Page 33 of Nightbane
She gasped, tensed. She was back in this prison, this glass cage—
“Breathe, Isla.”
Oro was leaning against her doorframe, nearly filling it with his height. His golden hair was slightly damp from rain, like he had only just walked back inside. Something about the sight of him made her feel like she couldn’t breathe properly.
It felt criminal for someone to actually look good with limited sleep. Had he even slept at all?
She assumed he had just been at the village. “How are they?” she asked, her voice a little strained.
“Good. Enya has a new system for storing water and food and tracking who can wield.”
“Of course she does,” Isla said, not unkindly. She was in awe of the Sunling’s organization.
It was hot and humid in the Wildling newland, and Oro had placed her in bed wearing her clothing from the day before. She began to peel off layers, without really thinking, until she looked up, and found him watching her, eyes slightly wide.
Isla held his gaze as she slowly removed her long-sleeved shirt, leaving her in just the thin sleeveless fabric she wore beneath. It clung to her skin, outlining her every curve.
She could have sworn she felt the room get even warmer, as he lost hold of his Sunling abilities. His control slipped, for just a moment.
Oro stared at her, and she watched him swallow—
He was the one to look away. “Are you ready for training?” he asked the wall.
She sighed. Training was the last thing on her mind at that moment. She wanted him in her bed; it would be so easy to just let the world disappear for an hour—
“Isla?”
Her name on his lips made her burn even more, but she said, “Yes.”
“Good,” he said. “Today, we’re growing something.”
POISON
Oro made an orange rose sprout from his palm. He reached over and put it in Isla’s hair. “Your turn.”
Isla sat and stared at her own hand for several minutes, without any results.
They were sitting at the edge of a stream. The sound of water rushing over rocks was a balm rubbing against some quiet corner of her mind. The stream was framed by hill faces on either side, some parts jutting out more than others, creating a curved, somewhat narrow river, making it impossible to see exactly where it led. Thin waterfalls fell off some of the cliffs, sheer and frayed like curtains of hair.
Isla had always wondered what it might feel like to swim here but had always feared Terra and Poppy seeing her wet clothing or hair and not being able to explain it. Visiting the stream at night might have been an option—her guardians at least gave her privacy when she was supposed to be sleeping—but then she would have been at the mercy of a forest draped in darkness that she had learned the hard way had no mercy at all.
The woods had not hurt her when she walked through it this time. No, the nature had leaned down toward her, as if the trees had wished to whisper their secrets into her ears.
“Close your eyes,” Oro said. “Let your mind go still. Find nature in the world around you. Form a connection to it. Siphon that energy exactly where you want it. Think of the rose, blooming in your hand.”
She followed his directions, but her heart was beating too fast. Her lids fell closed far too easily. She wasn’t sleeping more than a handful of hours a night, and she was starting to feel it.
“Breathe, Isla,” Oro said.
She breathed and started the process again, focusing her thoughts. When her eyes opened, she found the smallest of flowers blooming in her palm.
Before she could smile, the rose shriveled up and died, as if poisoned.
She was the poison. For she was born not just with the power to give life ... but also to take it away. “I cannot be Wildling without Nightshade,” she said, her voice brittle. “I will always be death. I will always be darkness.”
“You decide what you are, Isla,” Oro said. “No one else.”
It might have been a comforting thought, if Isla didn’t immediately think that she would only have herself to blame for her own mistakes, should she make them.
