“Giselroot, nasty thing,” she said quietly, almost to herself.
He stiffened. Looked at her, as if it was the first time he noticed she had been positioned in the lane beside him. “You know what this is?”
She shrugged. “Of course. Plant with five points? Green spots? Yellow buds?”
Oro nodded slowly.
“Giselroot. Poisonous. Causes a rash, and bad dreams.”
He blinked at her.
“All right, the bad dreams might have just been a tactic by my guardians to keep me away from them.” Giselroot grew in the forest just outside the loose pane of her window. After Poppy and Terra had it sealed, they had warned Isla against the plant, lest she find another way out of her room. “You’ll want to treat that with an elixir of milk, tomato paste, honey, willow bark, pasted ash, and crushed mulberries.”
Oro’s lips pressed together before he said, “Thank you.” Like it was a very hard thing to say.
She narrowed her eyes. “Giselroot only grows deep in the woods, where the trees are close enough to touch. What in the realm were you doing in a place like that?” Her tone said,Don’t you know how dangerous it is?
Oro fixed her with a strange look. Isla stared back.
Without warning, a bell sounded.
And Isla was forced to jump into her lane.
The water was a thousand needles piercing her skin. At first, the cold was almost welcomed against her raw arm. But it quickly sharpened, becoming too much, making it hurt even more. She immediately gasped for air, her chest a block of ice, the tips of her fingers and toes already numb.
Hundreds of islanders greeted her above, yelling, relishing in her weakness, jeering at her, cheering for their rulers.
Keep going,a voice in her head said, though her body screamed to get out of the water. She was surely at a disadvantage, coming from a place like the Wildling realm, which never saw a winter.
But she had been tested in the elements before.
Terra knew some of the trials might involve harsh weather conditions. When Isla was seventeen, she was left blindfolded in the middle of the woods, during a hurricane.
By the time she tore the fabric from her eyes, her guardians were long gone. The trees were bent in grotesque shapes from the wind, dirtand leaves stuck to her skin, and bugs had already started gnawing at her ankles.
Forests were deadly to those who couldn’t control them. It was why the king’s choice to venture into them was so shocking.
It took her three days to get home. In that time, she drank spoiled water and sat shaking beneath a hastily made canopy of palm fronds, the fever in her head like a bell, ringing over and over. Knowing she would die if she stayed, she forced herself to walk, remembering her survival lessons. She hunted for food with bows and arrows she made herself, using the dagger she always kept strapped to her thigh.
In the haze, she cut her fingers, and the blood smeared her weapons, acting as a siren call to even more insects, which feasted on her flesh as if she was already dead.
By the time she collapsed outside the Wildling castle, she was so sick, it took their best healers weeks to bring her back to health.
You could have killed mewere the first words out of her mouth once she could speak again, directed at Terra.
Her guardian had only smiled.The only way not to fear death is to meet it.
Isla knew what dying felt like. This wasn’t it. So, she kept going, pushing, though the needles sank deeper, until they clicked against her bones, her entire body overcome with cold.
Ahead, there was a split in the maze. Isla wondered which route to take when she felt a faint pull in one direction.
Then, a pull in the other.
She stopped, angling her head to take a deep breath.
One direction felt like home—Poppy and Terra. Her people.
The other felt like more.
