Page 32 of Skyshade
“Break the stone with power. The storm will be released and called to its origin. Follow it.”
Her grip on the bird’s cage tightened. “Thank you,” she told Azul.
Isla went to turn on her heel, but he called her name, and she just barely caught something he had thrown her.
Another ring. Her diamond ring. The one she had given to Azul before the battle for safekeeping. She looked inside. Something flurried.
“I added something to it. A shred of power for you to shape how you wish.” It seemed to hum against her hand, just like the other stone. She swallowed. She didn’t deserve this. If he had seen what she had done with power—
“Everyone can be redeemed. You are not a monster, Isla.”
She wished she believed him.
“You are not,” he repeated. “I know one when I see one. I knew something was wrong with Aurora from the very beginning.”
Aurora.
Some empty corner of her mind ached. She had been her best friend. She had been a stranger.
As she portaled away, she remembered the one thing she had left of her friend turned enemy. The only thing she had kept.
She had meant to go to Grim, to show him the stormstone, to hang the bird’s cage in the castle, but instead, she went to the Wildling newland. She went to the room she had been locked in, almost like the stormfinch.
A charred mark marred the center of her former room. The door had been ripped off its hinges. She had done that, in a fit of anger, proof that her bracelets were necessary. Now, even as she called for her power, it didn’t even whisper back.
Her wall of swords reflected her face in garish angles as she searched for the one object she had kept from the Starling newland.
Aurora’s feather.
She found it in a drawer. Upon closer inspection, it was just a simple white feather. Its weight didn’t signal any importance. A single flame would kill it, a single gust of wind would spirit it into the forest. She had found feathers just like it during her training.
So why had Aurora kept it in an orb?
Why had she kept it a secret?
Isla strummed a finger down its spine, and the barbs shivered in waves, like a pond disturbed by a stone, a breeze humming through treetops.
Strange.
She thought of Azul’s words, how stones could be imbued with power. Could feathers?
Her finger continued its path until its point, and she flinched, nearly dropping the feather in surprise. Its tip was as sharp as her dagger’s. A drop of blood dripped down her finger like a tear. The feather’s white point now gleamed red.
If it was this sharp...perhaps it was meant for writing, she thought, before finding a pot of ink and a ream of parchment in another drawer.
She wrote a single word. Isla.
Nothing happened.
What did she expect would happen? She nearly snapped the feather in annoyance. She should burn it. She should throw it into the forest. It was useless, just like her former friendship.
Aurora had betrayed her, but she was dead.
If the prophet-follower was to be believed, she had another traitor to deal with.
TRAITOR
A Wildling had destroyed the nightbane. One of her own was working against her. It still didn’t make sense. Why would a Wildling kill one of their greatest assets? According to Wren, her people were thriving on Nightshade.
