After all Oro and Isla’s searching across the island for the heart, they had failed.
Isla had made countless mistakes in the last eighty days. She had trusted the wrong people. She had made the wrong plans. She had followed the wrong leads. She had blindly chased power when she should have done everything to protect the people who loved her.
But she refused to give up. Not this time. Not when Celeste would have demanded she didn’t.
Isla banged on Oro’s door three days after their last journey to Moon Isle, her knuckles still raw from the cold of the Vinderland expanse, even after she had repeatedly smeared Wildling elixir over the broken skin.
At the feathered tree, Isla had seen the light go out of his eyes—she had watched him fold back into himself, ready to become the same king she had met that first night. More closed off and guarded than his own cursed island. When the heart hadn’t been where it was supposed to be, part of him had vanished, the same way Lightlark would if they failed. This time, perhaps forever.
Oro opened the door just as her fist was coming down in its wide swoop. He caught her arm before it could crash into his chest. He held her wrist and looked down at her, confused.
Isla pushed past him into his room, and he let her.
“This isn’t over,” she said, nostrils flaring and voice cracking in half as if she was still trying to convince herself of the fact.
Oro stared at her. He said nothing.
She took a step toward him. “I refuse,” she said, shaking her head. “I refuse to believe this is how it ends.” She jabbed a finger in his chest. “You are the king of Lightlark, the most powerful person in all of the realms.” He raised an eyebrow, seeming surprised that she was speaking about him in any manner that didn’t include the wordswretchedandinsufferable.“There has to be another way. Another ending.”
Her finger was still against his chest, and he looked down at it before looking at her. “What do you suggest?” he asked.
Such a simple question ... but one he had never asked.
Even in her search for the bondbreaker, she had been following Celeste’s plan.
For the first time, Isla made her very own.
“We start from the beginning,” she said firmly, turning, taking in his room. “From the most basic truth, the root of all of this.” She bit her lip, thinking. Thinking about the first thing he had told her, the basis for their entire search. A question she had asked before, that he hadn’t answered. She turned to him. “Howdidyou find out about the heart?”
He frowned. “I read about it.”
“Where?”
“In a book.”
“What book?”
“An old one. One I found in a hidden library.”
The world went quiet. All of Isla’s senses began to fade.
Hidden library.Just like Celeste had said.
Why hadn’t she listened to her friend?
She tried her best to mask her surprise, her knee-wobbling relief, and her crushing guilt as she said, very quietly, “What library?”
Oro did not hesitate as he walked across the room and opened the door of his balcony. He pulled the door all the way back until it pressedagainst his room’s largest wall and turned the handle again—this time, pushing forward, against the solid stone.
It opened.
Isla followed him into a room tall as a tower, wide as the king’s chambers. Filled to the brim with books and enchanted objects.
A library.
Isla barely breathed, barely moved, hoping her treacherous heart, beating far too loudly in her chest, wouldn’t give her away. All she saw were books. The bondbreaker must have been well hidden. Not that it mattered now.
Celeste was on the brink of death. Isla couldn’t use it with her in that state. And, even if she could, the bondbreaker wouldn’t save Terra. Only an excess of power would. Only the power promised to the person who broke all the curses would.
