But because of what it now held.
Power in its purest form. When the heart had healed her ... it had marked her.
Yourheart.It does not only belong to you.She hadn’t understood Grim’s words then. But she did now.
Isla felt its pull from across the island. In her room, where she had left it, with the note for Oro. The heart sang to her, the same song she had heard the moment she had stepped foot on the island. A call like the bird screeching in her ear, a chill like the frost that had numbed her tongue on Moon Isle.
Isla felt it—and called for it.
Her arm outstretched. Her fingers flexed.
And something like an arc of sunlight came crashing through the glass. The heart hurtled into her palm, and she glowed.
Her hand closed, and her cage shattered. Wildling power rushed from the heart in an endless stream. Branches snapped, flying across the room. Something shined at her feet—the bondmaker—and she grabbed it with her other hand, sticking it in her pocket.
A moment later, she was running, jumping, a foot in front of Aurora.
Eyes wide, surprised, Aurora changed in an instant, features twisting, until she became Celeste.
Celeste.
Isla did not hesitate the way Aurora must have been hoping she would. She grabbed the bondmaker from her pocket. Stuck one of its sharp ends into her palm.
And plunged the other end into her best friend’s heart.
Isla’s scream was a wild, guttural thing that rang through the Place of Mirrors. Her face twisted in agony. Her best friend ... her sister ...
She felt power barrel through the needle, into her, as Celeste’s eyes went wide, then dimmed.
Dimmed.
Until the original offense was committed again. A ruler of realm killing her best friend, in cold blood. A ruling line came to an end. And one of six won.
The world exploded.
Isla was thrown backward by a force wilder than the wind, stronger than a riptide. Tears burned and blurred her vision, hot on her face,dripping down her temples. She blinked once at the stars as she flew back, and they looked much brighter than they ever had before.
Before she landed on the ground, it collapsed.
The curses broke, and so did Lightlark. The floor had fissured, and Isla fell through the crack, after Celeste’s body, which had already been taken by the island. The Starling ruler had fallen hundreds of feet, down into Lightlark’s fiery core. The heart fell from Isla’s hand and plummeted after Celeste, returning to the island once more.
Isla followed.
She fell, fell, fell, just like she had that night on the balcony. Behind her back, the ground churned, boiled, ready to receive her bones. She felt power streaming through her, everything she had taken back with the bondmaker. But as she reached to grab it, the energy slipped through her fingers. She didn’t know how to wield it ... had never used her own ability before.
Isla closed her eyes. Recognizing her fate.
She only had time to say goodbye to one person. She chose—
And something caught her around the waist. Her back arched painfully.
She stopped falling.
Someone had saved her. But that was impossible. Grim and Oro might have been released from their restraints after Aurora’s death, but they couldn’t use their abilities in the Place of Mirrors, even with the curses lifted. Even with Isla returning their powers.
Unless—
Isla opened her eyes to see that the thing wrapped around her was vine. It had caught her and now began to pull her back to the surface.
