Page 188 of Grim and Oro
I tell her something even my father didn’t know. I tell her about my Wildling teacher. I don’t know why. But while we walk, she listens, green eyes looking up at me with curiosity, and I find myself saying far more than I should.
Each day, the talking becomes easier. I start to anticipate her voice, her questions. My answers become longer than simple yeses or nos.
I find myself lookingforwardto the conversations, then wondering why. I have other people to talk to. This Wildling might as well be a stranger.
No. Worse. She’s aliar. I know that, yet I keep talking to her.
I’m so tired when I return to my room each night that eventually my insomnia is cured. Tonight, I fall asleep in the middle of bathing.
I dream of a green sea, a golden beach. I dream ofher, the Wildling, at my favorite place.
I see her smiling, her eyes glistening.
Smiling atme.
I see her reaching toward me. I feel her pulling me into the sea. Deeper. Deeper. Too far out. So far, we’ll both drown—
I gasp as I break through the water’s surface, coughing and fighting for air. When I’ve cleared all the fluid in my lungs and I can breathe again, I realize how shaken I am.
It’s official. I’ve lost my mind.
I almost drowned in my damned bathtub. This needs to stop. I need to find the heart and end all this, once and for all.
HEARTLESS
We aren’t going to find the heart.
We’ve been searching for over a week now. I can tell Isla is losing hope too.
She sits on the ground, in a patch of forest we’ve already scoured, glaring at the soil. It’s an uncharacteristic thing for a Wildling to do; then again, nothing about Isla is expected.
Perhaps that’s what makes me so afraid of her.
“We aren’t ... we aren’t going to find it,” she admits, and I’m almost shocked into silence, hearing our thoughts so aligned.
We are more similar than I would ever admit aloud.
“We have to find it,” is all I say. Then I surprise myself by moving to sit next to her.
She glances over at me, and I want to turn, to see those eyes up close, to see if they match the shade from my dream, but I remain still. It might be one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.
“What does it feel like?” she asks.
I finally allow myself to turn to her then, and—those eyes.
She reddens, and I realize I’ve been staring. Andfrowning, as she’s often reminded me I do. She must assume I’m thinking ill of her.
How do I tell her she’s all I think about?
I clear my throat. “What does what feel like?”
“Dying.”
The word is a bucket of cold water on my thoughts. I tear my eyes from hers, mourning the loss of that green that is much more vivid than the forest around us.
I think about the bluish gray methodically spreading across my body. “Slow. Painful.”
I hear her swallow.
