oro’s dad burned to death a few years ago. Calder doesn’t try to kill Oro right away, much to Oro’s surprise. They start walking until Calder reaches a cave where he insists they stay for the night. He had brought a pack with him when the trainees were called from their room. Inside is a pillow and Oro’s blanket. Calder rips the blanket in half and gives half to Oro. They could still be walking since the sun is out and it’s warmer than it will be that night, but Calder goes to sleep. Oro doesn’t dare sleep, still waiting for Calder’s attack. They continue up the mountain in the morning, and Oro realizes why Calder stopped early the night before. There was a snowstorm and many of their fellow trainees who’d continued are now dead in the snow. Calder just says he could feel that the storm was coming. And there’s another on its way. They’ll need to hurry. They climb all day until they reach the mountain’s peak where they’ll be above the worst of the storm. They make a shelter and Oro tries to light a fire as Calder hunts food. Oro fails; Calder doesn’t. But they can’t cook his catch, so he dresses it and leaves it outside. He comes back in to sleep, and Oro continues to try and fail to start a fire. The next morning, the food has been stolen, so they’ll have to hunt again. Oro joins Calder. He’s never been hunting and he realizes that he is woefully unprepared to provide for himself while it looks like Calder is very self-sufficient. It has a hatchet in his pack that he says he always carries with him. He can hunt and track. They find a stag that charges them when it hears Oro. It runs after Oro, who panics and runs directly off a cliff. He’s saved by Calder. When they get back to their shelter, he asks why Calder saved him. Calder responds that neither of them are their father and cycles can be broken. They shake hands and officially introduce themselves. As soon as Oro returns home with his Moonling training completed, his father asks him to gild someone who was caught stealing from the treasury. Oro refuses. His father throws him into a prison cell and withholds food until Oro agrees. But Oro will not. There’s a hole in the ceiling that he can get water from when it rains. On his weakest day when Oro cannot sit up anymore, Zed appears. A Skyling orphan who says he will bring food in exchange for jewels. Oro tells him to find Enya, who will give him whatever he wants. Zed finds Enya and returns with food for Oro. This continues until Oro asks Zed to break him out of his prison cell. Zed steals a ball of Starling power - he says he’s the best thief there is - and blows the roof off Oro’s jail cell. The four of them: Oro, Enya, Calder, and Zed become close friends. If Oro’s father had been a good king, he would have been prepared for Nightshade to attack. Maybe then he would have survived, and so would Oro’s mom. But they didn’t, and Enya’s mother died too, and now Egan is king. Soon enough, the treaty is signed, ending the war and Grimshaw is chained up in a cell. But Enya says it doesn’t make sense. Why would they sign the treaty? They were winning. Oro decides to speak to Grim and learn the truth with his flair, ignoring Calder when he reminds Oro that they are not their fathers and neither is Grim. When Oro asks why Grim stopped fighting, he is shocked to hear Grim say he has tired of death and know that Grim is not lying. To know that Grim didn’t kill because he chose to. Because he likes it. When Oro questions his answer, Grim tells him to believe what he wants. None of Oro’s friends believe that Grim doesn’t have an ulterior motive and encourage Oro to go back. But every time he does, he and Grim seem more and more similar. Grim almost never lies to Oro and even tells him voluntarily that though he can’t read minds, but he can read emotions. They both hated their fathers, neither wants to rule. But their biggest difference is that Grim thinks that love is a weakness and Oro does not. He would do anything for those he loves. Oro is worked up. He can’t stop thinking of how Grim grew up without a mother because his father had her killed. How his own mother changed his life so much. How their roles could easily have been reversed. When he returns to Grim, Grim lists off Nightshade soldiers that Oro killed himself. Oro never saw them as more than enemies that he needed to kill. More proof that they are similar. Everyone thinks that Grim loves battle but Grim doesn’t love anything. He just does what he must. He asks Oro why he keeps coming and Oro is honest. He wants to know if this is some master plan. When Grim says no, Oro can tell it’s the truth. Oro goes out with his friends and learns that his brother is betrothed to Aurora, the leader of Starling. Egan didn’t tell him. They’ve been growing apart ever since Egan became king. Enya assures him it isn’t personal; it’s probably just for political reasons. Starling is powerful and Lightlark is still reeling from the war. But two rulers have never wed before, that’s a lot of power in one place. Enya asks when Oro will get married too, but he brushes her off. Oro confronts Egan and is told that the marriage is purely political. But Oro knows that it isn’t, not for Aurora. She’s been in love with Egan for years. She’s obsessed with him. Egan is going to put off the actual wedding but will announce the engagement. It will give the people something to celebrate. Agnes, Egan’s guardian who also took care of Oro when possible, comes to Egan and tells him that the daughter she struggled to have has gotten lost and slipped into the Midnight Woods - a place on Star Isle full of night creatures, it is a death sentence to anyone who enters. Except maybe one person. Oro asks Grim for help and Grim agrees, he doesn’t like the idea of a child dying any more than anyone else. Oro makes sure that Grim won’t try to escape and then the two take off. Once in the woods they can hear the girl, Ara, screaming. They fight the creatures, but Oro is quickly overcome and drained of power. Then Grim destroys all the creatures and saves Ara without even getting a scratch. Oro realizes for the first time exactly how strong Grim is. He was holding back during the war. Grim hands Ara to Oro, she needs a healer quickly and Oro is faster. Grim has already promised not to escape and Oro decides to trust him. He flies Ara to help. As Ara is healed, Grim makes his way to the prison and closes himself back in his cell. After he helped to save Ara, Egan says that Grim’s fate is left in Oro’s hands. Oro tells Grim that he’s free to do as he wants as long as he stays on the island and doesn’t kill anybody. He does not need to be in a cell any longer. Grim has been out for years and he and Oro have become friends, almost. Tonight he tells Oro that he heard Egan is having an affair with another ruler. This could be bad and he thought Oro should know. Oro confronts his brother, who is telling the truth when he says he is not sleeping with Violet Crown. But it’s a lie when he says he doesn’t love her. He tells Oro that he has no plans to call off the wedding, but Oro realizes he has no plans to marry Aurora either. But Aurora is unpredictable. He tells Egan to choose. Either marry her or break it off. He doesn’t see Violet and Egan together outside of their official rules anymore. Not for a decade, until he finds Violet coming out of Egan’s room. At this point, Egan’s wedding is only weeks away. Oro yells at him for being so selfish. Grim has said that his father has always wanted Lightlark and so they’ve been building up their cache of weapons, weapons created by Starling. Egan agrees. He’s going to call off his wedding because he is in love with Violet. He also agrees that Lightlark needs someone who can put the island before himself. So, Egan is abdicating to put Oro on the throne. He is going to subject Oro to the life he’s never wanted and put him in a gilded cage. But there is one silver lining. When Oro speaks to Grim, he suggests that Grim could become leader of Nightshade and the island could finally really be at peace - ruled by friends. Grim shakes on it. Then the curses are released. When Grim says he is not to blame, Oro can there’s a lie. Oro swears he will make Grim pay for this one day. By the end of the day, all the rulers are dead - Egan included. Five hundred years later, Oro no longer believes that Grim created the curses. For this reason, he has personally invited Grim to the Centennial. It is the only chance they have of breaking the curse. But he also remembers the lie that he felt. Grim is responsible for the curses somehow - which is why he must be the ruler who dies to break the curse, his realm destroyed as a result. Oro meets the other rulers, the only one he’s looking forward to seeing or trusts is Azul. He notices that Grim is acting weird around the Wildling ruler, he must be interested in her. Oro hears the Wildling singing and startles her, causing her to fall off her balcony. He pauses for a moment, thinking she will save herself with her power, but she doesn’t. He saves her as he wonders why. He also could have let her die; it would have fulfilled part of the curse. But he didn’t. That night, he speaks to Grim. He wants to know the real reason Grim came. Grim has his reasons but doesn’t share them. Grim asks why Oro still hates him, since he must know after five hundred years that Grim didn’t set the curses. But Oro still blames him, even if he wasn’t directly responsible. He also blames Grim for giving him hope that they could be at peace. For believing they could be friends. Grim tells him a secret. Lark Crown is still alive. If Isla dies, it won’t fulfill the curse requirement. And if Grim dies, a greater danger will be set upon Lightlark. Nightshade power is what is keeping Lark imprisoned. But the island won’t withstand the death of one of the other realms. Oro has already decided he must find the heart of Lightlark. Now he knows there’s no other option. Grim sets a duel for the first challenge. Oro has to face Isla. She nearly wins. She tricks him and his strength is waning since he’s dying. But at the last second she lets him win. Very interesting. And he can’t stop thinking about the color of her eyes. His favorite shade of green. Oro’s sickness is getting worse. It’s caused by his inability to go into the sun, because of the curse. If he doesn’t break the curse during this Centennial, he will die before the next one. Only his closest friends know. He sees the Wildling talking to Grim - are they working together? He already doesn’t trust her just because she’s a Wildling. So many Wildling rulers have thrown themselves at him to get their hands on his power. Luckily, he saw right through them, thanks to his flair. At the next challenge, Diem knocks the crown off of his head with a throwing star. He silently applauds her but also cannot appear weak because of this display. He gilds for the first time in centuries. Afterward, he is visited by Enya and Zed. Zed has created a network of spies and tells Oro that Moonling nobles are causing problems. Cleo’s hold on them was tentative even before the Centennial. Oro meets with Cleo. She didn’t come to the last Centennial and he asks why. She had an heir the last time and so was disqualified. She no longer does. She returned because she knows a second prophecy, given after the prophecy telling how to end the curses. She tells Oro a little about the second prophecy and insists that she is there to break the curses. Oro tells her to get a handle on her nobles. He also sends Calder to keep an eye on them. At the Starling challenge, Oro is taken back to his Moonling training when he couldn’t use his power but also without Calder to help him. It’s Isla, and the fact that her eyes remind him of his favorite beach, that brings him out of the nightmare. He starts watching Isla. He follows her to the agora where he trades Juniper a secret (that he’s dying) for what Isla wanted. She wanted to know how to get onto Moon Isle. And since his secret was so good, Juniper gives him something else. Multiple sources want Isla dead. But Isla doesn’t go to Moon Isle yet, she goes to Sky Isle instead. She leaves disappointed and heads back to her room. She’s disguised as a Skyling and Cleo sees her. Cleo follows her back to her room but doesn’t confront her. Because Grim is hiding her. Proof that they’re working together. When Oro listens at the door though, it doesn’t sound like Isla wants anything to do with Grim. At Isla’s challenge, she plunges her own arm into a fire just to heal it. To risk herself, she must have so much to lose. She must have many secrets; Oro is going to find them. When Oro isn’t following Isla, he searches for the heart. On this particular night, he gets bit by a poisonous plant just before Cleo issues her challenge. He waits for the challenge to start, Isla next to him. She sees his rash and tells him how to treat it. When they’re plunges into the water, they’re called to a tablet naming their heart’s desire. He finds his tablet and returns to his room, only then looking at it. It says one word: love. But that’s ridiculous. He doesn’t want love; he’s learned from Egan’s mistake. He stops following Isla and sets Zed to the task instead. It’s Zed that tells Oro she climbed the Moonling tower to find the library and was caught by Cleo. But when Cleo went in, Isla was nowhere to be found. And Zed doesn’t think Grim was with her. So how did she disappear? Oro issues his own challenge. Tea that reveals the drinker’s biggest secret. The first to reveal their secret wins. No one reveals their secret except Oro. He tells them all he’s dying, and he wins the challenges. He gets to choose the teams, and he chooses Isla as his partner. That evening, he explains that he needs someone that knows about plants and she is his best bet. He asks her to continue to mask her powers and also not to dress like a Wildling, there are things on the island that hate Wildlings. He takes her to the next place he wants to search and tests her to see if she will trust him. She calls him out, since he definitely doesn’t trust her. He realizes that’s true and decides to tell her the truth. He tells her he’s looking for the heart of the island. When Oro next sees his friends, he tells them what he learned. That Isla is not working with Grim. So then, why is Grim so interested in her? There must be something she can offer him to make it worth his while. Oro and Isla continue to search, but they don’t find the heart. Oro is visited by Azul, who says that his realm has taken a vote. They volunteer to be the realm that dies to free the others of the curses. Oro says they will find another way, but Azul is prepared to die, as are his people. As is Zed, should it be necessary. Isla and Oro begin to lose hope that they’ll find the heart. Then Isla gets into some trouble and has to have massive thorns removed from her body. They’re excruciating and she lets Oro help her remove the ones in her back as he has her use his hand to bite down on, so she doesn’t bite off her own tongue. He uses his Moonling powers to heal her, but he doesn’t heal the bite marks on his hand. Oro asks Enya to help him find the specter, who may know where the heart is hidden. Enya warns Oro not to get attached to Isla. It takes them weeks to track the specter down. In that time, Isla is attacked by Moonlings, she disappears with Grim, and Oro finds her on Wild Isle trying to open the little door in the Place of Mirrors. When they finally track the specter down, she refuses to speak with Enya, so Oro has to speak to her alone. In exchange for the information she has, she wants to be in a body for just a few moments. The body of most beautiful woman Oro has ever seen. Of course he knows who that is, but he will leave Isla to choose. Hopefully she’s also desperate for the specter’s information. He hasn’t seen Isla for eight days and she’s angry about it. He wonders if she’s missed him. He’s missed her, not that he tells her that. He takes her to the specter, and then Isla is mad about the deal that he made. He probably should have told her ahead of time. But she allows the specter in and the specter approaches Oro. She knows that he wants Isla, has dreamt about her. Now is his chance to have her. But he doesn’t want the specter, it’s not the same. It’s not really Isla at all. He does nothing and Isla comes back to her body a moment later, only inches away from Oro’s mouth. He gives her access to Sun Isle’s library in exchange for the specter, who told them that the heart is not on Star Isle. His friends wonder if he’s lost his mind. She is probably working with Grim, against him. But he reminds them that none of them had great first impressions, maybe she could be a friend. Or at least not an enemy. There’s a ball. Oro gets jealous when he sees Grim and Isla walk in together. They may as well be holding hands as they look at each other. Then Grim gets a look at someone in the crowd and looks worriedly at Oro before leaving the ballroom. He was looking at the Starling ruler. Oro has Zed follow Grim. Then the whole world starts to shake apart. The island is breaking and Oro is dying. But Isla won’t let him. She demands he save everybody and he uses emotion to have the power he needs to do it. It’s dangerous, and he nearly dies anyway. But the island and he both survive. He thinks Grim did it, but Grim couldn’t have. Grim had caught Zed following him and was about to kill him when the island started to shake. Grim looked terrified and both he and Zed started racing toward the ballroom. Oro knows Grim was coming to save Isla. He knows Grim would not have risked Isla like that. The island must be breaking; they have less time than ever to break the curses. Oro tells Isla they need to speak to Remlar and it’s her idea to use herself at bait. Remlar cuts Oro, not deeply, but Oro is already weak from dying. After Isla agrees to visit Remlar again and they get the answer they want (the heart is where darkness meets light), Oro falls from the sky while flying them back. Isla has to hide them in a cave as daybreak threatens. When Oro wakes up, he’s surprised that she saved him and wonders if she cares for him. He wonders if she cares for someone else, is falling in love with someone else, and that is why she needs the curse broken so badly. If she’s falling in love with Grim. They play a game asking each other questions and he asks Isla what her secret was that she refused to reveal. She won’t tell him and instead asks what his flair is. He will tell her if she tells him her secret - still no. He will let her claim the heart and get untold power if she tells his secret. Still no. Either she is the only ruler, other than him, not interested in the prize or her secret is really bad. She doesn’t answer him. They see the Oracle who tells them the heart is somewhere in Moon Isle. Oro can’t sleep thinking of Isla, and he walks through the castle. Isla appears behind him. She’s crying and she wants to know if his offer still stands. When he says it does, she tells him she was born powerless. He can tell from his fair that she’s telling mostly the truth, but he doesn’t understand the small twinge of lie he feels. She has never used powers. that is completely true. Meaning that the way he feels about her is not some Wildling bewitchment. He steps toward her but collapses in pain, passing out. He dreams of her and when he wakes up, he knows what he has to do. He switches the teams, pairing with Cleo. He needs to search places only Cleo can go, and to do so, he needs Cleo to trust him. So, he tells the other rulers Isla’s secret. He’s afraid one of the other rulers will attack her and he will have to protect her, showing that he is not working against her even without powers, but Grim steps forward and saves Isla instead, making them both disappear into the shadows. Isla will think this is a betrayal, but it’s in her best interest too. Even so, he dreams of her again that night. All he can think of is Isla, and worse than that, the betrayal leads to nothing. The heart is not in the place only Cleo can access. But that only leaves two other places to look. As he’s walking, a bird distracts him - it’s trying to lead him to a bunch of men. They’ve frozen Isla and are planning to kill her. He rescues her and takes her to his room to warm her up. She’s angry, he tells her why he betrayed her. It was imperative that she believed the lie so that Cleo would believe it. He wants to earn her trust back. He tells her his flair. Even though she lied to him repeatedly, and he knew it, he still told her the truth. And the prize will still be hers. The day of Carmel is here, and all the rulers must attend. Of course, Oro must wait until nightfall. As he prepares to go, he finds petals strewn along the hallways. He follows them to find a drunk Isla, who asks if he ever smiles. He takes her back to her room, and she asks him to come in. They both fall asleep there and when Oro wakes up, Carmel is nearly over. He has never neglected a responsibility before now, before her. He rushes to leave and things are awkward. He shouldn’t have come; she only asked him in because she was drunk. He makes his way outside and finds himself in his mother’s garden, talking to his mother’s memory, when he hears a scream. He rushes in to find the Starling ruler trapped in webbing. Their time grows short and Oro and Isla start working together again. They decide they will search each of the remaining places in the next two days. On day one, they strip off most of their clothes to go in the water with dangerous Nightshade creatures. Isla gets injured and Oro pulls her out to heal her. This time when he touches her, it feels different. Like she might like it too. Neither found the heart, only one place left. It’s not in the last place either. Both Isla and Oro start to lose hope. That evening, Enya tells them that she doesn’t die right away. And if Oro dies, so does she. There must be a way to find it! The Vinderlands know Moon Isle better than anyone, Calder and Oro visit a small sect of Vinderlands that has broken away from the rest of them. But for their help, they want Isla. They want to drink her blood. Oro kills the man they’re speaking to. That should ease tensions. Isla pounds on Oro’s door. She refuses to believe that this is it, that there’s no chance. He asks her for a new idea and after a few days, she has one. She has figured out where the heart is. On the way to retrieve it, she asks what he will do when the curses are broken. He wants the island to live like it used to. All different communities together, not ruled by one king. Maybe Wildling could join again. She says maybe and he feels that she’s lying. As they wait for the heart to be revealed, Oro feels a ripping in his chest. The island can’t die now, not with them so close! He asks Isla to sing to him and she does. It makes the pain retract. Then they see the heart, which is apparently an egg. Isla goes to grab it and is shot by the Vinderling, here to seek retribution. Isla lays in the sun dying just out of Oro’s reach. He reaches anyway, the sun that is rising burning the muscle off his arm. But then Grim is there and he vanishes with Isla. Just… vanishes. Is that Grim’s flair? Why reveal it now? Oro waits until the sun starts to set, and then he flies to the Mainland. Isla is there, she’s okay. He knows that’s a miracle and he will always be thankful for it. Even if she never chooses him, he will just be happy she’s alive. If she loves Grim, he won’t even tell her how he feels. He won’t burden her with it. He gives her the heart and tells her to meet him in the library. Before Isla, Oro meets Azul and Cleo. He may have told Isla she can save a realm but the choice of who to kill affects them all. Azul and Oro choose Nightshade, but Cleo chooses Starling. And it’s Starling that Isla chooses to save. When told that Grim must die, Isla argues with him and runs off. He knows she’s probably going to try to save Grim. Grim dying gives him no joy surprisingly. He hates Grim now, but he didn’t always. There’s an attack and part of the palace is destroyed. People are dead. And Celeste the Starling is no longer imprisoned. Oro checks on Isla and enters her room when she doesn’t answer. He sees the heart of Lightlark, as well as a letter explaining that she’s found a way to save Nightshade and Starling. Oro goes to where he knows Isla likes to spend her time, at the Place of Mirrors. There, Celeste has a needle in Isla’s arm as Grim watches, unable to help (only Wildling powers work here). Celeste takes Isla’s power, and Oro’s and Grim’s with it. Oro realizes that he is in love with Isla, otherwise she would not have access to his powers. The truth comes out, Celeste is Aurora, and she cast the curses. Isla fights Aurora off and is able to portal away, just to come back with weapons. She takes Aurora’s powers with the needle and then kills her. The curses are broken, Aurora’s body falls into a chasm, so does Isla. Both Grim and Oro reach out to save Isla, but only Wildling powers work here. Oro and Grim come to the same realization at the same time as Oro uses vines to grab Isla. Oro was able to, but Grim was not. Because after learning the truth, Isla has fallen for Oro, but she doesn’t love Grim anymore. Grim disappears. Oro takes Isla to the palace and lets her recuperate for weeks from the pain of physical and emotional injury. When she finally comes out of her room, he’s able to hold her and he knows, he’s finally found his fire after hundreds of years of searching.

