Page 29 of Skyshade
The snakes? “What—”
Before the word left her mouth, Eta was gone.
Grim straightened as she stepped back outside the doors. He looked relieved, until his gaze dropped to her leg. It had bled through again. She hadn’t even felt it. No, she had been too busy turning Eta’s words in her head.
Every single thing that has been written in this book has come to pass.
The book had to be wrong.
Grim ducked to replace her bandages. From the floor, he looked up at her, and it made her heart stutter. “Well?”
She considered not telling Grim about the portal. She knew he would hope, just as she had, that it was a solution to their problems.
But she had to tell him something—and she would need his help finding it.
She told him everything about the portal. She sensed his excitement at the idea of another way to the otherworld, then watched it wither when she told him it couldn’t be used, not without killing them in the process.
“Do you have any idea where a portal might be?”
He shook his head with certainty. “No. With my flair, I would have sensed it.”
She had figured as much. So, where was it? Where could it be hidden, where the ruler of the land wouldn’t have encountered it?
The storms were connected to it. Perhaps they could be the key to finding its location. There was one person who knew more about tempests than any of them. “I’m going to visit Azul.”
Grim looked surprised, but he didn’t try to change her mind. She was trying to help his realm, after all.
But that was not the only reason she wanted to seek out the Skyling.
The walk down nearly broke her. Grim offered to carry her several times, and she was close to letting him, but somehow, they left the darkness of the mountain. Before she saw even a shard of sunlight, Grim was portaling them back to the palace.
Her leg was soaked in blood—the wound was worse, deeper now from the strain of her movements. Her head was spinning. They had run out of bandages. Grim was gone in an instant.
When he returned, he held a coveted vial of healing elixir. Before she could say a single word, he was pouring the liquid directly onto her wound. She gritted her teeth as her skin slowly sewed back together.
Only minutes later, when the pain had dimmed, did Grim say, “Hearteater. Why is there only one vial of healing elixir left in our weaponry store?”
There was no use in hiding it. “I sent the rest to Lightlark.”
She watched his shoulders stiffen.
Isla knew what it looked like. Nightbane was one of Nightshade’s greatest resources, and now it was gone. Every remaining vial mattered.
She had sent almost all their store to the enemy.
It was a betrayal, treasonous.
But she wasn’t even sure who the enemy was anymore. All she knew was that the elixir belonged to her people, and she chose what she was going to do with it.
Grim was silent. She readied herself to see anger or frustration in his expression...but all she saw was pain.
He stood. Handed the near-empty vial back to her.
He didn’t say anything, which was almost worse.
“You can’t expect me not to care,” she said, out of nowhere. “I was preparing it for them, that was my home, I was—I was—”
She couldn’t get the words out. Her eyes stung, thinking of Oro. Of everything they had built together, over months. Trust. Love.
