Who were they? Cannibals who would roast her on a spit and eat her charred flesh?
It was so cold, the promise of heat was almost welcomed.
Whoever they were, a Moonling was helping them. Someone had unfrozen the ice.
They carried her through the forest. And she could hear that ridiculous bird, the one that had announced her presence.Cleo’sbird. Was she watching her, somehow? She imagined the Moonling ruler would take great pleasure in seeing her roasted alive.
“Shoot the bird. It’s making my ears bleed.”
She heard the familiar sound of an arrow hissing through the night. For a moment, there was silence.
Then more screeching.
“If you can’t shoot a bloody bird, why should you get her heart?”
“I found her!”
“Perhaps I’ll shootyouand keep her for myself.”
The bird screeched and screeched, almost happily.
The forest went still.
She felt a current through the air, metal in her mouth.
One of her captors screamed, and the heat of flames roared past her face. The smell of stars shattering something nearby, blood splattering against her skin. The one holding her dropped her.
But before she landed on the ground, someone else’s arms were around her.
And she was in the air.
She was metal being fashioned into a blade, filled with so much heat she screamed and wondered how she even had strength to make the sound.
“Just a little longer,” someone said.
At the sound of that voice, she stilled—and kicked with all her might, moved any limbs that had been thawed.
A hand came over her eyes, warming them, and finally, she could open them.
Oro was standing above her, frowning.
“You,”she said through her teeth, her voice venomous. Her hands pleaded to choke him. To gut him, slice a blade right up his center, tear his heart out with her bare hands.
Was he here to kill her? Had he finally found the heart of Lightlark?
“Before you do whatever horrific thing I am sure you are imagining,” he said, “let me speak.”
She would have lunged at him without hearing another word if her body wasn’t still so numb.
Oro sighed. “I did not betray you, Wildling.” Isla opened her mouth, but he kept talking. “Though you believing so helped tremendously ...”
“Helped what?” she growled. He was lying. She didn’t trust a word that came out of his wicked mouth.
“One of the places where darkness meets light on Moon Isle was impossible to access without Cleo. It had been encased in a maze centuries before to keep others out. I needed her ... so I changed the matches.”
Isla’s nails dug into the flesh of her palm. She could move her fingers now. Maybe, if she was quick enough, she could choke him. She attempted to get her hand up. But it barely got an inch off the bed.
Bed.