Oro

Click to reveal, if you're ready. We start immediately after Lightlark ends, as Isla opens the secret door on the Wild Isle using her crown and, as soon as a gap is widened, a force shoots through the gap and into her chest knocking her back before slamming the door closed again. She sees a vision: bodies littered on the ground, darkness devouring the bodies (literally) as it covers them. When the darkness realizes she’s watching, it forces itself down her throat. She wakes up from the vision to find Oro worrying next to her. They return to the palace from the Place of Mirrors where he tells her that perhaps she has to master her powers before the door will allow her inside. But Callie just finished the Centennial, where she nearly died, and experienced not one but two personal betrayals, killed her best friend, and took her Starling powers. Now she is depressed and has PTSD, but Oro insists that she start training regardless. She’s going to need her skills, especially if the visions she saw comes to pass. One catch, she needs a Nightshade to unlock her powers. Like Grim, who happened to be at the center of her vision. They call a meeting of the rulers to figure out what to do next, now that the curses have been broken. It’s not much of a meeting honestly, Oro is there with a few advisors, so is Azul. Isla is there as the Wildling Leader, but she doesn’t trust anyone as an advisor anymore. There is no Starling ruler, a young Starling woman named Maren takes the role as Starling envoy. Nightshade isn’t represented at all, and neither is Moonling. In fact, Cleo seems to be preparing for war. About halfway through dinner a Moonling man, Soren, bursts in through the door. He’s been sent to the meeting in Cleo’s place. He tells Oro that Cleo destroying the bridge to the mainland was a statement, but it was also for protection. They have their legion of ships not for war but to unite their people once again although they haven’t decided if they’ll live on the island or the Newland. Azul speaks up, saying that his people will each be given a choice of where they want to live. But more than that, Skylings have heard rumors of rebellion from all the different peoples on Lightlark. This surprises Soren who lashes out at Isla, asking her basic questions about her people on the Newland, none of which she knows the answer to. She starts to doubt herself as a ruler and her choice to exile her old advisors - who lied to her and killed her parents, when the Starling woman speaks up. Starling has been taken advantage of for the last five hundred years and in order to rebuild, they need a proper ruler. Maren asks Isla to take the job, since she now has all the power of the previous ruler, and Isla agrees even though she was just thinking about what a crappy leader she is for Wildling. She’s not the right person to rule Starling, so she will just have to become that person. Screw Wildling, I guess. Meanwhile, Oro says he’s going to visit all the realms and give them a pep talk. He thinks Grim might try to start a war again, like his father before him, and all the realms need to be united against Nightshade. Isla meets with Azul and they have a heart to heart. He tells her she never connected with her people, she was never allowed to, and the Starling people are actual strangers to her. Isla doesn’t feel connected to Lightlark because she is so new to it, even though she has decided to live there at least some of the time. Azul takes her on a little tour to get to know the island and encourages her to really get to know her people. She decides to do just that. She visits Wildling first, which is very low in population and the people who are still there are struggling hard. She asks what they need, offering more food or education to teach them better growing or building techniques, but the Wildlings tell her to go to Starling and help them first. None of the Starling are older than twenty-five because of their curse and it would help the Wildlings with their guilt of eating hearts to survive. For a moment on the Wildling Newland, Isla thinks she sees Grim. She had thought she heard him at the dinner for the rulers too, and the flashes of him are really throwing her off. She knows he can turn invisible and is not sure if he’s really there or if she’s imagining it all. Isla is coronated as the ruler of Starling and just as the crown is placed in her head, the ground opens and a bunch of reptilian, winged humanoids fly out and start killing everybody. The people try to fight back but not much hurts the flying, scaled creatures. Oro is trying to put up barriers of fire to protect everyone while also trying to close the rift and suddenly, Isla thinks that maybe training her powers may have been helpful after all (do you think!?). She cannot do anything with any of her powers, including the new Starling powers that she can feel there, just waiting for her to use them. She yells out in frustration and attracts the attention of one of the creatures which then prepares to eat her head, but instead just pauses for a moment and looks at her. She reaches out to touch its head and the creature screams at her in response before leaving - taking all his buddies with him - and flying toward Nightshade. Oro closes the gap in the ground and then people turn on Isla, who they saw not get eaten. They now believe she’s working with Nightshade. They call a gathering of the rulers and Cleo deigns to attend this time. She asks how Isla managed to stop the dreks (the flying reptilians), which Isla doesn’t really have an answer to. Oro asks if Cleo was able to speak to the oracle but unfortunately, the oracle refused to unfreeze herself at this time. Oro then asks Cleo if she’s made her choice about staying on Lightlark or leaving (she has not) and asks her what side she will be on should Nightshade declare war (the winning side) and then Cleo disappears in a wave of water. That night Isla is kidnapped by a wave and taken into a cave where she sees people of all different realms wearing scary red masks. Someone touches her arms, and her body explodes with power, knocking everyone away and giving her the chance to run for freedom. She makes her way back to the Mainland and to the palace, where Oro hears her story and calls another meeting. He tells them all that Isla is the reason they are no longer under the curse and that anyone associating with the rebels will be hung at the Bay of Teeth, where they may be eaten by sea monsters. Azul offers her two volunteer Skyling guards for protection. Oro is upset because she almost died and they have a tender moment together, which is a big deal considering they barely look at each other for two people in love. She tells Oro that she wants to start training, finally. Oro has an idea about how to untangle her Wildling and Nightshade powers. Remlar, the weird bee man who helped them to find the island’s heart and who tried to kill Isla the last time she saw him. When they see him, Remlar says he can help her. He puts one hand on her head and another on her heart and it hurts a lot, but then he’s done, and he doesn’t explain anything. As if this book isn’t confusing enough, now we get to go back in time to when Isla portaled to the Nightshade Newland for the first time. She was being pursued and her starstick wasn’t working, so she was running from the people chasing her. She flung herself into a room with a bunch of other women and was mistaken as a member of the group. They were all waiting for the chance to be chosen, Isla doesn’t know what for - but it’s pretty clear to me that it’s to sleep with Grim and attempt to have a child with him. Unsurprisingly, Grim came in and chose Isla. He took her to his room and kissed her. She enjoyed herself quite a bit but ruined it by stabbing Grim in the chest and before she portaled away, her starstick had suddenly started working again. It wasn’t long before he found her and appeared to her in her bedroom asking how she got into Nightshade. Instead of telling him, she stabbed him again and put a knife to his throat, forcing him to portal away. Every time we go into the past, it’s Isla regaining more of her memories. Back in present day, Isla realizes that she’s starting to regain the memories that Grim hid because her Nightshade powers have been released. Thanks, Remlar! Oro is next to her, worrying again. She’s panicking, overwhelmed by her newfound powers. Oro takes her to the Place of Mirrors, where no magic but Wildling magic can be used, to give her body and mind time to adjust to having powers. Her Skyling guards come with them. She begins training with Oro in the Place of Mirrors, starting with control. He warns her it may take a few weeks or months to attain, but it takes her a day and a half. They continue with focus, where he gets to throw rocks at her, and he warns her that emotions undo what control she has so she needs to manage her emotions. They may make her more powerful, but they can bleed her dry as well. Isla trains for weeks at the Place of Mirrors until she announces that she wants to continue her training on the Wildling Newland. She takes a Sunling named Enya with her to teach the Wildling people. Enya is one of Oro’s closest friends and was pivotal in teaching the Sunling people to survive after the curses had been cast. Enya gathers up a group of other tolerant people to help on the Newland and they agree to stay for a week to help the Wildlings get things started. When they get to the Wildling Newland, Enya proves to be effective and thorough, and quickly starts getting things in order. By the time the volunteers leave, the houses on the Newland are fixed and the Wildlings have a steady food supply, as well as the skills to maintain both. Isla stays behind alone to continue bonding with her people and begins to train with Wren, the leader of one of the larger villages. Isla wants to take a bonded, an animal familiar, and Wren agrees to plan the ceremony. Wren explains that you don’t choose a bonded, they reflect who you are inside and for Isla, her strength as a leader will be reflected as well. This worries Isla since she does not consider herself a competent leader, let alone a strong one. For the bonded ceremony, a bunch of people escort Isla to an island in a swamp and leave her there. She will have to find her bonded and shoot it with an arrow. Regular people don’t have to shoot their bonded, just rulers, and I’m still confused as to why. Something about the animal allowing you to shoot it – it probably indicates strength and trust or whatever. After seeing a bunch of animals that don’t spark any connection, Isla has to run away from a giant horned bear. Just as she escapes, a sassy panther comes out and chooses Isla. He’s big enough that Isla can ride on his back to safety. Lynx, who happened to be Isla’s mother’s bonded as well. Great, now Isla thinks the panther has chosen her out of duty and longing, instead of for who she is. There’s no place for the panther on Lightlark, so Lynx chooses to stay on the Newland while Isla returns and prepares a place for him on Lightlark. Upon returning to Lightlark, Isla hears that the rebels have been spotted and now there are Starlings among them – one of Isla’s own realms. Isla’s attendant Ella saw some of the Starlings, although she says she didn’t recognize them because of the masks. Ella tells Isla and Oro that the Starling are the only people who knew about the tunnels that the rebels are using. The Starlings use the tunnels to hide, to house the dead, and to travel to the east side of the isle, which has apparently been taken over by monsters. This is the first time Isla has heard about these monsters because, even though her Wildling people encouraged her to help Starling first, she hasn’t actually been to Star Isle yet. Azul tells Isla that no one else has been attacked by the rebels, they seem to be targeting Isla specifically - which doesn’t make any sense if Starlings are now involved. If she dies as their ruler, all the Starlings and Wildlings die with her. As Isla prepares to finally go to Star Isle, she thinks she sees Grim in her room for just a moment. We go back in time again. Grim came back to Isla’s room, asked about her starstick and how she portals with it, but he ultimately allowed her to keep it. He told her that at some point, he was the one who had made the starstick but neither he nor Isla knows how it came to Isla. Later, she went to his room with a peace offering, a bottle of Wildling elixir, and waited for him to show up. When he did show up, there was another man with him and Isla elected to hide in the only available place: the bathroom. In the shower specifically. When Grim found her hiding in his shower, he thought that she was there for nefarious reasons. She’d already stabbed him twice and no one likes Nightshade as it is, but she explained why she came as she gave him the elixir. He was not impressed and was kind of mean, so she challenged him to a duel. If she won, he’d stop hating her (that is how that works). If he won, she wouldn’t come back to Nightshade ever again. She fought hard but he won. Back in the present, Isla and Oro continue training while visiting Lynx. She finally tells Oro about her memories of Grim coming back. Oro seems like a great guy except he overreacts when it comes to defending or protecting Isla. It’s too much, bud. He gives Isla his room, just in case Grim is trying to reach her. Since Grim has never been to Oro’s rooms, he won’t be able to reach Isla there. He can only travel to places he has seen. For the time being, Oro will find a new room. The two of them start to rebuild the Wild Isle, slowly bringing the isle back to life, and Isla plans to celebrate the Wildling holiday Copia with the people of Lightlark. She hasn’t brought any of the other Wildlings to Lightlark yet, neither the Wildlings nor the other realms are ready for that since they’ve been separated for so long and the curse made the Wildlings seem like villains. Copia will be a sort of introduction to the idea of Wildlings returning one day. The day of Copia comes and Isla puts her power on display for everyone to see. The whole hall is blooming with flowers and as she gives a little welcome speech, she makes a tree grow from a seed into a mature tree before their eyes. A tree that has not grown on Lightlark for hundreds of years. But as soon as Isla sits (feeling pretty proud of herself), the tree and all of the flowers die, an illusion sent to everyone at Copia. A voice tells them all that they have one month to vacate the island before it’s destroyed. Flee to their Newlands or join the voice’s forces, but fighting is futile. Everyone believes the voice is Grim’s. Isla visits Cleo. Cleo did not attend the Centennial just before the last one and had started preparing her people for something, building ships to leave if necessary. Isla wants to know what Cleo knows. Cleo doesn’t tell Isla…yet. But she does stay on Lightlark and meets with the other rulers to figure out a plan forward. Cleo reveals that she tried to talk to the Oracle again but had no luck. Azul mentions that Grim must be well equipped if he’s prepared to take on all the other realms at once. And there must be something he wants. Oro thinks that something is Isla, Isla is not so sure. Cleo visits Isla alone. She tells Isla that the reason she didn’t attend the fourth Centennial is because she had had a son, and her son had died because of the curse. Isla reminds Cleo of her son. Cleo also mentions that the oracle is finally awake and has a message for Isla. Isla and Oro decide to see the oracle together but are interrupted by Azul, who shows them the Moonling boats leaving Lightlark. Cleo is with them, but Soren has stayed behind. They’re told that Cleo is joining Nightshade. The Moon Isle starts melting, now that the Moonling people have left. Oro and Isla get to the oracle. There are actually three oracles frozen in the ice but only one ever awakens, the other two had allied with Nightshade in the previous war and have been frozen for more than a thousand years. But they’re gone now, no longer in the ice. The remaining oracle tells Isla that her memories are the key to unlocking the world. Isla already knows everything she needs to know, including what weapon Nightshade has and how to stop them, she just needs to remember it. If Isla fails, Lightlark will fall forever. And the Wildling vault, if she can open it, will change everything. No pressure. Telepathically, so that Oro cannot overhear, the oracle instructs Isla to visit again - alone - to receive the Oracle’s final prophecy. The oracle is dying, injured by Cleo before she fled. Isla visits Remlar again. The bee man tells Isla that he cannot recover her memories. A skilled Nightshade could but it would still be dangerous, it’s better if Isla does it herself with her Nightshade abilities which she doesn’t know how to use. She asks him to teach her. He tells her it’s simple. Access her Nightshade abilities like she does with her Wildling abilities but look for the shadows. She reaches inside herself for the shadows and turns around into a memory. She had become friends with Celeste, and together they made a plan. Isla was using the starstick to look for skin gloves. She searched all the illicit markets in all the Newlands except for Nightshade, so she went there with the flimsiest of disguises. A man there tried to scalp her for her hair, and she killed him before running away. She was caught and taken to the dungeons where she was visited by Grim. He thought the two of them were looking for the same thing, she wondered aloud why he’s also looking for skin gloves. No, not skin gloves, Grim was searching for a way to survive the Centennial. He proposed an alliance with Isla, if she helped him to find a special sword then he would attend the Centennial for the first time and ally with her. She agreed with the caveat that she still got to keep the starstick. In present day, Isla gives the Wildlings the option to fight against Nightshade, asking those unwilling to fight to make as much elixir as possible. She tries to open the vault on Wild Isle again but is still unable to. Oro introduces her to two more friends: a Moonling named Calder (Cal) and a Sunling named Zed. Zed’s the fastest Sunling in recent history. They all debrief the plans they’ve made so far. Oro has people who have been searching the island for a special ore that, when made into a metal, can pierce even the thickest hides. Like drek skin, but they haven’t found any ore yet. The ore must be worked by both Sunling and Starling power to be made into metal and they didn’t find any weapons already made, so they’ll have to make as many as possible once the ore is found. The Sunling forces have been raised and are training, their numbers are strong. Wildling warriors have volunteered and have their own weapons, the others are making as much elixir as they can. Oro’s friends have gathered all the outside communities (like the Vinderlands), most have agreed to fight against Nightshade. Starlings have also agreed to fight, but considering their age and population, they’re going to shield parts of the Mainland instead of going into battle. The Wildlings can cover the Mainland in barbs and poisonous plants, since Grim will most likely portal his forces in. The plants will injure them as soon as they arrive. Azul comes in from a meeting and deals a devastating blow, the Skylings want to leave Lightlark. The Skylings act as a democracy and there will be a vote soon on whether they leave or not. In her training with Remlar, Isla kills a massive tree and uses her power to create hundreds of saplings. She’s the only person with the power to turn death into life. In the past, Isla and Grim started to work together. Before they could look for the sword they needed to visit the blacksmith, an ancient Nightshade being that kills people for the special talents they hold in their blood and then uses that blood to create special weapons. He tried to kill Isla, obviously, but Grim stopped him before he got too far. The blacksmith told Grim that Isla could help Grim find the sword, Grim would not be able find it himself because if a Nightshade ruler