Page 1 of Lightlark
CHAPTER ONE
ISLA
Isla Crown often fell through puddles of stars and into faraway places. Always without permission—and seemingly on the worst occasions. Even after five years, portaling still made her bones groan. She held her starstick tightly, her breath bottled in her chest like the rare perfumes on her vanity, the glass room spinning and fractured colors bleeding together, until gravity finally pinned her down like a loose thread in the universe.
And it was safely tucked down the back of her dress, along her spine, by the time the door swung open.
“What happened to your hair?” Poppy shrieked so loudly, Terra came rushing in behind her, the many knives and swords at her waist clanking together.
Her hair was the least of her worries, though she didn’t doubt it resembled a bed of moss. Traveling between the realms’ newlands with her starstick had the habit of undoing even Poppy’s most tightly wound coils and firmly made braids—an unexpected perk, really.
Isla didn’t pretend to be an expert at using the device. In the beginning, the puddle of stars took her unexpected places. The snow villages of the Moonling newlands. The airy jubilees of the Skyling newlands. A few lands that hadn’t been settled by any of the six realms at all. Little by little, she learned how to return to locations she had been to before. And that was the extent of her mastering of the starstick. All she knew for certain was that somehow the mysterious device allowed her to travel hundreds of miles in seconds.
Terra sighed, hand dropping from the hilt of her blade. “It’s just a few loose strands, Poppy.”
Poppy ignored her. She rushed over to Isla, wielding a brush and a vial of syrupy leaf oil the same way Terra had taught Isla to brandish weapons years before. Isla grinned at her fighting teacher over her charm teacher’s shoulder and cried out as Poppy roughly removed the pins. Poppy shook her head. “Have to start from scratch.” She stuck the clips between her lips and spoke around them. “I leave you alone for an hour, and you’re a mess. Even locked the door for good measure! How in the realm did you manage to mess it up in your own room, little bird?”
Own room.Her room was not her own. It was an orb of glass, the remnants of an ancient greenhouse. But the panes had been painted over. The windows had been sealed. All except one door had been removed.
She was a little bird, just like Poppy and sometimes even Terra called her.
A bird in a cage.
Isla shrugged. “Just some swordplay.” Poppy and Terra were her only family—though they weren’t family at all. Everyone who shared blood with her was long dead. Still, even they didn’t know about the starstick. If they did, they would never let her use it. It was the only key out of the bird’s cage. And Isla had been locked inside not just for her own safety—
But for everyone else’s.
Terra eyed her suspiciously before turning her focus to the wall. Dozens of swords hung there in a shining row, a makeshift mirror. “Pity you can’t bring any of them,” she said, a finger trailing across the wall of blades. She had given Isla every single sword, presented from the castle’s ancient store. Isla hadearnedthem after each training achievement and mastery.
Poppy scoffed. “That’s one Centennial rule I agree with. We don’t need her reaffirming all the other realms’ horrible views of us.”
Nerves began to swirl in Isla’s stomach, leaves dancing in a storm.She forced a smile, knowing it would douse Poppy’s frustration—her guardian alwayswastelling her she didn’t smile enough. Isla hadn’t met many people, but the ones she had were simple to figure out. She just needed to uncover their motivations. Everyone wanted something. And some things were easier to give. A smile for a charm teacher who had spent nearly two decades teaching her student manners. A compliment for a woman who prized beauty above all else. “Poppy, pretty as you are, all of their horrible views are true. Wearemonsters.”
Poppy sighed as she slid the last pin into Isla’s hair. “Not you,” she said meaningfully.
And though her guardian’s words were wrapped in love—good—they made her stomach pool with dread.
“They’re ready,” Terra said. She took a few steps toward the vanity. Isla watched her through the mirror, its edges spotted with age. “Are you?”
No.And she never would be. The Centennial was many things. A game. A chance at breaking the many curses that plagued the six realms. An opportunity to win unmatched power. A meeting of the six rulers. A hundred days on an island cursed to only appear once every hundred years. And for Isla—
Almost certain death.
Are you ready, Isla?a voice in her mind said, mocking and cruel.
Her fear was only tempered by her curiosity. She had always longed for more ... everything. More experiences, more places, more people.
The place she was going—Lightlark—was made of more. Before her guardians had discovered it and had it sealed, Isla used to sneak through a loose pane of glass in her room and down into the forest. It was there that she met an Eldress who had once lived on Lightlark, the way all Wildlings used to before the curses were spun. Before most of the realms fled the island to create new lands in the chaotic aftermath. Her stories were fruits in a tree—sweet and limited. She spoke of kings who could grip the sun in their hands, white-hairedwomen who could make the sea dance, castles in clouds, and flowers that bloomed pure power.
That was before the curses.
Now the island was a shadow of itself, trapped in a forever storm that made traveling to it outside the Centennial impossible, by boat or even by enchantment.
One night, Isla had found the Eldress at the base of a tree, on her side. She might have thought the woman was sleeping, if her tanned skin hadn’t become bark, if her veins hadn’t turned to vines. Wildlings wielded nature in life and joined it in death.
But there had been nothing natural about the Eldress’s passing. Even at over five hundred, even away from the strength of Lightlark, she had died too soon. Her death had been the first of many.
And the fault was Isla’s.
