Page 58 of Skyshade
His fingers curled around hers.
The stables faded, replaced by his room. She grabbed her starstick, and portaled to her own.
She was immediately engulfed in warmth. She seized, whipping around to see if Grim was there too, if he had changed his mind—but there was only Oro, arms wrapped around her, his heat almost biting against the cold of her skin.
“You’re freezing,” he said into her temple.
Past him, she saw the stormfinch sitting quietly in her cage. Lynx towered behind Oro, eyes wide in worry. Teeth barred in fury.
“What happened?” Oro asked, looking just as concerned as Grim had a few minutes prior. She was covered in cuts and blood; her hair and clothes were still wet.
There wasn’t time to explain. She had to get Oro out of here. She needed to get back to Grim quickly, lest he come and check on her.
“Come back with me. For good.”
Oro’s words were firm. Pleading.
She closed her eyes. They still burned from tears and salt water. “I can’t. You know I can’t.”
His warm hand pressed gently against her cheek, and her shoulders hiked. She opened her eyes to find his staring her down, lit like they held flames.
“I know you think you being here is the only way to save Lightlark, I know you did it for us, but you cannot be the cost of this. I won’t let you be. There has to be another way, another—”
“There isn’t .” He didn’t understand. “If you kill Grim, I’ll die, and so will all of Nightshade.”
“Killing him isn’t the only way to stop him. You could help us. We could imprison him. No one would have to die.”
“I’m going to die,” she said. “Soon.” And before that, according to the prophecy, she would plunge a blade into either Grim’s or Oro’s heart.
“We’ll find another way.” He didn’t look defeated...he looked determined.
Oro wasn’t going to stop fighting for her; she knew that, even though he should. She remembered Enya’s words. Him loving her was dangerous. It made him weak.
Even without the prophecy, she was bad for him. She made him forget his duty. Made him do reckless things like risk his and all his peoples’ lives by traveling across the world to the land of his enemies. The king she had met at the Centennial would never have done that.
She was poisoning him.
She didn’t deserve him, and she was ruining him.
Break him, a voice in her mind said. Make sure he never looks for you again. Make him hate you.
Her heart was burning again, breaking, but for entirely different reasons. Tears fell down her face. She missed him so much. She missed his touch, but also so much more. She missed their conversations before bed. The way he would warm her socks because she always had cold feet. The way she would catch him studying her, as if he always knew this was temporary, that it would end, and he wanted to commit her to memory.
She didn’t breathe as his thumb slowly swept down her jaw, to her lips. As his calloused skin scraped across her mouth. It continued down her neck, until he reached her necklace.
He dropped his hand as if he had been burned.
His eyes darted to a corner of her room. It seemed in her absence he had noticed the pile of daggers she had taken from her pants. They were still bloodied. She hadn’t cleaned them yet.
For him to be safe, he needed to forget her.
For him to stop looking for her, he needed to hate her.
“I use those to kill people,” she said steadily. He met her eyes. They narrowed, because he knew she was telling the truth. She didn’t drop his gaze. “I put the knife through their hearts...and I enjoy it. I roam the streets at night, looking for people to kill. I smile as the life leaves their eyes.”
He shook his head. Even as his own power was telling him she wasn’t lying, it seemed like he didn’t believe it. “No. You don’t.”
“I do,” she said, stepping into him, getting as close to his face as she dared. “There is so much blood on my hands, they’ll never be clean. I’m the enemy, Oro. Stop looking for me. You won’t like what you find.”