tries to claim the sword, the sword disappears. The blacksmith knew the sword was last seen on the Nightshade Newland, but it has gone dormant, the blacksmith could no longer feel it. Grim and Isla tracked down a group of thieves that was well known and Grim managed to get some answers out of one of them. The thief said that they did have the sword at one time, but one of them (named Viktor, always has a snake with him) went rogue and stole the sword decades ago. Last the thief knew, Viktor had been seen around Creetan’s Crag. After getting the information, Grim killed the thief. He was the only thief still alive out of four, Isla had already killed the other three. She struggled with that fact, but Grim told her that the thieves didn’t deserve mercy, they sold more than just objects. He took her back to her room, telling her that he would be back in two weeks so they could go to Creetan’s Crag together. In present day, Isla goes to Star Isle to find the strongest wielders who will be able to power their shield. Maren makes Isla promise the person can give their power anonymously (Isla will only tell Oro) before showing Isla what her cousin, Cinder, can do. Cinder wields her power like a natural, she’s completely untrained and as strong as a ruler would be, even though she’s only a child. Isla tells Oro about Cinder that night and he comments that Maren is right to protect Cinder, others may want to use her. It’s not common but it’s not unheard of for a gifted child like Cinder to be born. As they’re talking, Isla is overcome by the vision she received from the vault. It’s not the first time she’s relived it, but the visions are steadily becoming clearer. In this iteration, Isla actually sees Grim. He tells her to save herself and run, but then she dies. When she comes to (the vision made her pass out), Isla tells Oro that she and Enya are going to visit the Vinderland (a group of Wildlings who broke from the realm well before the curses and became cannibalistic because they wanted to) to convince them to fight with the rest of Lightlark. Oro is not pleased by the plan, but he helps Isla to create a shield around her body for protection, using her Starling powers. The Vinderland almost killed her once already, best to be prepared. When she and Enya go to Vinderland, the Vinderlands are not amenable to helping the rest of Lightlark and instead, try to kill the two of them. One takes a swing at Isla’s head but when she reaches up to block the axe, the weapon turns completely to ash at her touch. When they see this example of Nightshade powers, the Vinderlands agree to fight with Isla, who they say is able to walk the line between life and death. There are hundreds of Vinderlands, but many of them cannot fight due to an illness they can’t cure. Isla thinks of making a tea from the elixir flowers. She’s hopeful it will cure a sickness but working mostly from intuition, since most of the Moonlings have left and they were the primary healers on Lightlark. If Isla can cure the Vinderland, they will all fight with Isla. In the past, Isla grew impatient waiting for Grim to go to Creetan’s Crag and decided to visit one of the Wildling villages with the starstick. When she portaled in, she was immediately knocked out. She heard two women talking about eating her heart (even though she’s also a Wildling) since hearts have been few and far between lately. Something Isla knew nothing about thanks to her guardians. She was able to reach her starstick and portal away, but she couldn’t go home right away. One of the women was able to open her chest with a knife as she prepared to remove Isla’s heart and Isla couldn’t allow her guardians to know she could leave her room. So, she went to Grim instead, who retrieved the elixir from her room and destroyed her shirt that was all bloody and helped her to deal with the pain of the injury. Later, once she was home again and sleeping, she woke up to find Grim in her room. He watched her sleep to make sure she didn’t bleed out or somehow made her injury worse. When she woke again in the morning, he was gone, but he reappeared again that night. They went to his palace so that he could train her to be better with a sword and how to better use her starstick. In present day, Isla goes to the Star Isle to train with Cinder to create the shield. When she gets there, Isla is told that one of the monsters on the isle took a child. Monsters to the east and specters in the palace, these poor kids have no place to go. Isla decides to deal with the monsters now and finds that the monster who stole the child is a massive snake. Isla is able to pin it down with vines but only after almost getting one of her Skyling guards killed and nearly drowning herself. When Isla finally traps the snake, the snake transforms into a woman. She is someone who used to be Wildling and separated before the curses, like the Vinderlands did, and it sounds like it’s more than just her on Star Isle. Isla tells the snake woman to stop eating children and to fight with them when Nightshade arrives. The snake says no to both and wanders off. In the past, Isla and Grim went to a celebration in Creetan’s Crag and quickly found the thief (and his snake) watching a strip tease. Isla decided to dance and when Viktor asked for a private dance, she was more than happy to oblige. She offered him a drink, which drugged him, and questioned him. He no longer had the sword, it had been stolen from him by the greatest thief alive, and it was hidden in the Caves of Irida. No one would take the sword from the thief because the thief had a monster. Before he could tell Isla what kind of monster, Viktor passed out and Grim showed up. Viktor wasn’t the only one affected by Isla’s dancing. But before he could make any bad decisions, Grim portaled Isla to her room and did not follow. He was gone a month before Isla decided to go looking for him. She waited for him in his room, but another woman came in instead. Isla was embarrassed and hurt, although she would never admit it, and decided to go find the sword herself. She needed to find a map to the caves, so she went to the Nightshade market and, predictably, got into a spot of trouble. She was caught by a bunch of men who decided to skin her, although it’s not clear why. She made a portal but one of the men grabbed her before she could step through. Another man went through the portal instead, to find out where she was trying to go. Unfortunately for him the portal led to Grim’s rooms. Grim quickly found Isla, killed the men, and took her back to his room to heal her many injuries. She decided they’d go to the caves together the next day and Grim agreed to her plan. In the present, the time has come for the Skyling vote. It’s no real surprise when they vote to leave. About one hundred chose to stay, but they also voted for Azul to leave the island to protect the realm. A huge blow for Lightlark. And the Vinderland tea has not been working. Finally, Team Lightlark makes some progress. They are able to find and extract the ore that they can use to make into weapons effective against the dreks. Isla also remembers that Soren exists and is in the island, so she asks him for help healing the Vinderland and he agrees (it’s not immediate healing but it’s a step in the right direction), Lynx agrees to fight with Isla, and she starts to learn how to ride on his back, and they choose where they’re going to engage Nightshade. Back in the past, the thief’s monster was a dragon who was sleeping in the mouth of the cave. Isla and Grim could see the sword (and a bunch of other treasures) behind the dragon, but they couldn’t portal in since using any Nightshade power would make the sword disappear. That includes the starstick. They suck into the cave, which was surprisingly easy, but tripped a booby trap which put an arrow through Isla’s leg before Grim threw her to the ground and shielded her, he took another twelve arrows himself. They left the cave and once they were far enough away, Grim portaled them out. Once in his rooms, Isla cared for all their wounds with special Moonling created bandages. Isla had suspected that Grim was working with Cleo in some way, but she didn’t know why Moonling would agree to that. Meanwhile Grim told Isla that strong emotions enhance your power, and pain is the strongest emotion of them all. There is more than one kind of pain, it’s not necessarily physical, and pain was why he is so strong. They tried the cave again, and again, and again, each time they discovered another hidden trap and must devise a way past it. In the present, Isla cuts her own hand, using the pain to give her enough power to finish protecting the island with plants. Oro is disappointed, he already warned her that channeling power through emotion is dangerous and can kill her. He asks her not to continue to do that, it can drain her dry. She starts to portal people who aren’t fighting to their Newlands using the starstick and takes a visit to Celeste’s old house while in Star Isle. She’s still angry about Celeste, understandably, and destroys a bunch of Celeste’s treasures. In the house, she finds an orb with a small feather that she pockets before leaving. She trains with Remlar again. Remlar tells Isla that his people will fight for Lightlark, and so would other creatures touched by night if she only asked them. They would see Isla as hope, the first person with Nightshade and Wildling powers in a very long time. She finds Lynx’s old battle armor from when he fought with her mom. Isla finishes transporting anyone who is not fighting off of Lightlark, then she’s kidnapped by the rebellion. This time she manages to fight back, and it is revealed that Maren is one of the rebels. Betrayed, yet again! But Maren explains that the rebels don’t want to hurt Isla, they want her help. Years ago, ancestors of the current king had a Nightshade create a bunch of curses called nexus, designed to keep the common people weak and concentrate the power in the king’s line. It’s the reason that only that line, Oro being the only one living, has more than one power. Until Isla. The rebellion thinks that Isla has a flair, that she is immune to curses. It’s why she didn’t have the Wildling curse and it’s the reason she is able to have more than one power now. But to break the nexus curses they would have to kill Oro, something Isla is unwilling to discuss. She walks away without hearing any more. In the past, Grim showed up in Isla’s room barely alive. He’d been torn apart, almost literally, and Isla used the elixir to heal him since she didn’t think anything else would manage it. Once he was able to talk again, he told her that the Nightshade Newland was split by a large rift. Nasty creatures called dreks come from the split and he has to fight them. He usually wins but they got the better of him that time. When she asked where the dreks come from, Grim revealed that his ancestor Cronan created them, they used to be people that Cronan altered to make unstoppable. After Cronan died, the dreks were banished below but they had begun rising again. The sword he was trying to obtain would allow him to control the dreks and to stop the attacks. But one of Cronan’s descendants had a vision that the sword would lead to the end of the world if used by a Nightshade leader and cursed it to disappear if Nightshade powers were used in its proximity. Grim continued, he told Isla that his father was obsessed with finding the sword but unlike Grim, he wanted to use it to invade Lightlark. Grim told Isla that he never even knew his mother. Nightshade rulers do not take spouses. In fact, they never sleep with someone more than once so they don’t develop any feelings for the other person, which could turn into love and allow someone else to manipulate their powers. Isla realized what the line of women was for when she had first met Grim and guessed that he is trying (unsuccessfully) to conceive an heir. He revealed that he was afraid the dreks may kill him and wanted to ensure his realm would survive his death. In the present, Isla approaches the snake woman and asks her again to fight with them. The snake woman refuses again but many of the other creatures on the island agree to fight, just as Remlar thought they would. Isla feels an urgent call from Lynx, so she and Oro go to the Wildling Newland immediately, to find it empty of everyone except for Lynx. She also finds a note from Grim. He has taken the Wildling people to Nightshade where they will all be waiting for her. This is the last straw for Isla, once she’s alone, she summons Grim with her necklace. He explains that he did not coerce the Wildlings or kidnap them, they chose to go with him of their own accord. It’s clear to Grim that Isla still doesn’t remember everything or else she would come to Nightshade too. When she meets with him, Isla realizes that Grim still loves her, she can still feel their bond. She goes to Remlar and asks him to teach her how to cut off someone’s power through their love bond. Now, Team Lightlark has a new plan to defeat Nightshade. Isla has to use her bond with Grim to stop Grim’s power only long enough for Oro to kill him. In the past, Grim made a full recovery and took Isla somewhere special. A whole field of flowers that look just like the flower that the Wildlings use to make their elixir, but in Wildling it only grows in one small plot. Grim thought it was the same flower but when the Nightshade used it, they created the addictive drug nightbane. Isla and Grim made another deal, Grim would give Wildling more flowers to plant and Wildling would provide Nightshade with elixir. In addition, Grim would provide Wildling with the hearts they need to eat, from people who would die anyway. Present day, Isla asks Remlar to reveal the remainder of her memories. They’re short on time, she needs to remember everything now! She suddenly remembers how Grim distracted the dragon guarding the sword so that Isla could grab the sword, but the dragon noticed her and nearly killed her with its fire. Grim relinquished his chance of retrieving the sword and portaled in to save her life, causing the sword to disappear again, choosing to save Isla over saving his people. She remembers how she found a baby dragon near the caves and made Grim adopt him. Remembered how the two of them started to realize that they’d fallen in love. After her memories are returned, she goes to the Place of Mirrors and successfully opens the vault. Terra shows up out of nowhere and, after a fight in which Terra wins because Isla is too emotional, Terra thanks Isla for opening the portal for them and leaves. Terra is on Team Nightshade. Turns out not all of Isla’s memories were returned immediately when they were released. She continues to remember: how she heard someone call out to her while in her room and followed the voice to find the sword waiting for her outside. When Grim sees that she has it, he’s less than pleased and reveals a secret he’s been keeping. Twenty years ago, he and his general had been searching for the sword together. His general had a flair, uncommon but not unheard of for common people, a flair that made him immune to curses. The general disappeared with the starstick and never returned to Nightshade. Grim now believed that his general was Isla’s father. He had thought his general died before finding the sword but no longer believes that is true. He thought that Isla’s father did not want Grim to get the sword, because he was worried that Grim would want to take over Lightlark like his father before him. You see, the three original creators of the island, along with thousands of others, had fled from another larger world and made Lightlark as a miniature version of the world they had known. If they ever needed to go back to their old world, they also created a portal on the Wild Isle. That information was eventually forgotten by most people, except for Nightshade. But it wasn’t until Grim was born and his flair revealed that Nightshade tried to seek the portal out. The portal does not work by itself, it needs someone who can portal to use it. He no longer wants to use the portal, but Cleo now also knows about it and is very interested in using it. That explains the healing bandages from Moonling. But using the portal could destroy Lightlark itself. In the present, Isla finally visits the oracle again. She’s told that the present has not yet been decided but Isla will kill either Grim or Oro. Which one dies is still in flux. The day of the battle is finally here. Oro tells Isla that if something happens to him, she needs to take his power to save his people and then leave. Then the fight starts. I’m not going to get into it, but early on Isla thinks Lynx gets hurt and then starts fighting using emotion to fuel her power. She fights Cleo, and with Enya’s help, manages to restrain Cleo’s arms and stop her from using her power. In this fight, she learns that Cleo wants to go through the portal to bring her dead son back to life. In the other land “souls can rise once more.” Isla’s Skyling bodyguards that stayed to fight with Lightlark are killed and Isla’s power is completely drained, just like she was warned it could be. In the past, Grim felt that the scar had opened somewhere new and dreks were pouring through. He told Isla that she changed everything for him. He would always find her. In that life. In the next. The two of them were infinite. Then he took the starstick and went to fight where Isla couldn’t follow him, clearly believing that he wouldn’t survive. Present day Isla has nothing left to give, so she goes somewhere quiet and waits for Grim to appear. She doesn’t wait for long. Shortly after Grim arrives, Oro also arrives and he and Grim start to fight in earnest, for real trying to kill each other. Grim manages to make Oro get hit by his own bolt of lightning and Oro is weakened, lying on the ground. Past Isla is desperate to know if Grim was safe. She took the sword and looked deep within herself. She found a tether between herself and Grim and asked it to take her to him. She used his portaling power to find him on the battlefield, dreks surrounded him and those around him. This place was previously considered safe, children screamed in the streets. He saw her and was horrified, but happy as well, he realized that if she used his power then she must love him. Just then, he was pierced by drek talons through his chest. In desperation, Isla shoved the sword into the ground and used it to kill everything around her without exception. The dreks, the Nightshade soldiers, the civilian people, everything except for Grim. It’s the vision that she’s been seeing in the present. Not a vision at all, but a memory. One in which it is not Grim that does the killing, but her. She gives her life for Grim; she sends the Wildling power she didn’t know she had down their link to save her people and then dies as Grim holds her. Present day, as Oro lays on the ground, Isla cuts off Grim’s power before he can use it to kill Oro. Oro prepares to strike, Grim quickly realizes what is happening and tells Oro that if he dies so does Isla. Her life is tied to Grim’s, ever since she died using the sword. What’s more, Grim is not afraid of dying. It’s Isla that Grim wants to save. The reason that Isla did not die when she was shot through the heart in the first book is because her life was tied to Grim’s. It gave Isla just enough time for Lightlark to heal her. But it is only a temporary solution. There’s a permanent solution to save Isla through the portal. That’s why Grim now wants to use the portal when he never did before. Why he would risk everyone else: to save Isla. Isla pushes Oro away, physically and emotionally, finally remembering everything that has happened in the past and believing herself to be a monster, riddled with guilt over what happened when she destroyed the town. Remembering that she and Grim are married! The necklace that she wears that can summon him is a sign of their commitment, only death can remove it, he gave it to her after they said their vows. Isla grabs Grim’s hand but before they portal back to Nightshade, ending the attack, Isla turns to tell Oro that she loves him, but she loves Grim too.

