Page 102 of Skyshade
BLOODLESS
Isla didn’t stick around to see Grim’s rage, but she felt it, the castle trembling around her. She raced to their room.
A town was destroyed. And they thought she was responsible.
That was why Grim hadn’t wanted her to come, why his eyes had lingered at the dirt on her body.
Did he think she did it too?
Did he suspect that if she showed up at the town, they would point to her and scream? Like she was a villain who had returned to finish them off?
No. It wasn’t her.
Just as she denied it, a sliver of doubt spiraled through the back of her mind like a blade. She had dreamed of destroying the village. She had woken up later than usual, covered in more dirt than expected. The skyre had been made incorrectly. She thought of the auger and blacksmith’s warnings, the price of using the markings.
Had she attacked the village unknowingly?
Had the monster that had been growing within her taken over while she slept?
No. Tears swept down her face.
No.
She shouldn’t have taken the bracelets off. She shouldn’t have trusted herself, even with the skyre. Especially with the skyre.
Isla needed to see the ruins. Maybe she would remember. Maybe it would be clear that she’d had nothing to do with it.
She knew the general direction of the village, but it took one of her father’s maps and five tries to get it right with her starstick. By the time she landed, encased in shadows, Grim was already there with his soldiers, searching through the rubble.
Her knees nearly buckled. It looked so much like the village she had destroyed.
A baby wailed. A woman cried out for a daughter she still couldn’t find. Her hands were bloody from desperately digging through rubble.
Instead of ash, there was dirt. Everywhere. It was as if the ground had swallowed the town, had dragged the bodies beneath. A few lifeless hands were sticking up through the ground, in a final call for help.
Someone grabbed her hand and she gasped, realizing she had lost hold on her shadows. “Hearteater,” a voice said. Grim.
He wrapped them in his own shadows, shielding them from the world.
“I didn’t do this,” Isla said. She couldn’t have. That was what she told herself. She shook her head. Tears rolled down her cheeks. “I swear it.”
“I believe you,” he said instantly, before pulling her into his arms. Her cheek against his chest, his hand cupped the back of her head.
Grim trusted her. Immediately.
As he held her, hand smoothing down her spine, she couldn’t help thinking that he shouldn’t.
She’s done it before.
Astria’s words had gutted her with more efficiency than any blade could. She couldn’t even be mad at her cousin, because she was right. Isla had unintentionally killed hundreds in the past.
Who was to say this wasn’t her either?
She knew the facts. Nightshades had seen her. Who was she to question their testimony?
She barely slept, afraid that if she did, her body might act on its own, relive its nightmares again and again. Grim’s arm around her now felt more like a precaution.
“If I leave in the middle of the night...follow me,” she told him before bed one night, and he just nodded. That was the furthest she could go in acknowledging that the attack might have been her. Grim’s eyes were clear of any judgment.
