Page 155 of Lightlark
She smiled.
“Isla—”
“We don’t have time,” she said, squeezing his fingers. “We need to go. Now. As close as you can get us to the Place of Mirrors.”
Grim’s eyes shot to the window, where darkness cloaked everything.
He hadn’t been outside at night in centuries.
“Do you trust me?” she asked.
He did not answer. He only pressed his hand against her heart. She shuddered, his fingers cold, a rush going through her. “Yourheart,”he said, frowning. He shook his head. “It does not only belong to you.” Isla didn’t know what that meant.
Before she could ask, she fell through the ground, to somewhere else.
They landed, and Grim braced himself. If Isla was wrong, his skin would begin to split open, just like Oro’s had under the sun ... he would die—
But nothing happened.
They were at the edge of the woods on Wild Isle, enchanted by ancient Wildling power, shielding it from all abilities other than Wildings’ own. She had a theory that the Wildling forest might be a little like her—that its quelling of powers also meant other realms’ curses would be nullified.
And she had been right.
Grim’s jaw went slack. He stared up at the sky through the treetops in wonder. He couldn’t access the dark power that thrummed through his veins, but it seemed the view of the dark sky above was enough.
She gripped his wrist. “Quickly,” she said, hoping Celeste had already made it inside.
Isla ducked into the dead forest, and Grim did not move an inch. He watched her. Eyes filled with something like despair.
“Heart,” he said.
She stilled. Something about that word ... about how he said it ...
“Will you ever forgive me?” he wondered, reaching out and tucking a piece of her hair behind her ear.
Her heart beat once. Twice. “For what?” she asked, taking a step back. Another.
Grim shook his head. Frowned. “You asked me, just minutes ago, if I trusted you. When you should have asked ifyoucould trustme.”
The forest did not make a sound. The dead leaves did not rustle. As if stunned, just like her.
She stumbled away. Said, “What?” so quietly, she doubted he had heard her.
“Heart,” he said. He took a step closer. “Your dreams, the ones you asked me about ... are not dreams.”
“What?”
“They’re memories.”
Memories.
Him standing before her in full armor. Her legs wrapped around him. His lips on her neck, on her collarbones, on the sides of her knees.
The dreams she’d had for weeks, the ones that had made it hard to look Grim in the eye.
“What are you talking about?”
He shook his head. Reached for her, then recoiled when she flinched. “You appeared in my castle one year ago. And you returned ... several times. Using your Nightshade relic.”