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Nightbane

Skyshade

Prepare yourself... Grim and Isla portal to Nightshade and Isla asks him to take her to where she had used the sword and destroyed a town, killing everyone inside. He obliges but he reminds her that he will choose to save her over everyone else, every time, even if that makes him a monster. He would choose to bind them together again if it meant saving her, his wife. For now, she needs to play the part of Grim’s wife, even though her real goal is to save Lightlark and everyone on it. She sends some of Nightshade’s healing elixirs through a portal to Lightlark, at least it’s something that can help them. She goes to an audience that Grim is having with his advisors. One of them, Astria, does not trust Isla but it’s clear that none of the advisors like her. But Grim is not having it, Isla is his wife and their queen, they will treat her accordingly. When the crowd questions Grim’s decision to leave Lightlark when they were winning the war, Grim tells them not to worry. They aren’t abandoning the plan; this is just the next phase - and they’re going to need Isla. This upsets Isla, who believed that Grim would no longer attack Lightlark, and she turns on him once everyone else has filtered out. He reveals that he only told them what they wanted to hear to buy some time, he has no plans to attack Lightlark again. But he needs to find a way to save Isla and his people. He tells her about the storms that sweep through Nightshade. They used to be rare but now they come every few years, deadlier than Isla can imagine. Bringing not just inclement weather but also disease and malicious creatures. The tempests have been deadlier than the curse for Nightshade ever was, and another storm is coming. Grim thinks it’s going to be a long one - maybe even lasting for a whole season. He had thought using the portal would save Isla and the rest of Nightshade as well. Isla is stuck between a rock and a hard place. She can save Oro and Lightlark, or Grim and Nightshade, but either way an entire realm of people is at risk. Unless she finds a way to save them all. She and Grim decide to work together to find a way to stop the storms. She visits the blacksmith and asks him to make her a device that will block her powers, she’s afraid of what she can do with them. He makes a deal with her, since making something with that effect will be costly. He explains that he was cursed centuries ago to live for all eternity, so that Nightshade would always have his special gift. But Isla is immune from curses, and she has injured him before, he asks her to kill him and let him rest. She agrees to do it at the end of winter - if he doesn’t change his mind by then - and he makes her two bracelets out of a special metal called shademade. The bracelets can only be removed by himself or the person that clamps them closed, and Isla can already tell that they’re blocking her power. Isla wants more information about the prophecy the oracle gave her and remembers that the Oracle had two sisters who were kidnapped by Cleo. Isla intends to find them and question them. But how to find a fleet that is sailing somewhere on the ocean? Isla remembers the baby dragon she made Grim adopt and she asks to see him. Baby dragon no more, Wraith has grown to full size in the few months she was gone. Wraith is ecstatic to see Isla again and Grim takes Isla for a ride on the dragon. Looks like she just found a way to search for Cleo’s ships. But first, she will need to learn how to ride the dragon by herself. She asks Grim to take her to a village that was affected by the last storms, and they ride Wraith to the village. Grim shows Isla where to sit and where to place her hands to hold on. When they get to the village, the villagers explain that a creature came with the last storms. One with way too many teeth that were far bigger than necessary, it killed many of their residents. Some of the villagers now have bags packed and ready should the storms come again, so they can retreat to the tunnels below the ground they would use for night travel when they were cursed. The problem is the storms are so fast there’s almost no time to shelter. An old woman calls the storms harbingers of the end. The next storm starts only a few days later. When the storm hits, Isla decides it would be the perfect time to find Cleo’s fleet. She uses her starstick to go to Wraith’s stable, the two of them fly toward the ocean. On the way, a bolt of lightning blinds them and Wraith hits a tree, causing Isla to fall off his back. Dangerously close to the ground, he swoops below her and catches Isla, she finally realizes how stupid this plan is. But she continues anyway. As they fly away from Nightshade, the storm gets weaker. They spend hours searching the ocean for the Moonling fleet before they find it. She drops off Wraith and portals to the deck of the largest ship, then she portals below the deck but all she finds is food and storage. She decides to check the rooms, in case the Oracles have been thawed and locked in a room instead of kept frozen. She immediately gets trapped by Cleo, who tells her that the Oracles are already dead. Cleo forced the Oracles to tell her their prophecies before she killed them, so she would be the only person who knew the future. Cleo also reveals that she is not the one who kills Isla, but Cleo won’t tell Isla anything else. Isla travels back to Nightshade on Wraith, which takes hours and it’s not clear how she gets on Wraith’s back since she usually climbs on, the Starstick I guess. When they get home, Wraith is exhausted. Of course he is! He’s still a baby who has never had to fly for hours at a time! He needs conditioning! Terra and Poppy come to see Isla, claiming that although they had previously admitted to killing her parents, that was a lie. Isla doesn’t believe them. But they’ve got other news as well. The field of nightbane that the Wildlings use to create their elixirs has been destroyed by the storm, and all the plants are dead. Isla orders them to preserve the elixirs they still have for now and to replant using the plants from the Wildling Newland. But it will take a long time for the plants to regrow. They need to know what’s causing the storms, so this doesn’t happen again. Isla asks Grim if they have an Oracles in Nightshade, but they do not. They used to have a Prophet, but Grim’s dad killed him for not sharing his prophecies. They could go see the Prophet’s order that still exists, but they would have to climb an incredibly dangerous mountain. The tunnels up the mountain shift, they’re full of beasts, and they nullify power. Grim has made the climb before and he will make it this time with her, even if the order won’t speak to him (because of his dad). They pack supplies and start their climb. Isla starts whining before they’re even one fifth of the way up. Then they run into some monsters with talons and sharp horns around their heads, they manage to outrun them although Isla’s leg gets cut, and the monsters stop following when they get trapped in a narrow hallway by their own horns. Then Isla and Grim almost drown, but Isla figures out to go deeper into the water where there is water flowing and they are washed through a tunnel by a current. They find a large ledge next to the water where they can climb out. They rest there for the night and let their things dry. The next day, they continue their climb and find a giant faceless grasshopper that tracks the scent of blood. Isla kills it by cutting her leg more and pointing her sword at the grasshopper, it impales itself on her sword as it runs toward the blood. Then they’re at the Prophet’s order, only Isla is allowed to enter. She meets Eta who has a book of prophecies (made from the Prophet’s skin). Eta tells Isla that the storms are caused by a portal somewhere in Nightshade and that it is growing larger. The portal cannot be used to travel through, since it would kill the traveler in the process. Unlike the portal on Lightlark which was created more like a bridge and would only kill the weak who tried to travel, this is a rip in the seam between worlds and more dangerous. Eta doesn’t know where the portal is, only that it’s how the Prophet originally came to this land. Isla asks about her own prophecy, but Eta only tells Isla that she will kill another powerful heart - but doesn’t specify whose. Eta warns Isla that she has already been betrayed by another Wildling, the nightshade was poisoned, not killed by the storm. The person who has betrayed now already betrayed her once before. To find them, Isla needs to follow the snakes. When Isla asks when she will die, Eta does not know. But the auger lives in the woods and likes blood, and he likes it best from a heart, he may be able to look at her blood and give her an answer. She and Grim leave the mountain and Isla decides to make a visit to Azul. Azul is not pleased to hear she’s married to Grim - who he does not like. He believes that Grim will invade Lightlark again regardless of his promises. She tells Azul about the prophecy, so he can hold her accountable and keep her on track. She also tells him about the storms in Nightshade, asking if he’s ever heard of storms coming from a portal. He hasn’t, but he tells her that in Skyling they read omens in the clouds, and they’ve been told that the mother of all storms is coming. He calls it a reckoning. He gives her stormfinch, a bird that will alert them to an impending storm so they can get people to safety. He also gives her a ring with a blue stone. When the storm hits, take the stone high into the sky and trap a bit of the storm inside the ring. When the storm is over, release the storm inside the ring and it will lead them back to the portal. Azul also returns the ring she once gave him, but he’s added a little extra to this stone himself. After their visit, she goes to her room on the Wildling Newland and finds the feather she took from Celeste’s room, now free from the orb it had been stored in. It feels like it’s more than just a feather and when Isla runs her finger along the edge, the point makes her bleed. It’s so sharp! She tries to write her name with the blood from her pricked finger, but nothing happens. She can’t figure out what’s different about the feather. Isla wants to find the Wildling traitor, so she goes to where the Wildlings are living in Nightshade - at a castle that once belonged to her father. Grim tells Isla that she still has family on Nightshade, a cousin. Of course it’s Astria. Isla questions every Wildling but only manages to find out that a bunch of snakes came out of the nightbane field before it withered. She speaks to Wren, who is playing with a bunch of snakes in a tree, and tells her there is a traitor among them. Wren agrees to alert Isla to anything strange that she notices and sends Isla home with one of the snakes, which Isla begins to wear around her wrist. A poisonous snake from the Wildling Newland whose venom can kill or can heal if mixed with the correct plants. She needs to see the auger which means Isla needs a heart. She watches from the rooftops of a town until a man tries to strangle a woman, Isla kills him and cuts out his heart. When she finds the auger, he takes the heart and demands more. Three times this happens until Isla finally comes back with eight hearts at once and he invites her into his cave. He drains the hearts’ blood into a pool - which is already filled with blood, then tells Isla to get in. He cuts her a little and she is pulled under, almost drowning in the blood. Isla wakes up back on solid land and the auger gives her bad news: she won’t make it through the storm season unless something changes. She could lengthen her life span using skyres, but no one remembers how to draw them since the Prophet has died. The auger reveals that one of the Prophet’s followers ripped the Prophet’s book and took some of the pages to Lightlark, the pages that tell where the portal is and how to close it. Isla could take the power from the portal and extend her life. New plan: find the portal, take its power, close it. Before Isla leaves, the auger urges her to find the truth about herself, then her path will be clear. She returns her snake to Wren and that evening, Isla is attacked in her room by Tynan. He has her pinned by his power, but he doesn’t know Lynx sleeps in her room. The panther attacks him and hurts his neck, allowing Isla to be freed. Grim portals in and is going to kill Tynan, but Isla does it herself instead. She realizes she needs to make sure this doesn’t happen again - if Nightshade wants a villain, a snake Queen as they’ve been calling her, then that’s what she’ll be. At the next gathering, she dresses and accessorizes with a bunch of snakes, carrying Tynan’s severed head in for all to see. Afterward, Astria comes to her rooms. They almost have a pleasant conversation. Astria tells Isla about her difficult feelings about Isla’s father and that she doesn’t respect his decision to leave. Later, Isla goes to the Wildling Newland to get a few things from her room, and she sees the paper she wrote on sitting with the feather. Underneath her name it now says “Hello, Isla” – in Aurora’s handwriting. Isla takes the feather to the blacksmith, who notices that the tip is covered in shademade. The metal glimmers like a diamond. He explains that a piece of soul has been stored in the feather, Isla’s power woke it when it touched her blood. Moreover, the feather is from the old world. There aren’t many relics left from there. It seems that Isla has started sharing memories with Lynx, she sees her father for the first time through Lynx’s eyes. Grim comes to Isla and asks her to marry him again. The Nightshade people believe she is a traitor, a spy for Lightlark, that she lacks commitment to them. They’re suffering because of it; a wedding would help, and it may distract them for a while from wondering when the next storm will hit. Isla agrees, they’ll have a wedding. Isla continues to play vigilante and cutting the hearts out of baddies in town, rationalizing to herself that it’s fine because the auger said she’d be back, she needs the hearts. She starts getting snacks left for her in her hiding place and is even followed at one point, but it’s only the woman that Isla saved the night she took her first heart. Sairsha: who wants to thank her for saving her and continuing her work, killing the bad guys. They people of the town call her the heartripper, and the people Sairsha knows are thankful. Eventually, Isla ends every night with Sairsha at the bar, staying for an hour before going back to her room. One night, Isla is woken by Lynx alerting her that Oro is at the window. Oro felt the bond between them weaken and got worried about her; he wanted to make sure she was safe. He’s only there a moment before stormfinch starts singing. She tells Oro to hide and portals to Grim’s room. They go together to Wraith, and they fly toward the storm. Grim looks sad and when Isla questions him about why, he says he wishes Isla didn’t feel the need to keep so many secrets. He knows that she went to see the auger because so did he - he was told the portal on Lightlark is the only way to save her. He urges her to reconsider using it. This storm is pelting them with little shards of metal, leaving them sliced up, and Grim’s power won’t work because the metal is shademade. They fly as close to the heart of the storm as they can, and Isla traps a piece of the storm in the ring. Then she promptly drops the ring. She is going to try again with a different piece of jewelry, hoping that she can get it to work, but then they see the clouds turn red and a creature emerges, shooting lightning from its jaws. Wraith tries to flee but he is hit by the lightning, and they fall. Wraiths can no longer fly, his wings are torn up, but he wraps Isla and Grim up in his wings to protect them. Before they hit the ground, the storm fades and Grim’s powers return. He’s able to portal them to the ocean for impact, then back to shore, then to Wraith’s stable. Isla begs Grim to portal her to his room, then take wraith to the Wildling house to be healed. She will get her starstick, clean herself up, and meet them there. She doesn’t seem at all worried about all the wounds that Grim took protecting her from the shards of flying metal. He does as he’s asked and once Isla has her Starstick, she portals to her own room, to Oro. She needs to break his heart so he won’t come back, this was too dangerous. She points to the pile of daggers in the corner of her room and tells Oro what she’s been doing with them, how she’s been enjoying killing the people. His flair tells him she’s not lying, but he doesn’t want to believe it. She portals him back to his room on Lightlark and returns his necklace, asking him not to find her again. Before she can portal away, Zed sees her. Zed is the fastest Skyling and manages to shoot three arrows at her before Isla disappear. One hits her in the stomach. Oro starts to heal her, but Isla tells him she’s agreed to marry Grimm again and portals away. She lands at the Wildling house where Grimm stitches her up, insisting that the last of the elixir be used on wraith. He must know at least some of what happened because someone had already started binding Isla’s wound, but he doesn’t ask, just comforts her as she cries. Some of those tears are grieving Oro, knowing that they can never be together. Not if his best friends are willing to kill her. The storm ends and Isla spends her mornings searching for the ring, her evenings with Sairsha as she hunts down bad guys. She’s been watching one guy for days; she must be careful because he’s a strong wielder - she finally surprises him in an alley. But she has trouble getting the knife into his chest to kill him. Grim shows up and gives her the assist. He has known what she’s been doing for some time, but he’s not going to stop her. She can kill him too if it’s what she wants, his heart is hers already. Grim tells her he will see her at the altar. Their wedding do-over is the next day, and sorely needed to improve citizen morale. The wedding takes place in the greenhouse that Grim had built her as a wedding present for their last wedding. All the Wildlings attend except two: Terra and Poppy. Eta officiates, proclaiming their union one that was foretold. Isla gives Grim a necklace of his own, a family heirloom provided by Astria. After the ceremony they dance and eat, until a guard comes in to alert Grim about something. Isla follows Grim and sees that hundreds of gravesites have been desecrated and dug up. She sees a snake in the center of the graveyard before it burrows under the ground, this was done by a Wildling. She portals to the only Wildlings not at the ceremony and demands that Poppy and Terra be thrown into prison. Isla will not be swayed, even when Wren tells her that she’s made a mistake. She goes to see the blacksmith and asks if there’s a way to track a ring. There was a ruler with a tracking flair, but that ruler is now gone and the item the blacksmith had made with his blood was also lost. But… that ruler had bound his power to a marking. One of the skyres the Prophet used. The blacksmith warns Isla against them, he’s seen even the best people turned into monsters from messing with skyres. They demand a price and that very well may be your soul. Not to mention, he doesn’t know how to use skyres, even if he had a completed one. That strikes Isla as a strange statement, what does he mean? He shows her a dagger with a marking and tells her it only shows half of the skyre. He doesn’t know the rest. She copies the shape of the mark onto a piece of paper. Besides, she’d need a portion of what was lost to use the tracking skyre, which she doesn’t have. She decides she needs to ask someone who was alive long ago who’d know how to draw a skyre. She uses her feather to ask Aurora. Yes, Aurora knows how. Yes, she will teach Isla. Why? Redemption. Of course, Isla doesn’t trust Aurora, even a dead Aurora. She is missing something, she knows it. She portals to town and sits on a rooftop, preparing to make someone else pay for this anger. Sairsha joins her and they share some pastries. Isla talks about how she’s always a disappointment, Sairsha urges her not to be so hard on herself. The hardest part of anything is not the doing, it’s the trying. Sairsha’s dead sister used to tell her that. She asks Isla why she kills people; Isla echoes the feather: for redemption. Sairsha gives Isla some wine. Sairsha once joined a group for redemption, they made her think she could use her talents for good. Isla can’t feel her face anymore. She’s growing weak. The wine was poisoned! When she wakes up, Isla’s surrounded by the people she always sees in Sairsha’s bar, now wearing hoods and cloaks and looking excited. But they aren’t here to kill her, quote the opposite. They’re followers of the Prophet and they’ve been waiting for her. As the prophecy says: at the end of the world, a girl will be born of life and of death. She will be a blessing or a curse. She will save the world… or end it. One of the men, Ragan, holds his sword out to her. When she takes the hilt, he impales himself upon it and dies. One by one, the people surrounding her kill themselves but make sure that it’s Isla’s hand that does it. If she had been able to use her powers, this wouldn’t have happened. Isla takes her bracelets off. Isla sees Astria in the library and asks about her father. Astria tells Isla that he fell asleep outside one day and woke up in the middle of the night, that’s how he found out he was immune to curses. But he always envied the portaling flair that Grim has, since he always wanted to travel. In fact, her father collected maps, would even make his own. They should still be in his room. Isla portals to the house the Wildlings now live in and finds the only room still untouched, her father’s room - mostly because the Wildlings can’t get in. But the door opens for Isla, and she sees so many books, letters, maps. One map takes up the whole wall with hand drawn countries and islands. She sees Lightlark and the Wildling Newland, she sees locations she’s never seen on a map before. Including a large island to the west of Nightshade. It even has a name: Isla. She takes that portion of the map with her. She uses the starstick to try to portal to the island and almost drowns when she lands in the ocean first. But she finally makes it to her destination and finds a lush island dense with fruit. Her father’s biggest secret. Isla has a dream where she sees a snake and follows it, follows a whole hallway of snakes to a mirror where she sees herself covered in snakes. The stormfinch sings again, in real life not the dream. She and Grim take her other ring and go to one of the outer villages to evacuate the people. Eventually they can do no more because the shademade nullifies their powers. She tries to capture the storm, but she’s too far away and she can’t get closer since Wraith is still injured. When she stands and sees all the death and destruction the storm