They walked the next half hour through Moon Isle in silence.
The wind whipped her cheeks so violently, she wondered if Azul was responsible.Azul.She hadn’t told Oro about the proof that he had poisoned Celeste. She told him then.
Oro frowned. “There must be a mistake,” he said. “Azul has never wanted to hurt another ruler. He has never even tried to form an alliance.”
She had just told him how the Skyling had poisoned Celeste. Wasn’t that proof enough that he wasn’t innocent?
Why was Oro defending him? She wanted to demand an explanation but reared back as something screeched in her ear.
The dark-blue bird.
Its wings flapped slowly, as if its feathers were too heavy for its small frame. It squawked again. This time, Isla did not threaten it.
She followed it.
Isla and Oro ran quickly through the snow, and she squinted, trying not to lose the bird in the dark. She didn’t feel the cold, or the hill dipping below her legs, or anything at all as she trailed after the bird, through the forest with branches like skeletons that caught on her clothes as if pleading with her to slow down.
She kept going. Panting.
The bird wasn’t the heart. She knew that.
But it would lead her to it.
Ice mountains came into view. The oracles were not far.Where darkness meets light.She remembered what the oracle had said ... that the heart wasn’t in her ice but wasnear, nearer than you know.The trees grew farther apart here, with more room for snow to pile. A riversnaked through them, the sound of the water splitting then refreezing again like the tiny cracks of firewood splintering.
Another screech through the night. She found the bird as it dipped down and flew up, into a tree.
Into a nest.
“Here,” Isla said. She knew the heart was there, somewhere.
All they had to do was wait until dawn.
They found a cave carved into one of the ice mountains, within view of the tree. Oro made a fire, though she knew he could heat them both without one. It seemed as though he needed something to do with his hands, to distract him from the time that moved too slowly and the bird just yards away.
Or maybe he couldn’t warm them. She had seen how much of his skin the bluish gray now covered. She had felt the island getting colder and darker with every day that passed.
Its flames popped and peaked in beautiful curls. Oro’s fire was still orange and red, but also tinged in something different ... a strange shade of dark blue. A signature of his, it seemed.
Isla traced a finger around his crown, perched precariously on her head. She frowned up at it, squinting so she could see its edge, right above her eyebrows. “It’s unreasonably sharp,” she said, sucking on her fingertip where the skin had been broken by one of the points.
Oro laughed. It was a glorious sound, making her smile immediately. Genuinely. Perhaps because, as far as she had seen, she was the only one capable of making him laugh.
But then he doubled over.
Moon Isle shook. Icicles fell from the mouth of the cave like daggers, some shattering, some digging into the ground. Isla narrowly avoided one that would have gone clean through her arm.
Oro’s hands were in fists, and he arched, grunting, face twisted in pain.
Snow slid off the mountains, threatening to bury the entrance of the cave. The bird screeched angrily, its pitch so high it made her wince. A crack like thunder sounded as a glacier split open.
As quickly as the shocks had started, they ended.
The island is crumbling, and me along with it.
Oro panted, fingers dug into the stone. His back trembled like he still felt the tremors, still ached everywhere.
She took a careful step toward him. Knelt until she was right in front of him.
