Page 109 of Skyshade
Lark must be replenishing her forces.
She remembered what Lark had said...what she had offered. Life.
But this wasn’t life. Not truly. Her forces had been drained of their souls. They were just bodies.
Grim looked spent. More exhausted than she had ever seen him. “She has an endless army. One that can never die. Never be stopped.”
There would be no winning against a force like this.
Screams still rang around them. The cries of the injured and dying. Grim portaled them all to the Wildling keep. They didn’t haveany healing elixirs left, but they had basic remedies. It wouldn’t be enough. People would die...
This was what Lark had wanted, she knew, rage boiling through her veins. She had killed the nightbane so more people would die when she attacked. So that more people would join her army.
This entire time, Lark had been planning against them.
Grim portaled her to her room so she could get her starstick. She needed to help get more people to the Wildling keep. But just as she went to grab it, it glowed. Then pulsed, as if trying to tell her something. Tentatively, she grabbed it.
When she fell through her puddle of stars, it wasn’t to her family’s home.
The blacksmith was pacing his forge. For once, he looked happy to see her. It was hot inside, as if he had just finished making something.
He handed her a dagger by the blade.
She frowned down at it. “It’s not time yet. Not for a couple of weeks.”
“I’ve called in my favor early.” He looked restless, a single eye glued to the entrance, as if he was waiting for something. “I trust you’ve seen her?”
Lark. Of course. Isla nodded. Understanding washed over her. “Has she visited you?”
“Not yet,” he said. “But she will.” His tone was ominous.
Isla realized then that the blacksmith must have been the one to put Lark in containment. She asked him, and he confirmed.
“If she’s this powerful, how did he do it?” Isla asked. “How did Cronan trap her? How did he wound her?”
He smiled ruefully. “He didn’t. Lark loved him. She cannot be incapacitated, but she sleeps, just like the rest of us.”
“He took her while she was sleeping?”
He nodded.
For a moment, she almost felt bad for the Wildling. She couldn’t imagine such a betrayal. Cronan was truly ruthless.
“We don’t have much time,” the blacksmith said. “That’s why I summoned you.”
She frowned. “How did you do that, with my portaling device?”
He tilted his head at her, single eye narrowing. “Who, Wildling, do you think made it?”
Of course. She owed him so much, for creating the one thing that had made her childhood tolerable.
“And I’ve made you something else.” He unveiled what he had been working on for months—a suit of armor. A breastplate fitted exactly to her measurements, by the look of it, and crafted from the thinnest metal imaginable. Sleeves of tightly woven chainmail and boots of leather and metal. Pants of the same material. The metal was a sparkling silver with roses painted onto the wrist plates. It glimmered beneath the light. Shademade.
This was what had been keeping him busy.
“Why?” she asked, in awe at the beauty of his craft.
“You will need it.”