wrought, she goes back to the feather and asks Aurora to teach her about the skyres. Aurora only knows one marking: to funnel and control power. But she knows you must write a skyre with a shademade tool and use an item of power for the ink. Isla learns the mark and touches the shademade tip of the feather to a Wildling ruby heirloom made with the power of one of her ancestors. She draws the marking on her arm using the ruby ink, and the pain is worse than anything she’s ever felt before. But afterward, Isla can use her power with a precision she’s never had until now. And even though Aurora doesn’t know more markings, she knows where Isla can find them. Isla tells Grim she wishes there were a place that they could visit to be alone together for a few days, and although she has ulterior motives, she means it. He may know of a place: the winter palace. His favorite place to be as a child, because his father wasn’t usually there. They share tales of when they were children and Grim tells her how he discovered his flair (being punished in his room at age seven for taking a hit during training, he was crying and desperate to be anywhere else). She asks if there’s a library and there is - but it’s not full of fun books, just ancient texts chosen by his ancestors. Bingo. The next day Grim shows Isla a huge, ancient hedge maze - where he used to hide from his father. It nullifies all powers, including Nightshade. In the center, Cronan Malvere lays in a large shademade coffin. Afterward, Grim shows her the library and lets her look through it alone. She asks the feather what she’s looking for and it responds: the book cursed closed. She thinks she finds it and can open it since curses don’t work on her, but the book seems to be completely blank. When she looks a second time, some of the pages now have writing, including the end page that bears a drawing of a skyre. Isla goes through the book again. Grim feels that Wraith is getting restless, so he leaves for a bit to exercise him. Isla continues exploring the book, she finds a few full skyres, a lot of partial skyres, but no descriptions of what they do. But the book also tells her that bones are more powerful than blood. If she wants a powerful skyre, she’s going to need some powerful bones, and she knows exactly where to get them. As she walks through the maze with the book in her hand, she is attacked by a beast - possibly from a prior storm. It slices her leg up and she tries to run from it, but three more appear. She runs into the maze, where they catch her. She tries to climb the hedge; they pull her down. She realizes she’s still holding the book, the only thing between her and the beasts. She opens the cursed book and a different beast crawls out, this one has wings. It chases the non-winged beasts down and destroys them. Isla knows she doesn’t have much time; she could be next on the winged beast’s radar, and she’s already lost in the maze and losing blood rapidly. But she’s so close to the grave and this could be her only chance to get the bones! She runs to the tomb and opens it, only to find it empty. She climbs to the top of the hedge and starts running for the castle. Luckily, there’s a thick layer of ice for her to run on. The beast starts to chase her down and she makes it to the edge before falling off the hedge. Luckily, Grim is back. He catches Isla and kills the beast. He takes her inside and by the time she wakes up, he’s already wrapped her leg and seen her marking - the one she’s been hiding. He asks her about the book, and she explains that she thought it might help her find the portal, and she was right! She thinks Cronan’s tomb is the portal. Cronan’s flair was portaling, like Grim. Maybe his bones opened a portal that hadn’t been closed yet. There’s another cemetery desecrated, but Poppy and Terra are still in jail. Isla visits them and they tell her again that they did not betray her, they did not dig up the graves or ruin the field of nightbane or kill her parents. And she can tell by using Oro’s flair that they are not lying. Someone else has betrayed her. She visits the auger again and asks if he has the blood and bones of the Prophet - which he does. She wants to use them to track the missing pages of the Prophet’s book (made from the Prophet’s skin and written in his blood). The auger gives her a tooth from the Prophet’s skull. He also tells Isla that he can feel her blood being soured already, it will only get worse the more skyres she draws. She goes to the island named for her (or the other way around) and tries to draw one of the four skyres she now has seen completely. She doesn’t know what they mean, she’s going to try each one until she finds the right one, hopefully. But she draws the first skyre wrong and she almost dies of it. She wakes up hours later and returns to Nightshade, to find that there has been an attack on a town. Grim won’t tell her exactly what happened, only urges her to rest since she hadn’t slept the night before, but she overhears Astria giving him a report. A Wildling destroyed a town, using power that has not been seen for ages, and they looked just like Isla. But Isla insists it wasn’t her, and Grim believes her. She keeps trying to make the skyres and eventually succeeds but before she can track anything, there’s an alarm. Astria tells them there’s an army at the gate, an army of Nightshades. The ground shakes and breaks apart right underneath Isla’s feet, she falls deep into the ground to find a woman who looks like her. Lark Crown. Lark explains to Isla that she never died but was buried by someone she once trusted - we will get to that in a minute. Worlds are built on bones (apparently), so many people died to create Lightlark, while the heart of the island was stolen from their original world. The land that made Nightshade, however, didn’t have all the dead to build upon. It’s why Cronan killed most of his children, to fuel the land. Cronan should have died to stabilize the land, but he didn’t, he buried Lark instead and stole her power over the years, finally using his power to open the portal to the old world only after he had enough of Lark’s power to survive the journey. Lark believes Cronan lives still because his curses have not ended yet. Now Lark wants to create another new world. She should have killed Horus and Cronan to build Lightlark, she will learn from her mistakes and kill Grim and Oro to make the new one. Her original plan included killing Isla too, but now Lark thinks she can use Isla instead. She can give Isla her life back! But Isla leaves, making a tunnel for herself with her power and flying to Grim’s army. Except it isn’t Grim’s army at all. It’s Lark’s army of dead. Grim’s army marches to meet Lark’s, but they are no match. They can’t kill what isn’t alive. But Isla can, Grim can. It will rise again but at least they can kill them temporarily. They tell Grim’s army to fall back and they fight together from Wraith’s back, just the two of them, until Lark’s army retreats. The blacksmith calls for Isla. He knows Lark is here and she will be coming for him. He built the cage that Cronan used to contain Lark, trapped her while she was sleeping, and Lark will use the blacksmith to help her destroy the world. He has made Isla some armor entirely out of shademade and some weapons, now he needs Isla to kill him. Before she does, he tells her that his name was once: Ferrar. She puts a dagger in his heart. She takes the armor and leaves just before Lark gets to his forge. Isla goes to the Wildlings and gives Wren her starstick, telling Wren to get all the Wildlings out. Then she goes to Grim, who she has already told about Lark but who didn’t seem surprised enough. She remembers that once Oro said Grim protects them from something even worse than the curses, and she realizes that they both knew about Lark. Grim confirms it. He knew that Cronan had trapped Lark and that only one of his line, or the death of that line, could release her. Grim told Oro before the Centennial so that Oro wouldn’t be tempted to kill Isla, since it wouldn’t end the curse anyway. Oro knew just like Grim did that Lark was as ruthless as Cronan, most people do not remember that now. They did not tell Isla because they did not want Isla to try to free her. Isla reveals that Cronan is also alive, he went through the portal. Grim and Isla don’t think Lark can be killed. So, they need to push her through the portal and then close it. Isla thinks the missing Prophet pages are on Lightlark, which will tell her how to open and close the portal. She’s going to go find them using the Prophet’s tooth. The tooth leads her to Sun Isle, to a gate she can’t open it. While she’s trying to batter it open with a tree, Oro steps up and puts a dagger to her throat. He accuses her of killing some of his soldiers, but she tells him that Lark is awake, it was her that killed them. Isla explains why she needs to get past the gate. Oro can take her but it’s going to be awful, it’s a haven for Sun power but this area is so brutal that it has killed even Sunling rulers. Isla is going to chance it anyway. They walk for hours in the miserable heat when they see a sandstorm approaching. They run for shelter, but Isla traps a part of the storm in her ring before sheltering. It’s really hot in there and they both end up naked, with Oro touching her body using his Moonling powers to cool her down. But they go no further, and he tells her to go to sleep. She dreams of the day before the two of them fought Nightshade. And Oro can hear her dreaming about it, calling out his name. She wakes up and is embarrassed, they get dressed and keep going. They stop at an oasis where they both get naked… again, then they continue. To the tomb of Horus, which is only going to be visible for a few minutes so they best hurry. The tooth flies right to where the missing pages are, Isla reads them quickly and then pockets them. They say that to close the portal they will need several items of power to draw several skyres. They see Horus’ tomb and Oro tells Isla that Horus had a bone that was very powerful (or that’s the rumor anyway), several people have tried to break into his casket and steal the bone, but the casket can’t be opened. Isla smears her blood on it and opens it no problem. Inside, the not decayed body of Horus is holding a bone. Oro takes the bone thinking it may help them against Lark, and the body crumbles to dust. They leave but there’s another sandstorm brewing, they will have to wait. Oro falls asleep, they’ve been walking for days, and he’s not slept yet. While he’s sleeping, Isla steals the bone and leaves, hoping to make it to the gates before Oro realizes she’s gone. When she gets to the sandstorm, she releases the storm the caught in her ring and uses it to make a tunnel through the flying sand. She keeps walking toward the gate. Obviously, Oro catches up to her and traps her against a tree. He knows that she’s lying when she tells him she doesn’t care about him. He walks away frustrated, as if he’s going to leave her, but they’re very close to the gates now and he can see Lark’s army just outside the gates, but even Lark is unable to get through. Isla pulls her necklace, calling Grim - who destroys the army with his power, at least for now. She tells Oro and Grim to play nice - to beat Lark they’re going to have to work together. They gather all of Oro’s friends except for Zed, who is in jail for stabbing Isla. They’re not fond of Isla, but they’re willing to work together. Enya and Calder will gather the rest of the people to be evacuated, the bodies of the remaining dead will all be burned. Grim - who has returned the Nightshade sword to the thief’s lair - will retrieve it again. Isla will find Remlar. Oro insists on going with her, he doesn’t trust her or Grim. But before they can set out, Grim returns and tells them that the thief’s lair has been cleaned out, it’s completely empty. They pull Zed out of jail, who will find the only other person who is a better thief than him and both he and the thief will help Grim find the sword. Then, Isla and Oro look for Remlar, who is also missing along with all the other bee people. They do eventually find him, and Remlar confirms that he knew Lark personally, he was one of the only beings she left alive while making the island - because he was useful to her. He knows a curse that can weaken Lark, and he will tie the curse and his own essence to a dagger that Isla can use to stab Lark. Oro and Isla leave to give Remlar time to work. Isla wants to investigate the portal on Wild Isle and sees that the door to the portal is shademade. As she investigates, she sees Wren, who has never been to Lightlark and should not be there now. Isla gave Wren her Starstick to save the other Wildlings. Isla chases Wren down and her eyes are empty, Lark has killed her and made her rise back up. Now, Lark has the starstick. Suddenly, Isla cannot feel Grim through their bond. She cannot access his powers. She panics, thinking he’s dead, but Oro reassures her. Grim is difficult to kill - he’s likely just bound somehow. They can figure this out together. They go to the shore, where they find themselves surrounded by Lark’s army. Isla freaks out in her panic for Grim, and now for Oro, and everything else. She lashes out with her power, destroying Lark’s army for the moment… and accidentally putting a stone dagger not through Oro’s heart, but just next to it. Isla tries to heal Oro but she’s not fast enough. He’s dying already and she hasn’t even removed the blade. She pulls her necklace and Grim arrives with Zed, apparently that still works. Grim explains that they’d been imprisoned. Now that they’re free, Grim portals all four of them to the Sunling castle - where Isla finds some Wildling elixir. Enya comes in and helps heal Oro, he’s still weak but he will live. Isla asks Zed how they got caught, but he won’t discuss it. Grim reveals that Zed got in some sort of argument with the other thief - who we still don’t know the identity of. Isla asks Grim to take her to Remlar, who is not quite done with the dagger. She waits while he finishes and asks who he would choose to kill: Oro or Grim? His answer is easy, he would kill Oro. Remlar tells Isla that in the old world, Oro’s ancestors had ruled the skies but got greedy and wanted everything, taking power until the others revolted against them. Isla and Cronan decided to start over, convincing Horus to join them. Oro is the last of that ancient line and killing him would end the curse that limits the power of the others. Yes, killing Cronan would do so as well since he created the curse, but that would be much more difficult since Cronan is no longer on this world while Oro is right here and easily killed. Isla has the power of the three original rulers: sky, land, and underworld. And the heart of Lightlark chose her, who knows what that means. Isla stages a trap. She pretends to find the heart of Lightlark, which Lark wants. Lark arrives and demands the heart from Isla, but the heart is not really the heart. It’s a glamoured acorn. Isla hands it over. But the acorn is not really an acorn, it’s a bomb. It explodes as Lark holds it and Oro comes out of nowhere to stab Lark with the cursed dagger. But Lark didn’t come alone, Cleo fights back - stabbing Oro with an ice dagger while Soren grabs Isla from behind, putting a knife to her throat. This stills Isla’s comrades who are afraid that if they fight, they could get Isla killed. They watch as the cursed dagger does absolutely nothing to Lark and Remlar’s dead body falls from the trees. Lark laid a trap of her own. She killed Remlar, knowing that would negate the curse on the dagger. Isla pushes her power out and portals everybody away from the glade, stifling Grim’s power through their bond so he cannot portal back. Lark traps Isla and puts her in shackles, made with the shademade bracelets that Isla left in the blacksmith’s forge. Lark tells Isla that she will find the others and she will send pieces of their bodies to Isla until Isla agrees to help, however long that may take. Isla is trapped, she doesn’t know how long it’s been. She is underground and has no accurate way of tracking the passage of time. Lark sends an undead soldier to force Isla to eat and drink. She can’t reach Oro or Grim through her bonds, and she can’t reach her necklace chained as she is. She thinks of what the blacksmith said to her: that she has everything she needs. She runs through her research and starts to realize that as she killed people, it felt like she grew stronger. Like she gained new powers. She realizes that maybe her flair is not being immune to curses like her father, it’s rare for flairs to be passed on from parents to children. Maybe her flair is absorbing the power of the people that she’s killed, and she is the one responsible for her parents’ deaths, giving her the immunity flair. Poppy and Terra did tell her it wasn’t them that killed her parents, and she now knows that was the truth. Which means that she has the blacksmith’s power too. She concentrates hard and her shackles fall off. She blows her power outward, creating a crator in the surface of the world with her at the center - free. She goes to Poppy and Terra first, she tells them that Wren is dead. After she portaled everyone to the Wildling Newland, Wren had stayed on Nightshade and paid the price. They tell Isla that she was born with too much power, her first cry brought the castle down around her and killed her parents. In fact, the only person who survived the crumbling castle was Isla, and only because Lynx protected her. They used to grind shademade and put it into her food to help keep her power in check. When they told her she’d been born without power, she never even tried to access it. She portals to Remlar’s body, retrieves the dagger, and returns his body to his people. When she leaves, she pulls her necklace. Grim lands next to her with Wraith and informs her that Lark went underground a few days ago. He thinks Remlar’s blade weakened her, even if Lark didn’t die. Isla asks him to gather Oro and Oro’s friends, she is going to see Azul. Isla tells Azul that the grandfather of all storms is going to start tomorrow, and she’s going to create it. She takes Lynx to Isla Island with her; she realizes that Lynx has been there before. He takes her to a house that her parents built together, and she finds a letter to her from her father. He explains how her parents met, and that her father had the blacksmith make a charm for Isla’s mother that made her immune to the curse – which is how she didn’t kill him. He also tells Isla that they know what will happen to them, how difficult Isla’s life will be and that she will cause their deaths, yet they are choosing to have her anyway. Her mother’s flair, which no one else was aware of, is the ability to see the future. She’s had the blacksmith make that into a charm as well, so that Isla can choose to have the gift or not. Next to the letter is a bracelet with a little vial charm. Breaking the vial would give her the gift of foresight. Isla puts the bracelet on but doesn’t break it, at least not yet. Grim comes back and meets Isla that night; everyone has their orders, and he has portaled away every person of this side of Nightshade to protect them. The next day, Grim dresses for war and meets Oro on the field of battle, this time as allies. Isla draws another skyre using the god bone from Horus’ casket. Lark rises again and her massive army with her, Grim and Oro fight back-to-back as Isla watches from above on Wraith’s back. Zed delivers something to Isla, a bunch of storm rings from Azul. Isla flies up and a storm starts. Once the shademade starts falling, Lark approaches on her own flying steed, a massive creature with six heads. But Isla has a new trick up her sleeve - Cronan’s sword. She uses it to call the dreks, which swarm Lark’s creature. Then Isla calls the storms from all her rings and Lark’s beast dies, plunging to the ground. Isla retraps the storms, now all melded together as one big storm. Next, Calder will find Lark’s broken body and trap it in ice as Isla meets Oro and Grim at the blacksmith’s forge. But first, Isla goes to the winter castle… where she is attacked by Cleo. Lark is standing next to Cleo, so much for her being frozen. But Isla visited Cleo last night and made Cleo a promise, so Cleo stabs Lark with a blade of ice repeatedly, reinjuring her as quickly as Lark heals. Betrayed! Isla puts on the armor that the blacksmith made for her and runs to the maze, she doesn’t have much time. Cleo can’t hold Lark for long. When Isla gets close to the maze, Lark shows up behind her, still healing from her wounds. Isla calls the dreks again. Then, she portals them both herself and Lark to the center of the maze. Oro and Grim wait for Isla at the forge. The portal will require all of their powers to be closed, Isla is going to use the forge to create an item. She will meet them at the forge to incorporate all their powers into the item. Grim and Oro are both concerned, Isla is taking longer than she should. When Oro hears the dreks again, which should have been gone now that the storm is over, he realizes what she’s doing. She can use all their powers herself. She’s trying to sidestep the prophecy, getting them both to the forge to keep them safe as she does it all herself. She told only Grim her “plans” because if she had told Oro, he would have known that she was lying and had a whole different plan of her own. He tells Grim and they run toward her. Isla had realized that the portal on Wild Isle was made of shademade infused with Wildling blood. The auger helped her recreate the technique and infuse her own blood into Cronan’s tomb. She fights Lark as she feels Grim and Oro coming closer. Isla destroys Cronan’s casket completely. She learned from the scroll (which Remlar helped to translate) that the portal can only be closed from the other side. That she needed the name of the other world to get there, but luckily the Prophet carved the name on his own body and the auger told her what it is: Skyshade. Isla has Cronan’s sword, which she can use to track him down in the old world - since it was made with his blood. She has thought of everything. She will go to the other side and close the portal. She will take Lark with her - Lark who was even more powerful there and was able to resurrect people completely. She will kill Lark and take that power to be able to bring back everyone who she has killed, and Cleo’s son. Grim and Oro fight their way through the maze, Isla’s dreks trying to hold them back. But by the time they get to the center, all that is left is a charred circle and a burnt feather, the feather that Isla had used to speak to Aurora. Except, it hadn’t been Aurora at all. It was Lark’s soul in that feather, which Isla woke up when she pricked her finger on it. Isla had been the one to wake Lark after all. Lark had only led Isla to believe it was Aurora so she could lead Isla to all the information about the skyres. Information that Isla just used to portal them back to Skyshade.

