Page 76 of Skyshade
It didn’t even have a keyhole. Isla frowned. How was she meant to get in? From the outside? She supposed she could break a window. Orsimply break down this door with a weapon. Or portal in with her starstick.
She placed a hand against it to test its strength—and with the slightest touch of her fingers to the wood, the door creaked open.
Isla jumped back, almost expecting to find someone there.
But the room was empty. She hesitated on the threshold and the door opened wider, like a hand beckoning her inside.
Isla didn’t know if the room was enchanted or if it recognized her as her father’s blood, but it didn’t matter.
At first glance, the room was nothing special. It was empty save for a mirror, bed, and wardrobe. But as she stepped forward, shadows fell from the walls like brushed away cobwebs, revealing stacks of books. Letters. And, most of all, rows and rows of maps.
Astria had been right. Her father had been born with the heart of an explorer. An entire wall was made up of layers of parchment overlapping at the edges like a quilt and painted over with meticulously drawn coastlines. She recognized Nightshade, Lightlark, and the newlands.
There were a few other shapes she hadn’t seen on any other map. Unexplored areas, by the look of it.
The largest of these was far beyond Nightshade, to the west. It was a large piece of land, separated from the rest of the map by a row of tiny islands, sitting like guards. Strange. How could something that large not have been developed in all the years since the curses? It seemed special. In fact, it was the only uncharted body of land with a name, etched in with precision. Her breath caught as she read it.
No. That couldn’t be right.
Its name was Isla.
MIRROR
Her heart thundered in her chest. This didn’t make any sense. Why did her father have an island with her name on it, when he had lived here before he had ever even met her mother?
Isla.
It had to be a coincidence. Her name meant island. Perhaps it didn’t mean anything at all.
But what if it did?
Isla removed that sheet of map from the wall, rolled it up, and placed it in the pocket of her cape. She moved around the room, to see if there was anything that could help her now, anything that might indicate the portal, but all she saw were letters between him and family members, detailed maps of Nightshade, and books upon books about the other realms. She flipped through one about Wildlings, read the first sentence of the middle chapter, and nearly snorted.
Wildling women have fangs that curve out of their mouths like pythons, they have claws like panthers—they drink blood in buckets.
Is that what her father had thought of the Wildlings before meeting her mother? She wondered for a moment about their story. How they met, and where, and how they had fallen in love.
Part of it she could guess, given the details she already knew. Her father had escaped with the sword, using the portaling device he had stolen from Grim. Somehow, he must have ended up on the Wildling newland. Her mother must have happened upon him, and, for some reason, they had chosen not to kill each other.
Isla swallowed, realizing how closely it matched her own story. She had somehow ended up on Nightshade, using the starstick. Grim had happened upon her. And—though she had stabbed a blade through his chest during that first meeting—they had decided not to kill each other.
Yet.
Life and darkness. Opposites in so many ways. One power created, the other destroyed. It seemed like a pairing that could never work, not really. Perhaps they were too different. Perhaps her own parents’ joining had been wrong.
She remembered what the prophet-followers had said, before their death. A girl will be born. She will either destroy the world...or save it.
She wouldn’t be the cause of more destruction. She would find a way to close the portal and buy herself more time. She would use that time to change her fate.
This map...it had to mean something.
There was only one way to find out.
Map in one hand and starstick in the other, she imagined the island in her mind’s eye, felt around for it, tried to visualize it, tried to pin down its place in the world. She fell through her puddle of stars.
Then she was drowning, pulled down by a relentless current. Only her last-second instinct to reach her arm high over her head kept the map from disintegrating in the water. She had landed in the middle of the sea—a wave crested, about to pull her under again. She closed her eyes tightly and used her starstick to whisk her away. Anywhere. Anywhere.
She landed roughly. Her cheek was scratched from the shell-laden beach, her landing had dragged her across it. The sand was dark, volcanic ash. She peeled herself up from the ground, coughing up water, folding over, her mouth and eyes full of salt. Her fingers felt around for her map and found it damp—but whole. She carefully opened it up, tying the corners down with rocks so it could dry. She didn’t havefresh water, but once her tears cleared her vision enough to see properly, she carefully folded the map into her pocket.
