All she knew was that she needed to fit in, and this would be the most inconspicuous color.
The recipe called for a flower petal with the shade, but there weren’t any in Wildling. As a substitute, she carefully ripped the bottom of her stolen dress’s hem and threw the fabric into the potion.
It bubbled a bit, thickened. Isla and Celeste watched as it became a paste.
The Starling peered into the pot carefully. “Is it supposed to look like this?”
“I don’t know,” Isla mumbled. Nerves flurried in her stomach. She wasn’t just sneaking onto another ruler’s isle. She wasimpersonatinganother realm. None of the Centennial rules stated against it, but it was still dangerous.
No one could recognize her. It would immediately put her and their plan in jeopardy.
The enchanted dye had to work.
“It’s cooled,” Celeste said. She had dipped a gloved finger into the mixture.
They took the bowl into the bathroom, and Isla sat in the bathtub as her friend coated her long brown hair in the light-blue paste.
Celeste worked in silence, her fingers careful, rubbing into her scalp, then making her way down to the ends.
“How does it look?” Isla finally asked after most of her hair felt like it had been covered.
Celeste said nothing.
She whipped around to look at her friend’s expression.
And found a smile tugging on the corners of her lips.
“What?”
She finally laughed. “It—You just look different,” she offered. “But it’s good. The color is nearly exact.”
“Nearly?”
Celeste waved her concern away. “No one will be able to tell in the moonlight,” she said. “And no one will be in the library this late ...”
Isla groaned. So many excuses, so many elements out of her control that had to go right.
The mixture was enchanted, thanks to the ever-changing tulip soil. Without it, the color wouldn’t have stuck nearly as quickly or effectively on her dark hair. Still—the blue would only last a few hours.
Her friend took her stained gloves off and gripped her hand tightly. “This will work. You do this all the time.”
Isla gave her an incredulous look. “I sneak onto another realm’s isleall the time?”
“No. But you sneak into other realms’newlandsall the time. Wearing stolen clothing. Impersonating another ruler’s people. With your starstick.”
That was true. But this was different.
This was the Centennial.
“You move like a shadow,” Celeste continued. “You strategize like a general. You can blend in anywhere—I’veseenyou.”
Her friend was right. She had spent years unwittingly gaining the skills she now needed to find the bondbreaker.
Isla washed the paste out of her hair, combed it, and hoped it would dry by the time she reached her destination.
“Right,” Isla said, staring at her reflection, feeling strange in a color she had never been allowed to wear. “So far, I’ve been a thief. A liar.” She sighed. “Time to become a fraud.”
It took forty-five minutes to reach the Sky Isle bridge. Once, the island was whole. Then, thousands of years ago, it was sliced into pieces, so each realm could have its own. All the isles were connected to the Mainland by rope and wood that didn’t look even remotely steady. Wind whistled through large gaps between each plank. The strings holding them together were thin and frayed. The entire thing rocked back and forth like a pendulum. Isla looked down at what had to be two hundred feet, the water churning roughly below, a soup ready to boil her.