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Get ready... Oro and Grim (and Lynx) linger in the center of the maze where Isla just disappeared from. They grieve. They wait, but she doesn’t return. Then Grim turns on Oro and punches him in the face, leading to a fight that ends with Grim’s knife at Oro’s throat. He asks Oro if he loves Isla and Oro knows he should lie, but he can’t - so he tells Grim yes. But instead of being mad, Grim is relieved. Cause he’s about to get Isla back and Oro is going to help him. Oro calls his friends and closest confidantes Zed, Cal, and Enya in to help. They meet with Grim and his general Astria. None of them have any ideas how to reach Isla but they’re all convinced that Grim’s portaling power is their best hope. The ask if there’s anything that may enhance his power, but he only knows of one item. A stone that used to lay on an island called Atlas. Problem is, Grim claimed the stone already and gave it to Isla. She’s currently wearing it around her neck. Grim remembers when he claimed the stone, called the Infinite. Many had tried but come away from the stone cursed instead. When Grim asked Isla to marry him, it was tradition to give her a diamond necklace, and the Infinite was the only stone that was good enough for her. But when Grim got to the island, he was faced with the memories of atrocities he’d committed before, walking through a tunnel surrounded by the people he’d killed. But seeing them then, he sometimes felt regret for causing them pain – a new concept. When he reached the end, he was faced with his sister Laila, who he accidentally killed when he lost control of his shadows at twelve. She pushed him off the cliff and he nearly fell but remembered why he was there and clawed at the cliff face. He climbed back up and was tested again. He saw all of Isla’s worst moments, but he didn’t care. He loves her as much at her worst as he does at her best. The stone looked inside him and saw that Grim didn’t want the stone for his own gain but to help Isla and he was able to claim it. Isla used all her to close the portal after she and Lark traveled through it, so there was nothing to save her when she landed in this land. Luckily, the armor she’s wearing keeps her alive. When she looks around, the world is nothing but ash. Her power feels like it is in a vice. How will she ever kill Cronan with weakened power, or bring back the people she killed, or save Grim from dying when her life force runs out soon? She sees Lark, who is grievously injured but healing, albeit much slower than Isla expected. Lark sees Isla and calls her an idiot as the ash forms chains around her. Oro’s friends try to convince him that it’s for the best that Isla is gone, but Cal declares that they need her back. She’s wearing the most powerful artifact that Lightlark has and Cronan cannot get his hands on it. It’s bound to Isla through her marriage vows until death, but Cronan won’t hesitate to kill her to have the diamond. Grim arrives and they decide to speak to Cleo. They find her on her ship, and she tells the that she made a deal with Isla so that Isla would bring her son back to life - which means that Cleo needs a portal back to this world as much as they do. She tells them of a prophecy she’d been told by the Oracle: five hundred years after the curse, the world would be changed completely. Someone born of life and death both would decide between doom or prosperity for the world at large. That person would have to choose one side, darkness or day, without losing themselves to either. The Oracle also mentioned a war between worlds that is called Crowntide. This is troubling. So many of their people have already been killed in their war with Lark. If they have any chance of surviving another war, they need Isla back. Cleo tells Oro that his father searched for something powerful for his entire rule, he had Cleo’s sister (the previous Moonling ruler) help in his search. But they weren’t looking for something… they were looking for someone. Lark and Isla are both bound and put into a wagon. Lark realizes that their captors are scavengers, there are others in the cart that are already dead. She manages to steal a dagger, freeing herself and then Lark, and grabbing all the things the scavengers took from her before rolling off the cart. But she doesn’t get far, the scavengers pull her back to the cart with magic - so there is magic here. She just can’t use it. This time, Isla stays in the cart. As they travel, she sees flashes of what the world used to look like and Lark keeps bleeding, unable to continue healing. Suddenly, one of the scavengers is killed, their body drained of water from below by some sort of creature in the sand. Cleo explains that Horus had left a map and a record of a lost king, but Oro’s father never found that king. She takes Grim and Oro to the Moonling library where she gives them the map - which is really a compass. Grim breaks the compass and feels the water inside, then grabs their hand and portals them where the compass directs them to go. But Oro’s father would never have been able to find the king, because the king under the ocean, he would have needed a very strong Moonling’s assistance. Cleo stills the water and parts them all the way down to the ocean floor. She tells them to go, she will hold it open for as long as they need, even days, if it means regaining her son. Grim and Oro drop into the crevice and fall for miles, their power leaving them towards the bottom, so they hit the ground hard. They both worry for a second, how will they leave if they are powerless, but there’s no point worrying about that now. They look around, they are surrounded by people and creatures shackled to the floor. The creatures die, they’re revived, they die again. Tortured that way for eternity. The scavengers that have Isla keep walking until the horse carrying the cart can go no further. The creature doesn’t seem to have fazed the survivors. While one of the scavengers tosses dead bodies out to make the cart lighter, they are attacked by a different group of people. The attackers shoot the scavengers until only two remain, but those two cover the attackers with ash, killing them. Apparently, the attackers could not control the ash. Before they can continue walking to wherever they’re going, it begins to rain. Isla is delighted, finally some water, but she realizes something is very wrong when the scavengers run. When the rain hits her, she feels her power come back. But she isn’t the only one. Lark’s chest heals and she turns toward Isla. Lark opens a portal above her, to a forest thick with tall pine trees, and she sends the pine trees hurtling toward Isla. Grim figures out pretty quickly why his and Oro’s powers are not working. The prisoners’ shackles are made of shademade and with the number of shackles they’re near, the shademade is affecting Oro and Grim as well. They’ll need to search through the prisoners to find the king, so Grim tosses Oro a dagger (he didn’t bring his own weapon) and they start cutting a path through the prisoners. They argue as they do it. Sometimes about Isla: Oro loves her enough to want her back safe even if he doesn’t get to be with her and accuses Grim of fostering the darkness within Isla so he won’t feel so alone while Grim says he took away her memories because he was trying to save her and he doesn’t foster her darkness, he accepts Isla for who she is fully. Oro points out that Grim killed his own siblings to become Nightshade’s ruler, including his sister. This is too far. When Grim’s father was ruler and Nightshade attacked Lightlark, Grim was made a prisoner in Lightlark as part of the peace treaty. Oro would often visit him and their hatred eventually thawed into friendship. Grim told Oro about his sister Laila in confidence. Grim reminds Oro that even though they’d been friends, Oro didn’t trust him. He still accused Grim of creating the Lightlark curse even after Grim said he did not and Oro’s gift indicated that Grim was not lying. When it came to Grim, Oro didn’t even believe his own flair. But then, Grim had planned on killing Oro later on so they argue about that too. Eventually, Cleo’s walls begin to shake, and she forms a stairway of ice for them to get out of the ocean quickly. They run for the staircase but encounter a huge scorpion. The scorpion grabs Grim with his tongue, but Oro cuts it, freeing Grim, and blocks the scorpion’s stinger with Grim’s sword. The stinger shatters the dagger, but they manage to get away from the scorpion when it is stopped by its chain. They don’t leave the ocean though; they crest a hill and find the king instead. Isla is hit by one of Lark’s trees. As soon as she is, she feels power flooding back to her and she shoots the trees back at Lark. Isla calls the god bone, orb of storms, and Cronan’s sword to her. Before their fight starts in earnest, portals start to open above them. Beasts come through, fighting in the sky above them. More worrisome, knights seem to appear out of nothing, carrying shademade swords. They attack both Isla and Lark and their power is leeched by the knights. Isla sees Lark start to weaken and knows that if she has any chance of reviving the people she killed, she is the one that must kill Lark. One of the knights hits Isla in the chest with his blade and her armor chest piece falls apart. She sees a portal above them that shows the same tumultuous sky that she’s under and assumes it will take them to a different part of this world. She uses her Skyling power to fly toward it, grabbing Lark on her way and fuses the armor chest piece over both of them. As soon as she’s through the portal, her power dies out again and they fall to the ground. Her storm orb barely flickers, used up. They land among trees and Isla sees something. She sees herself. The king sits in a chair covered by ten chains. He knows who Grim and Oro are and why they’ve come. He wants to help but he hasn’t decided yet whether he will. He explains that although Cronan didn’t know it, he’s been looking for Isla. Cronan has been looking for one specific place for ages, and he has no problem destroying everything to get there. This realm, Lightlark, was once a prison and they hid powerful relics there too, including the Infinite. It is part of the reason Cronan brought the others here, he wanted to claim the diamond. But the diamond rejected him and cursed him instead, forcing him to flee this world. Isla has the abilities of all six realms and the Infinite; Cronan could return here with her help. And if he used the Infinite with his sword and crown, he would have nearly unlimited power. Cronan created a world using Lark’s power. Anyone who falls to one of his curses exists there now. It is where the island would disappear to while it was in the storm. Something that the king sees in Oro makes him decide to help. He gives Oro a pile of thick golden threads he calls the Threads of Time. They need to get the threads to Isla, but Cronan must not obtain them. He tells them that all realms must play their part in this war. Then he just disappears. Grim takes the threads and the walls around them shake harder. They need to get to Cleo’s stairs and fast. They run as quickly as they can, cutting down anything in their way. The stairs are breaking so they’re forced to leap between the steps. Finally, Grim begins to feel the threads of his power. He grabs Oro portals them away. As soon as Cleo sees them, the ocean collapses together. Isla sees a memory of when she was eight and training with Terra. A terrible memory. When the memory fades, she sees Lark weak and hunched over. She briefly thinks about killing her, but Lark guesses Isla’s thoughts and tells her that Cronan’s sword won’t kill her. She explains that the forest they’re in forces you to relive your past. Then Isla watches Lark’s eyes go blank as she enters a memory. Isla grabs Lark’s arm and leads her as she starts walking through the forest. Grim, Oro, and Cleo think about what the king said, trying to find a way to the other world. The king said all realms must participate. Nightshade and Sunling already are, represented by Grim and Oro, as well as Cleo for Moonling. Isla is both Starling and Wildling, which leaves only Skyling. They decide to speak to Azul. It doesn’t take them long to fill him in on what happened to Isla. They tell him they need him to speak to his dead husband - a scholar who had been taken by the curse. Azul, surprisingly unfazed, tells them to lead the way. An hour later, Lark re-emerges from her memory. Isla peppers her with questions, none of which are answered, until Isla is pulled into another memory. This one showcasing Terra’s cruelty and what she called Isla’s weakness, as Terra destroys everything that Isla had of her mother. This is the moment that leads to Isla finding the starstick. She wakes up to find Lark leading her as she fights a winged creature. The creature flickers between monster and beautiful woman. Lark isn’t doing well with the sword, whether from weakness or lack of training, so Isla takes the sword and kills the creature. The effort takes a lot of energy. The land is draining more than just her power. Lark enters another memory, so Isla grabs her arm again. But then, women start to emerge from the trees. Isla runs, pulling Lark behind her, but the women are everywhere. One grabs Isla by the neck, and she is able to cut the hand off before trying to take cover with Lark. As the tree women close in around her, Isla is plunged into another memory. They use a ring that belonged to Azul’s husband to portal to the realm of cursed souls. Grim stands by himself as he waits for Oro and Azul to speak to Azul’s husband, thinking about Isla and keeping an eye on both Azul and Oro. The cursed spirit of his father comes to see him and asks if he claimed the Infinite. Grim confirms that he did but doesn’t say anything else. Not that he did it for Isla, not that he’s married. He doesn’t want his father to know anything about Isla. His father disappears completely and Grim turns to tell the others that they need to go, but Oro and Azul are also gone. Oro was called to his brother and unlike Grim with his father, Oro is delighted to see Egan. Egan explains that this is an in-between place, he isn’t always there. Oro tells him as much as he can about the curse and what happened since then, including his feelings about Isla. But Egan has no real advice, only saying that sometimes it’s worth giving up everything like he did when he chose Violet over his throne. Violet appears near him and asks about Aurora. Oro doesn’t have the heart to tell her that Aurora killed her and Egan and cursed Lightlark for five hundred years before she was killed, so he only says that Aurora survived and lived a long time. Soon, Grim interrupts and Egan and Violet disappear. When Azul appears as well, they portal back to Lightlark. But Isla was not plunged into a memory. She opens her eyes to find the warrior tree women and Lark frozen, and a silver woman walking toward her. Isla knows intuitively that the woman does not mean any harm. The silver woman takes Isla to a different grove, explaining that to fix her future she must understand her past. She shows Isla a pool where Isla sees her memories again. Isla realizes that she did not deserve what was done to her in the name of her “training”, she was only a child. She explains to the woman that it’s too hard, she doesn’t want to do any more. The woman responds that the road will get harder still, but Isla is strong enough to withstand it. She encourages Isla to drink from the pool so her life force will gain a little extra time and Isla does, feeling rejuvenated. Then the ground quakes and the silver woman says that he is coming. Isla knows she means Cronan. The woman takes Isla back and disappears, Isla finds the tree women now being held off by Lark’s magic alone. But when the ground shakes again, the tree women run and seal themselves back inside their trees. Cronan appears before Isla and Lark. Azul tells Oro and Grim what he learned from his husband. The three Oracles that had been on Lightlark had a mother from their original land. She drowned in a pool of water and froze in the ice. Years later, her body was cut open and the water from her lungs taken to create other pools. The first Moonling ruler on Lightlark made one of those pools from a vial of water he had. The water is all connected by an ancient enchantment. They could potentially use that water as a portal. Even better, Azul’s husband knew that the pool is located on a beach on Lightlark only accessible during high tide. They go to find the pool and Grim and Oro get into another fight as Azul watches. Before they can kill each other, they both collapse. Their bonds with Isla have just disappeared. As Grim freaks out, Oro slaps him and reminds him that if Isla were dead, he would be too since their lives are merged now. Then, they change the tides to reveal the pool. But when Grim tries to use it to portal to the old world, his power is not enough. Cronan approaches, wearing his crown. Lark sees him and attacks him, but Cronan brushes his hand in her direction and she is torn apart, her body a pile of flesh and bone. Isla realizes that her chance of absorbing Lark’s power to bring back the people she killed is now gone, and that she’s really underestimated Cronan’s power. As she looks on, Lark’s pile of parts starts to move back together - but Cronan doesn’t notice. He does notice Isla’s necklace. She tries to fight against him, using everything at her disposal but it’s nowhere near enough. He grabs her throat and her world goes black. Isla wakes up in a glass room where Cronan says that it would be easy to kill her, but he needs her alive. He calls her Worldkey and explains that the Infinite still fights him but chooses to be worn by Isla, so he will have to use Isla in order to use the Infinite. That will be easy, he can just mold her mind into what he needs and she will choose to join him. To keep Cronan out, Isla builds a mental wall out of the love she feels for the people in her life. It repels Cronan but he’s not super concerned. Every lock has a key, every wall can be broken, and he will figure out how to break her. Isla already knows what he could use: the men she loves. So, to avoid Cronan getting to them, she cuts her bonds to them both. Oro announces that he and Grim need to stop fighting… for Isla. She needs them more than ever now. Then Oro apologizes for not believing Grim all those years ago when Grim told him he did not cast the curse. It was the moment they went from friends back to enemies; it was the moment Grim lost his only friend. Grim apologizes too, for trying to kill Oro and waging war against Lightlark but Oro knows the apology is a lie. Grim admits it was, everything he did was all for Isla and he would do it again. He would do anything for her. But he proposes a truce, promising not to try to kill Oro again unless it will get him to Isla and Oro agrees to his terms. Then Grim goes to Nightshade to try to dig up information. Oro tries to figure out the Threads of Time while Grim is gone but nothing he does works. Not until he accidentally unspools one and sees time unfurl in front of him. He sees ghosts of moments, of Sunlings from millennia ago, of Horus the original ruler of Sunling and one of the creators of Lightlark. Of his parents when they actually liked each other, they certainly hadn’t by the time he came along. Enya interrupts him and he explains what he’s doing. She suggests that Horus is the only creator that they haven’t discovered is still alive. Oro knows he’s dead, he saw Horus’ corpse himself, but maybe he can still help Oro through these threads. Cronan puts Isla through hell and by the time she’s thrown into a cell, her shields are barely holding on. Lark is already in the cell, knitting the pieces of herself back together. Isla asks for more information about Cronan and after they both make sure everyone knows that they really hate each other and want to kill each other, Lark gives Isla a brief history. She knew Horus before Oro, and they dreamed of building a world together where they could make the rules. Cronan was always cold, but there was more underneath that Lark believed she could see, but he had hidden reasons for creating Lightlark. He wanted the Infinite. When Isla asks for more information about the diamond, Lark just laughs and tells Isla that she’s never been more than a pawn. Grim starts by looking through his library. He finds the book that Isla used to discover skyres, but it does not help him. Then he goes to the auger. The auger tells Grim that he can’t help Grim get to Isla in the otherworld, but he does know that Grim will need a skyre to survive once he gets to Skyshade. Cronan is a void and he has a skyre that he uses to amplify his power. If Grim used that skyre on himself, he would retain his powers. The auger does not know what the skyre looks like, but explains that if anyone could figure it out, it is one of Cronan’s own bloodline. The auger was told this information by the silver woman, and he recommends that Grim use the feather that Isla left behind to draw the skyre. Oro does nothing but watch the threads until he is forced to stop by his friends. He was watching for so long that the threads were weaving themselves into his veins - he was watching for two whole days without noticing the passage of time, his friends had to rip the threads out of his body to bring him back. He wants his friends to understand that he is learning so much and he tries to take the threads back, but they won’t let Oro have them. Like an addict, he fights his friends for the threads until he realizes what he’s done and comes back to himself. He apologizes. His friends are fine, but he can still hear the threads calling to him. Cronan continues to try to break Isla’s wall and he finally manages it, but Isla shows him only the memories she wants him to see, managing to continue to hide her relationships with Grim and Oro. But each memory he sees, Cronan