Nightbane (Lightlark, #2)
Alex Aster
For Rron—
you make the real world better than a fictional one
My bane and antidote, are both before me.
—J. Addison, Cato: A Tragedy, 1713
VAULT
Isla Crown tasted death on the back of her tongue.
Moments before, she had unlocked the hidden vault in the Place of Mirrors. Inside, power churned, whispering in a language she didn’t understand, calling to something deep in her marrow. It felt urgent, obvious, like the answer to a question she had somehow forgotten.
The rest of the abandoned palace was falling apart, but this door had remained closed throughout the curses. Her ancestors had fought to keep it a secret. Her crown was the only key and Isla thought, as she pulled the door open with a scream of a creak, that they must have hidden it away so thoroughly for a reason.
Her heart raced as she peered inside. But before she could get a look at anything good, a force battled through the gap, struck her in the chest, and sent her careening across the room.
The door slammed closed.
For a moment, there was silence. Peace, almost, which had become the most coveted and rarest of luxuries. It was all she dared wish for nowadays. Peace from the pain that pulsed through her chest, where an arrow had split her heart into two. Peace from the thoughts that ravaged her brain like insects feasting on decay. So much had been lost and gained in the last few weeks, and not in equal measure.
For that one second, though, she was finally able to empty her head.
Until it cracked against the stone floor, and her peace was replaced by a vision of carnage.
Bodies. Bloodied. Charred. She couldn’t see what realms they were from; she could see only their skin and bones. Darkness spilled around the corpses like knocked-over pots of ink, but it did not settle, or puddle, or disappear.
No. This darkness devoured.
It finished off the rest of the bodies, then turned its attention to her. The tendrils climbed, cold and damp as lifeless limbs. Before she could move, the shadows parted her lips and forced her to drink them. She gasped for air, but all she tasted was death.
Everything went black, like the stars and the moon and the sun were just candles that had been blown out, one by one.
Then, the darkness spoke.
“Isla.” It had his voice. Grim’s voice. “Come back to me. Come back—”
A blink, and she was back in the Place of Mirrors, all refracted sunlight and skeletal branches scraping against the remaining glass, reaching for her like hands.
And Oro. He was there in an instant, cradling her in his arms. He was not one for dramatic reactions, which only made his expression of horror more concerning.
Isla reached up and found blood running from her nose, her ears, her eyes, down her cheeks. She looked at the blood on her fingers, and all she could think about was what she had seen.
What was that? A vision?
A warning of what Grim would do if she didn’t return to him?
She didn’t know, but one thing was clear: as soon as she had opened that door, something had slammed it closed again. Something was in that room.
And it didn’t want Isla to find it.
TRUTHS AND LIES
“It rejected me,” Isla said. It didn’t make sense. The power called to her; she could feel it. So why had the door slammed closed again?
The king’s golden crown gleamed as he tilted his head back, studying her. He was standing as far from her place on the bed as the room allowed.
It didn’t matter. Even from feet away, she could sense the thread that tied them together. Something like love.
Something like power.
Oro finally spoke. “You’re not ready. I don’t think your crown is the only key. If it wasn’t meant to be easily opened, the vault’s door could be charmed to admit only a Wildling ruler.”
“I am a—”
“One who has mastered their abilities.”
Oh.
Isla laughed. She couldn’t help it. Of course the island would continue to come up with ways to make her feel inadequate. At this point, it was like a game. “If that’s true, then I guess it will remain closed,” she said, staring intently at a spot on the wall. The only Wildling masters still alive were her guardians—and if she ever set eyes on them again, she would kill them for murdering her parents. And for all the lies they had fed her.
Silence came to a boil and spilled over. She could almost feel Oro’s concern in the air, a heat tinged in worry. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Of all the things she had been through, being swept across the room by a snobbish door was far from the worst.
She hated his concern, and she hated herself for the anger that had hardened inside her like a blade, that struck out at even something as innocent as worry. Lately, though, she couldn’t seem to control any of her emotions. Sometimes she woke up and didn’t have the energy to even get out of bed. Other times, she was so angry, she portaled to Wild Isle just to have a place to scream.
“I will teach you,” he said.
“You’re not a Wildling master.”
“No,” he admitted. “But I have mastered four realms’ powers. The abilities are different, but the execution is similar.” His voice was gentle, gentler than she deserved. “It was how I was able to use your power.”
It was how he was able to save her. She would have been boiled alive by the core of the island if Oro hadn’t used the bond between them to claim her powers in the Place of Mirrors. That had been the moment her feelings for him were revealed. The fact that he could access her abilities meant she loved him.
Though she didn’t even know what that—love—was.
She had loved her guardians.
She had loved Celeste.
She had, at some point, loved Grim.
The vision. Death and darkness and decay. Was it a threat? A glimpse of the future?
The weight around her neck felt even heavier now. The necklace Grim had gifted her during the Centennial had been impossible to remove, and yes, she had tried. It had a clasp, but so far it had refused to open. It seemed there was no real way to take it off. Only she could feel it. Oro didn’t even know it existed.
Isla wondered if Grim was like that necklace—insistent and refusing to let her go. Would he kill people just to have her?
“I have to tell you something.” She considered keeping it to herself. If it had involved only her, she might have. She had broken the curses. She deserved more time to recover. Her cuts and bruises from the Centennial had disappeared, but some wounds were invisible and took far longer to heal than broken skin and bones. “In the Place of Mirrors . . . there was a vision.”
He frowned. “What did you see?”
“Death,” she said. “He—” She found herself unwilling to speak his name aloud, as if that alone might summon him from the shadows, bring him to life in more than just her mind. “He was surrounded by darkness. There were dead bodies everywhere. The shadows were reaching at me—” She winced. “It looked like . . . war.”
It looked like the end of the world.
Sharper heat swept through the room, the only sign of Oro’s anger. His smooth face remained expressionless. “He won’t stop until he has you.”
Isla shook her head. “I chose you . . . He feels betrayed. He might not even care about me anymore.” Oro didn’t look convinced. She closed her eyes. “Even if he did, do you think he would start a war over me? Risk his own people?”
“I think that is exactly what he would do,” Oro said, his gaze faraway, as if lost in thought. “Isla. You need to start your training, and not just to get into the vault.”
Training. That sounded like far too much effort, she decided, for a person who had to bargain with herself just to leave her room every day. She didn’t use to be like this. Training had been hammered into her like gemstones into a blade’s hilt. It was part of her very essence.