Page 36 of Skyshade
She landed behind him in a crouch. She took her thinnest knife from its place against her thigh and slid it right into his back.
The man cursed and dropped the woman immediately. She fell to the floor, gasping, clutching her throat with shaking fingers. The man made to turn around—presumably to hit her—but his efforts simply pushed him more firmly onto her blade.
Isla had never stabbed someone through the ribs...through their back. There wasn’t anything honorable in it. But, then again, a man choking a woman in an alleyway didn’t deserve an honorable death.
He whirled and grabbed her other wrist, perhaps meaning to break it, but the snake she wore there as a bracelet over her metal ones struck out, piercing his vein with its jaws. Without power, she needed to take precautions.
Isla sighed. “Now that’s going to be painful,” she told him. “Right into the bloodstream.” She shook her head ruefully. “Stabbing your heart would be merciful.”
She drew her blade sharply from his back and kicked him to the ground, far from the woman he had nearly killed. He vomited as he flipped over. His face was turning a peculiar shade of blue. He began spasming. The poison was already working.
She hardly recognized her own voice. “I’ve grown tired of being merciful.”
The woman flinched when Isla reached out to her.
“It’s okay,” Isla said, her voice gentler now. “I’ve been where you are.” She met the woman’s eyes, thinking back to all the times she had faced near certain death.
“Thank you.” The woman accepted her hand, allowing Isla to help her to her feet and escort her back to the town’s main street, leaving the man to choke on his own bile.
By the time she returned, he was dead. The alley was quiet. There was no one to witness how she carved his heart right out of his chest. It was bloody work, cutting through the ribcage; his organs were still warm.
The augur wanted a fresh heart? He was going to get it.
Just like Eta had said, the augur lived deep in the forest behind a thin waterfall, guarding the mouth of a cave like a door. It didn’t take long to find it, on Lynx’s back. Without so much as a word, she threw the sack with the heart in it through the curtain of water and waited.
Minutes later, her own sack was thrown back through—empty—nearly hitting her face. If the action wasn’t already clear, the voice from behind the curtain certainly was. It said—
“More.”
Greedy creature.
Isla returned three times—with three different wicked hearts—and was told the same thing.
More.
How much blood could one being need? What was it even being used for?
There hadn’t been another storm in days, but she could feel the energy in the air, as if the sky was holding its breath. It had slowly shifted into an ominous, darker blue. Grim was busy preparing the tunnels and developing a system of bells that would warn each town of an incoming tempest as soon as the stormfinch began singing.
Now that they knew there was a portal, he had searched for it himself, on Wraith’s back, unsuccessfully. She knew, because he gave her updates in his scrawled writing on letters he left outside her door, along with flowers, every morning.
She had let them pile up. She didn’t roam the halls anymore, in fear of running into him.
He had defended her. He had believed in her. She told herself she avoided him because he was a distraction from her work to get answers from the augur, but the truth was, she couldn’t face him.
At night, she portaled to the different villages, much to Lynx’s irritation. She heard things, from the rooftops. Whispers. Loud jeers. It wasn’t long before she heard about herself.
The snake queen, they called her. The Wildling snake. Just like the council that had tried to warn Grim.
A traitor in our midst. A lover of the king of Lightlark, come here to spy. To destroy. The words filled her with rage—and also with hurt, because what if they were right?
She didn’t want to be a traitor. She didn’t want to pretend. She didn’t want to be all the things they thought she was.
The next time she showed up at the augur’s door, she speared her sword into the soft dirt just in front of the waterfall. He wanted more?
Eight dripping hearts were skewered on her blade. It had taken days of searching for her victims, and only one night to end them all.
Her voice was a low growl. “If you want these, you’ll have to come out and get them.”