changes to make her more ruthless. He sees the moment that Isla told Aurora/Celeste that she didn’t have power and Isla feels the same overwhelming sadness of Aurora’s betrayal. Cronan encourages her to work with him, then she will never be hurt again. She can see how he could change her but just before she gives in, she remembers what the silver woman said about her depth of strength and she stays strong. Grim searches everywhere he can think of for Cronan’s skyre. He will not stop until he finds it. Isla is tortured from morning till night and in a moment of weakness, she thinks of Oro and Grim. She knows that she just made the biggest mistake. Cronan latches on, looking through every memory she has of the two of them. He changes memories so she sees herself killing each of them and eating their hearts. Cronan wonders if they will come look for her. He’s pretty sure if they do, Isla will do whatever he wants to save them. When Oro finally sleeps, he sees Isla. The real Isla. She tells him that Cronan is trying to break her, but he insists that she is the strongest person he knows. She just needs to stay strong for a little while longer, he and Grim are coming to save her. She panics and tries to make him promise not to do that, it’s exactly what Cronan wants, but he won’t promise that. She disappears from the dream. She visits Grim next, apologizing for not telling him about the prophecy of how she has to kill either him or Oro, or of her plan to leave, or for almost sleeping with Oro. He forgives all of it and vows to find her no matter what, ever after she asks him not to. She asks him to remind her of what could come after all this is done and he kisses her. They have dream sex and fall asleep together. He wakes up alone. Grim sees Oro and tells him that he knows everything. They reveal that they both saw Isla in their dreams and Grim does not like what happened between them, but he understands. Isla has made him a better person. Loving her is bringing them back together. Oro explains he’s had no luck with the strings, and he can’t use them anymore. Grim believes if they use his portaling ability with the threads, they could travel through time instead of just watching it. He portals Oro to speak to Horus, who tells him that it’s difficult to get back to the otherworld of Skyshade and it will kill them. They need to know the world’s name: Skyshade. They need portaling ability, check. Massive amounts of energy, they’ll need to figure that one out. A living piece of Skyshade. And Sunling, Nightshade, and Wildling power, so they’ll need Isla to reinstate their bonds. He does admit that the sacred waters may allow them to travel through the portal without dying, but the portal built into the island will not. Oro is brought back to Lightlark and tells Grim that he found the information that they need. Oro thinks he knows where they can get the power, but he has no idea about the living bit of Skyshade. Grim remembers how Isla caught a bit of the portal’s storm in a ring but then dropped it and lost it. That storm could be what they need. Oro convinces Lynx to help him search for it with his sense of smell and Grim asks Wraith to fly for the first time since Isla left to track the ring down. It should smell like her. As Oro and Lynx search the ground, Lynx takes him through the battlefield where they fought Lark’s beasts. Suddenly, Oro’s vision changes. He sees Lark in a cell and Isla being tortured by Cronan. When the vision ends, he sees that Grim and Wraith have landed - they found the ring. He explains what he saw and that he believes Cronan showed it to him. Grim wonders if that connection goes both ways. Isla’s existence is on repeat. Cronan tortures her - trying to break into her mind as she tries to block him from discovering that she found a way to speak to Grim and Oro. She is then placed back in her cell with Lark where Lark never quite heals, as if Cronan is stopping her. But this time as Cronan digs in her head, Isla sees Lynx’s face. Then Wraith with Grim, then Oro. Through her bond with Lynx, both men remind her of how strong she is, and it renews her resolve. She pictures the pool and the silver woman comes to visit her in her mind. The woman once shouldered a similar burden to what Isla has now. She encourages Isla to look into the pool. It shows what would have been if alternate choices had been made in the past, and it is one way to become at peace with the past in order to move forward. But be careful, people have drowned in the pool wanting to live in other versions of their life. Isla pictures the men she loves and declares that she has a reason to come back, then she enters the pool. The pool shows her on the day she gets to choose an animal to bond with at eight years old with both of her parents alive. The love she feels between the three of them is overwhelming. When Isla leaves the pool, the silver woman explains that with her flair, Isla preserved a piece of her parents’ souls when she killed them. In a place like the pool, they can speak to her. Her mother appears in the pool and tells Isla that no matter what choices Isla has made, she has been proud of her. Because no matter what Isla went through, her hope and her love endured. She encourages Isla to keep enduring. When Isla sees Cronan again, she is able to hide the pool from him. And she knows how to beat him. The only thing still needed before they can portal is the massive amount of energy, but Oro says he knows where to locate that, so Grim keeps searching for the skyre. While on Wraith’s back, he sees the maze that Cronan planted. It’s the first time he’s seen it from the sky. He uses Lark’s feather that he’s started carrying with him to draw the design on his skin. He was right, it’s Cronan’s skyre. Oro goes to see Cinder. Last time he saw her, the Starling girl already had a massive amount of power. Now she has a breathtaking amount. She can feel the life forces of not just everyone on Lightlark, but everyone. Period. She can feel Cronan. She wants to help Oro because there’s another world that she’s dreamed of her entire life. It calls to her. When her cousin Maren comes to protect her from Oro, Cinder explodes. She’s not even close to being in control of her powers and Oro has to shield both himself and Maren to protect them from Cinder’s tantrum. Maren puts Cinder to bed and speaks to Oro alone. He explains everything that is happening. Maren doesn’t like Isla, believing that she is a traitor, and she wants Oro dead to end the Nexus curse. But she still asks him what they need to bring Isla back. Isla retreats to the pool whenever Cronan invades her mind and sees that many of her choices have actually avoided death. She sees the big one, destroying the Nightshade village when the dreks invaded. If she had not done that, Grim would have stayed dead. Nightshade would have survived since Cronan was still alive somewhere. But the dreks would have decimated that village before moving on to the rest of Nightshade, then the other Newlands, then Lightlark. When the dreks killed Oro, the island would have been destroyed and everyone in it killed. The silver woman insists she must forgive herself to move on so Isla decides to speak to another soul she killed. Aurora. Oro introduces Grim to Cinder and for a moment, Cinder is very unimpressed. That is, until Grim introduces her to Wraith. Cinder takes a ride on Wraith and lights up the sky with her joy. When Isla sees Aurora, she is flooded with hatred for the woman who betrayed her so grievously and love for the only friend she ever had. Aurora tells her that when her own parents died, her soul was split. She constantly teetered on the brink of good or evil, with potential to fall in either direction. Violet made her good. When Violet betrayed her, Violet got what she deserved. Isla sees herself in Aurora but knows she would have always chosen love over vengeance. She asks if Aurora knows of any way to beat Cronan. Aurora reveals that the founders used an ancient practice to transfer part of their power to an inanimate object. Like the feather, which had been Lark’s. If Isla can find Cronan’s object and destroy it, then he will be vulnerable. Before Isla leaves, Aurora tells her their relationship wasn’t entirely an act. That night Isla visits Oro in his dream again. He tells her they have almost everything they need to use the portal, but they need her to restore their bonds with her. She agrees to do it, changing her mind about allowing them to come to her. But she is only going to bring one of them over, one of them must stay on the island in case the other two don’t make it. And she hasn’t chosen which of them yet. But she will do it tomorrow. The next morning, Oro tells Grim of Isla’s decision to only restore the bond with one of them to bring only that person through. They go to the pool, tossing Azul’s husband’s ring and the Threads of Time inside. They shake hands as allies, thanking each other for their commitment, then they both get into the pool. The funnel their own energies into the pool as Cinder sends a bolt of power directly into the pool with them. They wait for Isla to make her move. When Cronan comes for her this time, Isla lets him in and gives him full access to her mind. She has figured out what his powered item is, and she needs to get close enough to reach it. While he sifts through her memories, she realizes for the first time that he is creating a bond between them. She asks him why he destroys worlds and he just tells her that some worlds deserve to be destroyed. She disagrees. She forms a dagger of power and shoves it into his thigh, calling her father’s armor to her from where Cronan has tossed it against the wall. She forms a wall with the armor and reinforces it with her own power, so when Cronan throws his power against it, it is reflected and hits him instead. As he writhes in pain, she grabs his crown and places it on her own head. With his object, she has enough power to renew her bond. She sees Oro and Grim waiting in the pool but before she reaches for one of them, the silver lady stops her. She explains that Isla is super unlucky. Her soul is split and both Grim and Oro are the perfect match for one half of her soul. Her soul will continue to rupture until she dies, or she kills one of them. But Isla is real sick of hearing about this, she announces she’s going to rewrite her fate. The silver woman asks if she wants to use the pool to see what will happen with either choice, but Isla doesn’t. She’s a little busy right now and there’s only one choice at the moment. She grabs his hand as Cronan lunges at her. Isla takes the crown off her head and shatters it against the wall. Cronan slams her to the ground and starts to choke her, but he looks up in alarm when he feels a power great enough to challenge him. Grim lands in the middle of the room and starts laying waste to Cronan’s knights. He and Isla reach for each other, but before they can touch, Cronan breaks into Grim’s mind. He permanently wipes away every memory that Grim has of Isla. Their bond is broken again. Grim does not recognize Isla. He knows he was working with Oro to bring someone back to Lightlark from this world and he wonders if it’s her, but it can’t be her. He would recognize her if it was. But he can tell she is in love with Oro because she has access to Sunling powers, `and he feels the emotions she’s feeling for him and is confused by them (despair and love), and her voice nearly moves him - but he stays stalwart. Then he sees the Infinite… he wants that diamond. Cronan tells Grim that Isla will be the ruin of Nightshade and orders Grim to kill her. Grim doesn’t take orders but he does want the diamond, so he attacks Isla anyway. She blocks him and pushes him back with her own power, then flies through the ceiling and forms a storm. Grim goes after her. Meanwhile, Oro reels from being the one that Isla didn’t choose… again. His power unravels and he loses control, almost killing Enya and the others in the process. When he is brought back to himself, he feels awful about what happened and nearly vows not to use his powers again, but then a beast plunges through the pool. Isla flees from Grim, but she can feel him not far behind her. She finds another small portal that will only take her to another area of this world, and she goes through before it closes completely. Her hard landing tears her armor apart and she melts it down to form a bracelet on her wrist instead. She walks, seeing something like an oasis in the distance. It’s actually a village inside a crater (how she saw it, I don’t know). When she gets there, she finds a woman named Jessel who is raising two boys that are not her own. She offers to share food and water with Isla and Isla shares her whole sordid story with the woman. Jessel says that this land used to be like Isla’s long ago. There are still ancient creatures that remember it. She knows Cronan is behind the devastation but anyone who goes against him dies. No one can use magic, but there are little relics that retain power that can be used. She asks if Isla is there to destroy Cronan and Isla tells her yes, that and to save her world. Jessel asks her to save this one while she’s at it. Isla leaves soon after, not wanting Grim to find her with Jessel’s family. She searches for the bond with Oro and finds one, weak as it is. Through it, she sees a very sad Oro fighting beasts and manages to speak to him, something they couldn’t do before. She tells him what happened with Grim and they both realize she cannot leave without Grim’s portaling power. She asks Oro what Grim’s weakness is in battle and he only knows of one. It’s Isla. Oro fights with emotion, as dangerous as that is, but he has no choice because the creatures just keep coming. Zed takes Cinder and an injured Enya to safety while Oro, Calder, and Maren fight. Oro is angrier than ever because somehow Isla is in even more danger than before, his own heart is breaking knowing that she didn’t choose him, and he’s even worried for Grim. He takes his armor off, and it falls into the water of the pool - it was weighing him down. He dives back toward the next creature. Grim finds Isla in the oasis village but she uses his fighting style against him, stabbing him when he portals right to her. She insists that she understands him. She can’t use her powers without a storm, but the storms are attracted to his power. One comes and she uses it to portal. When she does, he attaches himself to her and tags along for the ride. She lands on top of him and he doesn’t remember anything from being in the position, but he realizes she’s beautiful. They fight; she tells him the secrets he told her. About how he hid in the maze, about the licorice store, about Laila. If anything, she’s just proving that she is his doom and he continues to try to kill her. They portal again and he tries to hit her with his shadows, but this time there’s a spark and he has a vision. A memory. Of her dead on a battlefield in his arms as he sobs over her with dead dreks around them. He throws himself away from her. She’s exhausted from fighting him and completely drained of power. They’re portaled again and he lands on the beach; she lands in the water and does not surface. He grabs her body and portals them both to Cronan. There’s something he’s not being told and he wants answers. Oro fights the monsters for two days before needing to rest while the others keep the creatures at bay. He’s woken from his nap by a huge black creature flying over the ocean. It seems to be able to manipulate energy. Calder fights it from the waves and he goes under. He’s a Moonling, he will be fine, but Oro watches as the beast searches for his energy to finish him off. Oro and Enya go to fight as well, and Oro hopes that Isla gets back soon. They can’t close the portal until she’s back. Cronan isn’t happy to see Isla is still alive but Grim insists she could be useful. Maybe Grim could convince her to join them, she obviously cares about him. Cronan is intrigued by this possibility. After all, Isla’s flair is absorbing the souls and flairs of the people she has killed. She is exceptionally powerful. He shows Grim his collection of worlds that he has conquered. These are the ones that he allowed to live because they now serve him. The others were destroyed. But Cronan needs more, Lightlark stands between him and the worlds he needs, but the Infinite repelled him from Lightlark. He needs to collect those worlds and then find the place where all worlds meet. But for that, he needs a key. He’s been kept from the key by a choice he once made. He needs to go back in time to change that choice or to find a new key. How convenient, Grim has time traveling threads! He gives them to Cronan, hoping to garner some trust and goodwill. Cronan is delighted and takes the threads, which immediately imbed themselves in his arm with just one little tendril still showing. Now they need to find the Pool of Possibility (the pool the silver woman showed to Isla). The pool will show Cronan the way and the threads will allow him to change choices as needed. The Infinite will give him the power to shape the universe as he sees fit. Grim doesn’t really care about any of that, he just wants his people to survive. But he has the strangest feeling that there is something now missing from his life. Something that had been worth fighting for. Grim fetches Isla from the cell she was tossed into with Lark and brings her to see Cronan. She tries to make him see that they love each other, but he is unswayed. When they arrive, Cronan has his crown back - although it’s a little patchwork now that it’s been broken. He takes Isla’s mother’s flair that she wears like a charm on her bracelet. He saw it in one of her last memories he watched. He puts the flair in his crown, along with the god-bone, and shows them all the future. In it, Isla whispers to Grim that she loves him and then stabs him, killing him, unless she joins them and kills Oro instead. Cronan tells Isla that in three weeks he will destroy Lightlark and everyone on it. That is no longer up for debate. Isla sees Grim frown a little as if he thought Cronan would at least save Nightshade. Cronan continues that he and his council will continue from Lightlark to the next galaxy where they will gather more worlds up. Isla can always choose to join them and serve Cronan for eternity, it is the only way to be with Grim. She has three weeks to decide. He leaves the room and Isla is drug out by Cronan’s knights. Grim stares as if he can still see the vision. Grim can’t bring himself to move, at least not until Cronan comes back in insisting that taking Grim’s memories was really good for him. He asks Grim if he saw the Pool of Possibilities while he chased Isla and before Grim has a chance to answer, Cronan invades his memories to look for himself. Grim is furious but needs to look differential. He needs Cronan to believe that he is in charge. Because Grim is not about to allow him to destroy Nightshade, but he only has three weeks to figure out how to destroy Cronan. Cronan orders Grim to search for the pool. Isla sits in the cell being taunted by Lark who is literally falling apart. She asks Lark why she can’t fight Cronan off herself, since she came from this world too, but the world is no longer the same world Lark left since Cronan has changed it so much. He controls everything here. Except the storms, little pieces of other worlds that leak into this one. Isla closes her eyes and sees the pool again. She sees a life with Oro, and he reminds her to find her a fire. It gives her the strength to continue fighting. Isla visits Oro during his waking hours this time and he’s struggling. When she tells him that Cronan plans to destroy Lightlark in three weeks, he’s not sure there will be anything left to destroy by then. The monsters just keep coming. And even with all that, even with her choosing Grim again, he can’t stop loving her. Isla reminds him of his strength the way he reminded her and asks if she can help at all. He asks where her portaling stick is, but she hasn’t seen it since Lark had it last. She tells him to let her see if she can find out where it is. Isla barters for the location of the starstick and Lark tells her she wants Cronan’s head on a platter, but also her feather which she can feel Grim still has. Isla tries to appeal to Grim. Maybe if they get to know each other again, he will remember or fall in love again. But he only wants to know why she’d kill him, which she can’t really explain. He takes her to Cronan again but stops for a minute so Isla can have a bath and get cleaned up. Her hair and make-up get done and she’s given a very revealing dress that shows off all her skyres. She is brought to a room where Grim and Cronan wait with six other men. Cronan introduces her as his worldkey, and everyone but Grim looks at her in a gross way. Cronan appears to be obsessed with bones. The men are all missing the small part of a finger since Cronan requires a bone with their oath, Isla will be required to give one as well. The cups they drink from are skulls, the cutlery made of bones, as is his crown which now includes the god-bone. When one of the men asks if he will consume or keep the next world, Cronan waves his hand and the crown changes. Isla realizes that he hasn’t actually consumed the other worlds, their power has been kept in the crown. Which she knows she can break. He announces that the next world will be Lightlark and he will absolutely be consuming it. Isla throws a knife at Cronan’s chest and nearly hits him, but he blocks it at the last minute and suspends her in the air. He shows her memories to everyone in the room. Times she was mistreated on Lightlark - including when Tynan nearly killed her. In Grim’s castle. Grim recognizes it. He also sees her slip a knife into her waistband when Cronan lets her down. They’re here for something else. The servants found a vial of poison in his room and Cronan suspects he planned to assassinate him. Cronan drinks the poison and nothing happens, but