Oro made a sword out of Starling energy. It crackled with strength, and he lifted it over his head. Grim wouldn’t be able to defend himself. She had weakened him. In one moment, he would be dead. He would be dead.He would be dead.
That was the first moment she had ever seen Grim afraid.
Just before the blade found his neck, he bellowed, “If I die,she dies.”
It wasn’t even his death that he feared. It washers. Her death was what made him rabid, shaking, yelling, eyes wide and desperate.
Oro froze, just an inch from ending the Nightshade. “No,” Oro whispered, disbelieving. Furious. Understanding something Isla still hadn’t. “You didn’t.”
BEFORE
This is wrong,was Isla’s first thought. She shouldn’t be alive. Her body recognized it. Its life force had been drained away completely.
She opened her eyes, and Isla had never heard such a sound of relief.
Grim was kneeling in front of her. Her hand was in his. “Heart,” he said. “You’re here, heart.” It was like he still couldn’t believe it.
She had been somewhere else.
Now, she was back.
“How?” she asked.
His head lifted, and she saw tears in his eyes. His face was covered in dirt and blood, but he was here, kneeling before her, like she was something to worship. “You died,” he said, the word cracking. His voice was raw, like he had been screaming too. “You died in my arms.”
Grim closed his eyes, and tears fell. They made lines in the dirt and crusted blood. She reached for him on instinct, clearing them away. Shehaddied. Were her people okay? Had giving her power to Grim through the thread that connected them worked?
She couldn’t cheat death. Grim couldn’t either. It didn’t make sense that she was still living.
“How?” she asked again.
MISSING PIECE
“You bound her to you,” Oro said, voice shaking with anger. With shock.
She remembered now. Grim’s explanation in the past. She knew binding someone to oneself meant sharing a life. Not just powers, but life itself.
One could not die without killing the other.
That was why, when the arrow had split her heart in two during the Centennial, she hadn’t died immediately. Not just because of the power of the heart of Lightlark ... but because Grim was keeping her alive.
“It was only a temporary solution,” Oro said, voice shaking with anger, but also fear.
Grim nodded. “The other world offers a permanent one.”
That was the reason for this war. That was the reason for all this death. She remembered what Cleo had said. In the other world,souls can rise once more.
He wanted to open the portal to save her life.
Oro hesitated, sword still in his hand. If he killed Grim, she would die too.
“Do it,” Isla said, because she was willing to die if it would save everyone else. Even if most of them still hated her and thought she was a blight on the world. The same way Oro had said he would give her his power, she would give him hers, in case the rebels were wrong.
Oro looked at her, and she saw fear and fury and disappointment—disappointment inhimselffor not being strong enough to make the right choice for his people. Enya was right. Isla had made him weak.
“I can’t,” he said, the words so soft.
“Kill him,” she said, her voice getting hysterical. “He’s going to kill innocent people. I told you about the vision. He’s going tokill children. He’s going to kill me.”
