Page 142 of Skyshade
It was as if something within her was always taking. And always getting stronger.
Almost like another power completely.
That was impossible. She already her flair. She had her father’s flair. She couldn’t possibly have another one. Unless—
Unless she hadn’t been born with her father’s flair.
Unless she had taken it.
Isla began to shake.
We did not kill your parents. Terra had said those words, and Isla had been quick to dismiss them, even though doubt had harbored in the back of her mind. Then, using Oro’s flair, she had confirmed it. Her guardians had no reason to take the blame of killing her parents. They had no reason to look fearful when she had returned from the Centennial, accusing them of that death.
Unless...unless they had kept it a secret. Unless they had been protecting her from the pain of the truth. Unless they had been protecting themselves, in fear of what she might do.
Tears welled up in her eyes, blinding her.
No.
Isla screamed at the top of her lungs.
She had killed her parents.
She had killed Aurora.
She had killed so many others since.
And it had made her stronger.
She took—she had taken the power of every single person she had ever killed. Shame consumed her, and she shook with rage. She fed on death. Death.
She was a monster.
But then realization washed over her like rushing water.
Because she had also killed the blacksmith.
You have always had everything you needed.
A primal sound left her mouth. The ground trembled in response to the force of her, because now that she knew the power she had—she could use it.
The blacksmith had put the bracelets on her before. He had always built a failsafe into his designs.
She had his power now.
Her focus unwavering, she remembered watching him in his forge. She remembered seeing him hammer, cleave, create. She imagined him taking his work apart, demolishing it forever. The metal bracelets at her wrists began to crack. Rocks in the ceiling began to fall like rain, shattering against the floor. And Isla just smiled.
She took, just like a curse.
And, as hard as she had tried, Lark would find that she could not be broken.
Isla dug it all up—the pain, the shame, the love, the hatred, the loss, the doubt, the fear, the life, the death, and wrapped herself in it, soaked in it. She scraped every ability from where it had been buried, every bit of power that she had ever taken, every strength she had been afraid to use. She filtered it through the skyre.
And she unleashed.
The world broke open around her. The ground parted like a screaming mouth in a roar that swallowed her senses, tearing through endless layers of dirt and rock until light rained upon her again. She blinked furiously against it, panting. Isla stood a mile down, in the new crater’s center. The bracelets were just twisted scraps at her feet.
She had been buried deep below, where no one could hope to find her. She stared up at the distant sky, and the ground that had walled her in like a cage.
