SWNOVELS Chapter Skyshade: FED ON DEATH
Isla’s wrists were raw from tugging against the bracelets. Blood dripped down her fingers and onto the floor.
Please, she said to herself, please don’t let her find them.
If she did. If Grim and Oro were hurt—
She folded over and vomited.
She struggled against the restraints in vain.
Time passed differently underground, without the moon or sun to tell her how long it had been. She was slumped forward, having exhausted all her energy.
Damn her for having the bracelets made. She had done this to herself. She had sourced her own imprisonment, down to the metal.
Only Lark could remove them, which meant she would die with the bracelets still on her wrists.
No, that wasn’t true. The only other person who could free her was the blacksmith, Ferrar. And she had plunged a blade through his chest.
All his work had been for nothing. The suit of armor and sword she had left in her bedroom. None of it mattered anymore.
What if I need you? She had asked him.
You’ve always had everything you needed, he had said.
If only that were true.
A day passed, it seemed, before a mindless soldier appeared in the cavern. His skin was leathered and far too cold as he roughly pulled her hair back and forced her to drink water. He shoved food down her throat, and she bit his hand as hard as she could, but he didn’t even flinch as his fingers came apart in her mouth.
Isla folded over and retched, spitting wildly. And he repeated the process again, with his mangled, bloodless hand.
Another day. Another meal. Another guard, this time. She had been right. Lark might have summoned them from the dead, but they weren’t whole. Lark was weaker here, in this world. Isla wondered, if, in the otherworld, she had been able to perform full resurrections.
What had she promised Cleo? Did the Moonling understand the limits of Lark’s power here?
Isla wondered about Grim and Oro. She hoped they were safe and far away from the Wildling.
She felt around for the bond between them, like she did every few hours, but with the bracelets on, and this far down, she felt nothing.
The thought occurred to her later than it should have. Her necklace. If she could find a way to pull it—perhaps to trick the guard into doing it—Grim could find her. He had found her before.
The next day, Isla tried. She fought with the guard.
She folded herself over, in any attempt to tug at the necklace.
The day after that, she attempted to speak to him, to convince him to help her, but it was like he couldn’t hear her.
Nothing worked.
Isla screamed again, as if her voice could cleave through the rock and alert Grim and Oro to where she was—
But no one came.
A week was a long time spent in silence. Her only company was her thoughts. There were only a few more days left of the storm season. A few more days before the augur said her body would perish. Perhaps Lark would find a way to keep her alive. Perhaps the Wildling planned to turn her into some sort of monster.
Ferrar’s words were like a chant in her mind, an echo through the cavern.
Everything she needed . . . She began going over his words. Going over her research. Going over the events of her life.
The prophet-followers had been convinced she had been the curse born of life and death. That she would either end the world . . . or save it.
Sairsha’s group had forced her to end them. They had believed they were giving her a gift. It didn’t make sense—unless they thought by killing them, she would be taking something.
She thought about the thrill of killing Tynan. The surge of every death afterward. The beast within that was being satiated.
As her powers had developed, something dark had formed. It had started with using her blood and pain as power, on Lightlark. Then, on Nightshade, it turned into killing for power. Eventually, the skyres.
It was as if something within her was always taking. And always getting stronger.
Almost like another power completely.
That was impossible. She already her flair. She had her father’s flair. She couldn’t possibly have another one. Unless—
Unless she hadn’t been born with her father’s flair.
Unless she had taken it.
Isla began to shake.
We did not kill your parents. Terra had said those words, and Isla had been quick to dismiss them, even though doubt had harbored in the back of her mind. Then, using Oro’s flair, she had confirmed it. Her guardians had no reason to take the blame of killing her parents. They had no reason to look fearful when she had returned from the Centennial, accusing them of that death.
Unless . . . unless they had kept it a secret. Unless they had been protecting her from the pain of the truth. Unless they had been protecting themselves, in fear of what she might do.
Tears welled up in her eyes, blinding her.
No.
Isla screamed at the top of her lungs.
She had killed her parents.
She had killed Aurora.
She had killed so many others since.
And it had made her stronger.
She took—she had taken the power of every single person she had ever killed. Shame consumed her, and she shook with rage. She fed on death. Death.
She was a monster.
But then realization washed over her like rushing water.
Because she had also killed the blacksmith.
You have always had everything you needed.
A primal sound left her mouth. The ground trembled in response to the force of her, because now that she knew the power she had—she could use it.
The blacksmith had put the bracelets on her before. He had always built a failsafe into his designs.
She had his power now.
Her focus unwavering, she remembered watching him in his forge. She remembered seeing him hammer, cleave, create. She imagined him taking his work apart, demolishing it forever. The metal bracelets at her wrists began to crack. Rocks in the ceiling began to fall like rain, shattering against the floor. And Isla just smiled.
She took, just like a curse.
And, as hard as she had tried, Lark would find that she could not be broken.
Isla dug it all up—the pain, the shame, the love, the hatred, the loss, the doubt, the fear, the life, the death, and wrapped herself in it, soaked in it. She scraped every ability from where it had been buried, every bit of power that she had ever taken, every strength she had been afraid to use. She filtered it through the skyre.
And she unleashed.
The world broke open around her. The ground parted like a screaming mouth in a roar that swallowed her senses, tearing through endless layers of dirt and rock until light rained upon her again. She blinked furiously against it, panting. Isla stood a mile down, in the new crater’s center. The bracelets were just twisted scraps at her feet.
She had been buried deep below, where no one could hope to find her. She stared up at the distant sky, and the ground that had walled her in like a cage.
Lark would wish she had buried her deeper.