The word was a bell, somewhere far away. A rumble of thunder. The quick shut of a door.
“Come back to me.”
Come back.Had she ever really left?
A shaking sigh. Words drenched in pain. Agony. Whittled down into a whisper. “What did you do to me?” he said, voice pleading. She felt a finger run down the side of her face. “What did you do to leave me completely at your mercy?” Isla opened her eyes.
She was in her room. Grim was clutching her remaining bottles of Wildling healing elixir in one arm.
Isla was in Grim’s arms before she could take another breath. He pulled her to his chest, cradling her head, hand behind her knees. His eyes searched hers desperately.
She pressed her forehead against his mouth. He was cold as stone, and it dulled the ache. She was too warm ... coated in flames, in energy, in sparks.
The arrow.
A hand went to her chest. Nothing. The sharp tip of it was gone. She looked down and saw her shirt, shredded. Ripped open to address the wound. She pulled her underclothes aside and saw it. An angry mark, right over her heart. Where the arrow had pierced.
She should be dead.
“How ... how ...”
“I don’t know.” He held her again, careful as cradling glass.
But she did. The heart had saved her ... its energy had been enough to keep her alive for the moments it had taken to heal her.
She remembered Oro’s words. Only those in Wildling, Nightshade, or Sunling could claim the heart. Use it.
Isla didn’t have powers ... had it still recognized her?
Had she truly been able to wield it?
She swallowed. If shehadused the heart, then part of Oro’s interpretation of the prophecy had been completed.
Only when the original offense has been committed again.
Isla slipped out of Grim’s grip and winced at the pain that pulsed through her chest. The sun still shined, but it was fading. She had been recovering all day ... too much time had been wasted.
“Thank you,” she told Grim, hand going to the invisible chain around her neck. To the diamond large as a small potato. She wrapped her arms around him, hands interlocked behind his neck.
“There’s something else,” Grim said. He was so serious that Isla’s stomach sank. What had happened while she was healing? “There is a Moonling shop in the agora, a hidden one long abandoned. I went there, to try to find more remedy, while you were sleeping. And I found something, hundreds of years old. A rare Wildling elixir that does what Moonling healing cannot.”
Isla drew in too much air. She blinked at him, a question in her eyes.
He nodded solemnly. Grim looked at the floor, not at her. “Celeste is awake.”
“I need to go,” she said quickly, both delighted and panicked. What if Azul came to finish the job now that Celeste wasn’t hidden any longer? If Grim had found the Skyling ruler, he would have already told her.
Grim looked at the mark on her chest, then up at her. “You need to rest,” he said.
She shook her head. No.
Isla turned to leave but stopped when she heard,“Hearteater.”His voice broke on the word. She faced him. “I thought you were dead.”
I did too,she thought. But she didn’t say that. Instead, she said, “I’m alive. Because of you.” She closed the space between them. Moved her head so his nose grazed her neck. Her mouth was at his ear. “And I want to do a thousand things with you,” she said, shuddering as her chest burned, the wound still tender. “But first ... there’s something I must do.”
Grim nodded.
And she pushed past him, out of her room. She ran to her friend’s chambers as fast as she could.