he serves the last drop to a servant, who drops dead immediately. He uses the Threads of Time with his own power to create portals to fifty different words he’s already conquered, meaning his Knights are already there. If the man makes it through all fifty worlds, they will pretend this never happened. The man only makes it through three before portaling back and dying in front of them. Grim takes Isla back to her cell, taking the bone knife from her on the way. But she spins him around, pins him to the wall, grabs the knife, and holds it to his throat. She asks him if he cares about his people anymore since Cronan plans to kill them all in a few weeks, but Grim quickly switches their positions and tells her that she doesn’t know what he wants. She retorts that she used to. They were once in this very position, in a similar dress, and he touched her thigh. He does it now and she nearly breaks through to him, but at the last moment he stalks off telling her not to threaten him unless she plans to follow through. Grim and Cronan wait the next day at the table for the other men and Isla. Cronan asks why he’s so distracted and Grim explains that it’s disorienting to have gaps in his memory. Really, he is plotting against Cronan. Cronan offers to take other memories but Grim refuses, saying he will think about it. He immediately thought of Laila, but he knows he won’t ask Cronan to take away any more memories, not even of her. When he escorts Isla back to the cell that evening, she asks what will happen to Wraith if Cronan destroys Lightlark. Will Cronan take him for his own. She explains that she found the dragon and they raised him together (a bit of an overstatement). He asks how she got the Infinite (he gave it to her) and she asks if he’s wondered why Cronan doesn’t just take it. Because it can’t be removed from her unless she’s dead. Much like his necklace. She breaks the news, they’re married! Nightshade rulers don’t get married, but he did. He was going to kill her the first time they met but he changed his mind, and their love made them stronger. He points out that it all ended here, with her as a prisoner, but she disagrees. He’s the prisoner and she’s going to free him. She is taken for another bath but as she’s getting her make-up done, Grim interrupts. He needs to know why he married her. Did she trick him? Poison him? She explains that they understood each other, the loneliness that the other felt. She found the starstick that he’d made and given to her father, and it took her right to him. Then he used her to help him find something he wanted but at the end of all that, he chose her. They chose each other and they kept choosing each other. He insists that it won’t happen again. After that he barely looks at her, and she is escorted to and from the dungeon by Cronan’s knights. She knows that he won’t give her the feather willingly - she’s going to have to steal it. She ask Lark how badly she wants the feather. She breaks one of Lark’s ribs off through the gaping hole in her chest then makes enough noise that the knight comes over. The others are probably upstairs with Cronan as he parties with his sycophants. She uses the rib to stab the knight in the throat and uses his blood to open the cell door. She runs upstairs to search for Grim’s room. When she finds it, she realizes that he’s bathing in the next room. She still searches for the feather but cannot find it. When the water turns off, she tries to leave but it is too late. Grim catches her. He asks why she’s there, but she refuses to tell him, so they go to Cronan. Cronan violently invades her memories. She blocks any mention of the feather, which would lead to the starstick, which leads to Oro. Isla makes a weak wall that Cronan easily breaks through to find the memories that Isla feeds to him, instead. Of her love for Grim. That is why she was in his room, to make him love her again. She can’t stay away. As Cronan keeps searching, disgusted, Isla strengthens the shields around the memories she is protecting and she reaches out her hand toward Grim, touching his ankle. Cronan doesn’t notice, not even when Grim gasps. The last thing she sees before she passes out is Grim’s startled face. When she touched Grim, she made him see something. Her naked in his bed. He replays the memory. This is exactly what she wanted, and he won’t give her the satisfaction. Grim distances himself from Isla, but she notices that he’s favoring one arm and guesses that he has an injury. She offers to help him and the next night he takes her to her cell. She looks at the arm, which he has shielded so she can see that he has a skyre but not the shape of it. It looks as if the skyre is trying to disappear but Grim is keeping it in place. It hasn’t healed because of this. And Grim doesn’t want to tell Cronan about it. Isla can’t heal it so they go to Lark - whose blood should do the trick. She asks for her feather, which Grim has been carrying on him. When she takes the feather, a missing piece of her has been returned and she looks much more healed than before. She gives Isla some blood, she and Grim portal to his room where Isla smears the blood on his arm. She holds it in place, so it has time to heal. Grim asks why she’s doing this, and she simply says because she loves him. Wrong answer. She loves a weak version of him which is gone now. He portals her back to her cell. Now that Lark has traded her blood for the feather, their deal is done and she will not tell Isla where the portaling stick is. When Isla gets to dinner that night, a group of people is brought in - including Jessel. Cronan announces that they’ve been plotting against him. But he always gives second chances, he offers each of them a knife in turn. If they can injure him, they can live. Each person is killed until they get to Jessel. Isla asks to kill her instead. When Jessel takes the knife and tries to hurt Isla, Isla slits her throat. Grim is surprised, Isla didn’t seem the type to do something like that, but Cronan is delighted and believes she’s thinking about joining him. Grim decides to visit the cell that night but hears Isla crying before he gets there. He realizes it was all a ruse. He knows Isla’s flair is absorption. Is that why she killed the woman? He erects a shield around Isla’s cell so the knights won’t hear her crying. Oro has sent Crimson and Maren to Star Isle, and his friends are resting after being injured. He is the only barrier between the island and the monsters when Isla visits him again. She reveals that she has not found the Starstick and Lark says they will not find it without her help. He encourages Isla to continue trying. They don’t have long before Cronan is there. Cronan calls Isla to the room where he tortured her. He decides it’s time for a civilized conversation and he gives her tea. She confirms that she killed Jessel to absorb her power and tells Cronan that no, she’s still not joining him. He insists the two of them aren’t that different. When he asks if she has seen a silver pool, she hesitates for a second too long and he invades her thoughts. She manages to hide the pool, she can feel his disappointment, and he sends her back to her cell. On the way, her anger gets the better of her, and she screams at one of the knights - who takes her head and slams it against the wall until Grim kills him. Isla’s hands are bloodied and imbedded with glass from the teacup shattering when Cronan invaded her mind. Grim takes her to his room. She assures him they’ve done all this before. She manages to remove the glass, disinfect, and sew up one hand before Grim takes over. She reveals that they didn’t fall in love because they were lonely, but because they were both hurt and found a cure within each other. Grim portals her to her cell. Oro heads toward Nightshade since he believes Isla will convince Lark to tell them where the starstick is and it takes several days for him to fly there. Along the way, he sees a silver pool. A silver woman tells him he has been chosen by the pool, and he will have a choice to make soon. He tests out possibilities. No matter the question, everyone either winds up dead or they don’t, but he is never as happy as when he was with Isla. Even when she doesn’t choose him, he is happiest just having the short amount of time with her that he did. Lark sleeps holding her feather while Isla watches her in their cell. She can feel a storm rolling and in and wonders if she can use her powers to delve into Lark’s mind. When Isla’s powers return with the storm, she gently ferrets out the location of the stick. She visits Oro and tells him where to find it; he’s already on Nightshade. He asks how it’s going with Grim and she tells him it’s not going well. Maybe Grim doesn’t need her on Skyshade with Cronan. Oro tells her not to give up. Oro, with the help of Astria, Wraith, and Lynx, go to where the starstick is hidden. But it is hidden miles underground where Lark walked through tunnels that she opened and closed with her power. Oro blasts the ground but makes little headway without the use of Isla’s Wildling powers. He digs for as long as his powers allow him, until he is too weak to fly out of the hole and just collapses at the bottom of it. He needs Isla and Grim back… now. At dinner, Cronan decides it’s time for a demonstration of Isla’s powers. He invites the other ever-present men to attack her after releasing her powers, she pins them all to the wall with a different power while her shadows assemble behind her. Cronan, pleased with her display, shuts her powers down again. On the way to her cell, Grim asks why Isla didn’t escape when her powers were returned to her since a storm had begun brewing, called to her power. She won’t leave without Grim, because he would not leave without her. He presses her against the wall, asking why she doesn’t ever give up, before turning around and walking away. He doesn’t make it far before he turns around again and kisses her thoroughly, pressing her against the wall and lifting her so she can wrap her legs around his waist. He’s never wanted anything more than he wants her, but when they’re done, he forces himself to step back remembering how she will kill him. Grim tells Isla that he must’ve been using her this whole time, she is visibly hurt by the statement. She turns around and walks alone to her cell. Grim can’t stop thinking about her. He finds Cronan and demands to see the vision again. He watches Isla declare her love for him before stabbing him for hours. Oro lies in the hole when he feels Isla’s magic come back to him. He quickly uses it to finish digging and retrieving the stick. The magic leaves him again soon. He leaves the hole to find Astria, Wraith, and Lynx waiting. Once back at Grim’s castle, Isla visits him and teaches him to use the stick. He transports himself back to his own throne room. He reveals that he saw the pool, that it made him realize how much hate he had been holding on to. Especially for his brother who abdicated, making Oro king. Isla reminds him that he is stronger than all the rest of them and that Lightlark needs him. She confesses that she did not use the portal to see the future though the regrets that decision now. She was afraid to see the future, and she doesn’t want to make decisions out of fear. The world deserves someone like Oro - who is not afraid to see it. Oro explains that the strong are not the ones that have never made a mistake, not the ones who have never fallen, but those who have gotten back up to keep trying. Like Isla. When Isla disappears, Oro grabs the stick. At the next dinner, there’s an extra chair for their extra participant. Lark. She’s fully healed and wearing her feather in her hair. Cronan explains that Lark loves him, enabling him to have her regenerative powers. She’s now his prisoner, but she is about to have her second chance for freedom. If Lark beats him in a duel, he will portal her to any world she wants to. Lark tries her best, but Cronan is too strong, knitting himself back together seamlessly as soon as he’s torn apart. When Cronan has had enough, he makes Lark’s body disintegrate and then sweeps her into a pile. She’s not dead though, she can only die of her own will. He cuts off his own arm and then grows it back. And after all that, Lark still loves him. Proof that love is for fools. Oro portals to Azul and asks for help dealing with the monsters coming through the portal. Azul agrees to help but has more information that he did not share before. His husband told him that Crowntide may not be an event but a person. Isla, who may destroy the world. In addition, prophecies can be interpreted differently. Only one of the sister oracles ever spoke to Isla, but one of the other two may have interpreted the prophecy differently. Maybe the person who is split in two that will either save the world or destroy it is not Isla, but Oro, whose heart is torn between Isla and Lightlark. He suggests that Oro may kill Isla to save the rest of them. Her fate dies with her. Isla returns to her cell and hears Lark’s body being remade. But Grim shows up the next day. Cronan knows she’s been speaking to someone from her cell and now he plans to invade Lightlark earlier than he said, Grim heard him discussing it with the other men. He leaves the door to the cell open, giving Isla the chance to escape because even though he doesn’t remember her, he remembers a world worth saving. She asks him to come with her, but he doesn’t also remember a life worth living. Isla insists that it is. Besides, she made a vow to him for this life and every life after it. She won’t leave without him. She insists that Cronan is afraid of them, that together they can defeat him. Cronan walks out of the shadows and tells them they are both fools. Oro thinks about what Azul said. He wishes the choice was between him or Isla because it would be an easy choice to make. He would willingly give his life for hers. Cronan portals them to his Galaxy room where he tortured Isla, which is lined with knights. He gives Isla her second chance, handing her a sword. He will let her leave if she can beat all of the knights. She is 10/11 when her sword is knocked away and she is forced to use her bare hands. She reaches under the knight’s helmet and sees Cronan’s face. Cronan stops her, reneging on his deal and holding her in the air as he explains that all of the knights look like him. They are weaker versions of him. He decides to delve into Isla’s mind and find what she’s been hiding from him. As he does, she realizes that his own mind has been left wide open, and she can see into it while they’re connected. She searches and Cronan doesn’t even notice. She finds what she needs - his weakness. Hopefully it’s not too late. When he sees what she’s discussed with Oro, he leaves her mind again. Cronan explains that he has built her up quite a bit, so she will have to be publicly dealt with. Another duel. In addition, he’s decided to invade Lightlark early, but he has been convinced that some people could stay alive to become slaves. Isla and Grim will duel to the death and whomever wins gets to save their realm. Inside his head, Cronan tells Grim that if he wins, he will allow Nightshade to survive. Of course, Grim will have to die for his betrayal. And Grim knows that even if he kills Isla, they will both die since Isla has already explained that their lives are tied together. When he gets back to his room, Grim finds Isla there. She knows she’s going to die the next day, and she wants to spend her remaining hours with Grim, the man she loves. He almost lets her leave the room but pulls her back in at the last minute and they enjoy their last night together. They spend the entire night together, but they don’t sleep at all. In the morning, Grim tells her that it doesn’t change anything between them. He still plans to win their duel. When Isla gets back to her cell, she takes Lark’s feather from the pile that is currently Lark and gets to work. One of the knights comes to tell Cronan that Isla is gone. Grim realizes that he must have let the illusion over his skyre slip. He sets out to find her. Moonlings, Skylings, and Starlings all battle the monsters from the portal. Oro visits the silver pool again, where he asks if the prophecy is about him. He’s told that the future is split just like he is, just like Isla, and there’s no knowing until everything is done. But there is a constant among the different possibilities. A blade that can kill anyone and anything, the only chance of beating Cronan. It is hidden in a pocket of time and Oro may be the only one that can find it. Isla got the skyre from Cronan’s mind, not Grim’s. She travels right to the Forgotten Forest where she had met the Silver Lady, a forest you cannot find without being invited, and she pulls her necklace to call Grim to her. He comes and they fight, she shows him a montage of her memories as they do so. He understands what they felt for each other, but he doesn’t care. Keeping his realm alive is more important than Isla and this is how he will prove his loyalty to Cronan and save Lightlark. He invites Cronan to the forest and Cronan takes over Isla’s body. She cannot fight him. He drags her forward until she has a dagger at Grim’s heart, piercing his skin. Either take them to the Pool of Possibilities or she will be forced to kill Grim. Grim is moved by the Isla who has finally given up. He hates it. He misses her strength. This makes him furious. But he has to protect his realm. She takes them to the pool and Cronan explains that the oldest place in the universe is a tree in which you can find every portal to every world in the forest that grows around it. Cronan nearly reached it once but made the wrong decision. He will use the pool to figure out how to get there and the threads to go back in time and change his decision. The Infinite diamond will amplify his power so he can conquer the universe once and for all. He cannot take the diamond, but once he kills Isla, Grim will take it and give it to Cronan before he also dies - or else Cronan will destroy Nightshade. Cronan goes into the pool for just a moment before coming out and breaking Isla’s neck. Her last words are to tell Grim that she loves him. What Cronan does not know is that Isla made a deal with Lark. Lark hates Isla, but she hates Cronan more and together, they may be able to overpower him. Isla promises to bring Lark back to life, but Lark will have to tell Isla how to kill her so that Isla can absorb her power. Lark agrees and Isla kills her, absorbing her massive amounts of power including the inability to be killed. Of course, Isla has no intention of actually bringing Lark back. When Grim watched Cronan kill Isla, he felt a wave of pain as his heart broke. But he can’t stop himself from smiling as her bones snap back into place. Isla overpowers Cronan. She puts him in a box she creates as the Infinite fuses with her body, as well as the shard from the heart of Lightlark, and she becomes incredibly powerful. She starts to resurrect the people she has killed. But it still is not enough. Cronan breaks free and shackles her to the bottom of the pool where she drowns repeatedly. He tells Isla that she will stay there unless she brings Oro to him. But what does he want with Oro? Finally, Isla remembers her strength and breaks the shackles. She pillages through Cronan’s mind to see why he needs Oro. It is because Oro can find a blade that could kill Cronan. Cronan falls away from Isla, and she takes the crown from his head. Isla appeared to Oro only long enough to tell him that Cronan plans to invade early. As he told his friends, he was called back to the pool. It is no longer silver; the waters are dark from when Cronan’s shadows entered it. Oro is told the future has been poured into it and he can now see every possible outcome. He does what Isla was not strong enough to do and he realizes that the prophecy is right. Someone must die and he knows exactly what he must do… if he’s strong enough. Isla places the crown, which Cronan has combined with the Threads of Time, on her own head. Grim understands that she is what he has been missing all his life and when she calls to him, telling him that she knows how to kill Cronan, he approaches to take her hand. But when he steps into the pool, Grim sees everything. If he goes with Isla right now, he will die. If he’s to live, he must stay with Cronan. She pulls him to her and he goes willingly, wrapping her in his arms just to take the crown off of her head. He pushes Cronan away with his shadows while he portals the crown somewhere else. He tries to imprison Isla so she cannot find the blade and thus, seal his own fate, but both she and the pool disappear. Oro feels as Isla gets closer to Lightlark. He uses the starstick to go to the pool, which is quiet for the first time in days. They begin to pull people out of the pool including Cleo’s son. Isla comes out as well, wearing armor and a sword she’d created when she fought Cronan. Oro wants to remember the futures that he saw and how his, Isla’s, and Grim’s futures are all intertwined, but he cannot. He’s too happy just having her back. Oro asks where Grim is. Isla tells him that Grim chose Cronan, but she is sure that Grim loves her. They even have a tiny bond again. But the look on Oro’s face makes her realize that he has seen the futures. Before he can tell her what he’s seen, portals form all over the place. All of Cronan’s world are converging here to conquer Lightlark. Cronan wants the Infinite, so must find Heartblade to kill Isla and take the diamond. But she must find the blade to Cronan him. She knows it’s somewhere on Skyshade but in a different time. She also knows that thanks to the Threads of Time, fate has been changed. The prophecy may no longer be about her. But she knows that either she, Oro, or Grim will wield the Heartblade. One of them will die for good. And one will either save the world or destroy it.

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Crowntide

The Lightlark Saga by Alex Aster

The Lightlark Saga
by Alex Aster