Warning her that she might see something she wouldn’t like.
Still, Isla nodded. She wanted to see it. Raw power. The thing she wanted more than ever.
He was so close his nose almost touched hers. “Not here.” He glanced at the window. Isla heard the rain, still raging, but not as violently as before. “Do you mind going outside again?”
She shook her head and followed him back out of the abbey.
Isla felt it all once more, the water in sheets, but she was already wet, already cold. Her eyes stayed glued on Grim as he walked to the cliff, to its very edge. His back was tense, his cape glued to his shoulders, and the muscles there rolled back.
Fast as lightning, he turned, hand shooting in front of him—and darkness erupted in a violent line, a wall of ink that rippled like water, peaked like flames. It whipped right past her, inches from her face. She stumbled back, the force of it almost making her fall over.
As quickly as it had struck, the darkness dissolved. Isla took an unsteady breath. In the places night had touched, life had been ripped away. The grass sat charred and matted; trees were reduced to hulls that decayed into ash right before her eyes.
If that power had been unleashed on a human, she could imaginetheir skin would melt right from their bones. And those bones would splinter and crack until they were fragments in the wind.
This was worse than fire.
Grim’s darkness left nothing behind.
He had turned back to the cliff, hand fisted at his side. A hand that wielded terrible, terrible power.
Grim went still when she trailed two fingers over the back of that hand, against her better judgment. When she said, “Show me more,” he grinned.
And gripped her by the waist.
They shot off the cliff, to the sand below—and this time, Isla didn’t scream. Because somehow, they had skipped the entire middle of the jump.
The sea foamed and raged like a crazed animal in the storm, clouds bubbling and frothing above, melding together to form a gray gradient. She couldn’t see where the ocean ended and the sky began. They both churned and eddied, desperate to touch.
Isla stood close enough to Grim that she heard him over the rain, over the wind that blew in from the sea, whipping against every inch of exposed skin and leaving it numb. She still had her crown in her hand and, for a moment, considered simply throwing it into the angry ocean, wondering if that would solve her problems.
“Hearteater,” he said.
She looked up at him, only to see something peculiar in his expression. He lookedworried.Devastated.
Worried that she would cower from his terrible display of ability? Hate him for what he was?
She remembered his words.
Iam the monster.
Part of her was afraid of it.
But she wasn’t afraid ofhim.Even though part of her screamed that she should be.
“Tell me how I’m feeling,” she whispered. She could try her best to control her thoughts, her actions—but if the Nightshade had taught her anything, it was that her emotions were far more difficult to bridle.
Rain fell from his hair and onto her cheeks.
He swallowed, reading her. “You’re feeling ... intrigued.”
She motioned toward their surroundings and shrugged. She had asked him to show her more. “Well?”
Instead of grinning again, Grim’s expression darkened. The ocean curled with a giant wave that crested before them and collapsed into cliffs just feet away. His mouth was suddenly at her ear. “I could open a black hole that would swallow the beach. I could turn the sea dark as ink and kill everything inside of it. I could demolish the castle, brick by brick, from where we stand. I could take you back to Nightshade lands with me right now.” His voice was deep as dreams, dark as nightmares. “I could do all of those things.” His lips pressed against the top of her ear, for just a moment. “And I might—if I didn’t think you would hate me for it.”
Isla’s shoulders and fingers shook—from the cold, or the rain, or his proximity, or his proclamations, she wasn’t sure. She looked down at their bodies, pressed close. Just flimsy, drenched fabric between them. Red dress against black, a rose dipped in midnight. Like tea in boiling water, darkness still seeped from him, around him, ribbons of it that reached toward her before recoiling. “Why do you care what I think? You barely know me.”
Grim’s shadows flared, though his expression did not change. “I know enough,” he said.
