Skyshade (The Lightlark Saga Book 3) (The Lightlark Saga, 3) (Volume 3)

Gardens stretched behind the palace, overgrown but still beautiful, coated in a layer of ice and snow. Isla watched them from the wall of windows as she sipped from the mug of hot chocolate that Grim had handed her when she had awoken.

He shamelessly stole the mug and took a sip from it. She narrowed her eyes at him, and he lazily smiled before pressing his warmed lips against hers and handing the drink back.

“What’s that?” she asked, spotting the border of a tall hedge. It seemed to turn a sharp corner.

“The maze.”

She frowned. “Maze?”

He nodded. “It’s ancient, older than the castle itself. Do you want to see it?”

Of course, she wanted to see it.

They got dressed in their winter clothes, Isla putting on layer upon layer, like some sort of ornate pastry. Grim led them outside, past the sprawling gardens, around the castle.

They walked until they reached the mouth of the labyrinth. It was enormous, with frost-caked hedges reaching more than triple her height. The tunnel was like a hallway that split ominously.

There was an energy to it like a shield. Power, pulsing, in a mysterious way she had and hadn’t encountered before.

They stepped inside.

“This was my favorite place, as a child,” Grim said. He made a turn, and she followed him. “My guardians were replaced every year, to keep me from forming an attachment to them. They never stayed long enough to learn the maze.” He trailed his hand along the thick shrubs. “I used to hide here. I used to hope they would never find me.” He frowned. “My father learned, and I awoke one day to see the maze on fire. I thought it was gone forever, but the maze is stubborn. It took centuries to grow back, but it did. And its power never wavered.”

Another turn.

“Power?”

He nodded. “The maze is dangerous. No power can be used within it, not even Nightshade. Which is why my father had to use a match to try and destroy it.” She thought about her bracelets. Was there a deposit of the same ancient metal beneath? It reminded her of the Place of Mirrors, but even Wildling ability could be used there.

“So, a ruler could die here,” she said. She had assumed if they got lost, she could use her abilities to cut through the hedges or fly out herself. But now, when she reached for her power, she found only its embers. Grim nodded. “The maze has killed countless of my extended family members, if lore is to be believed.”

Isla swallowed. She wondered at how casually he walked through it, brushing its hedges like an old friend.

“You aren’t . . . afraid?”

He shook his head. “No. Because I know the way.”

Isla studied his every turn, memorizing it, just in case. Starving to death in a maze was not how she wanted to spend the last moments of her life.

The maze was enormous. Her feet seemed frozen solid when they finally reached the middle of it.

At the center sat a coffin.

“Cronan,” he said, before she could ask.

The Nightshade ruler was buried there. The maze had been built around his grave.

She studied the coffin, knowing now why power was drained here. It was completely made of sparkling black metal. Shademade.

She didn’t know where Lark Crown was buried, and Oro had never mentioned anything about Horus Rey’s body. Perhaps the knowledge had been lost with time.

Since they couldn’t portal out of the maze, they had to walk out of it. The ground was damp, and their footprints had been frozen solid by the time they exited. It became a trail out of the labyrinth, leading their way out. By the time they were in the gardens again, Isla was shaking.

“The library has a fireplace,” he said, and she nodded, anticipation building in her chest.

In moments, the fire was raging. The hearth was so large, even Grim would be able to walk into it. The flames were unnaturally high, nearly brushing against its ceiling.

Frost melted down her skirts immediately, forming a small puddle around her shoes. Without thinking about it, she slipped out of them and undid her cape. It fell to the floor. She looked up to see Grim watching her.

Now that she had given up on burying her feelings for him, they surged forward at every opportunity. She didn’t fight them as her eyes traced his body, his damp shirt pressed firmly against every muscle in his chest and stomach. She didn’t look away from a gaze so hungry, so intense, that her skin prickled beneath it. His chest was rising and falling just as he looked at her, like it was an effort to keep still in her presence, to battle against the growing want that she could see right in front of her.

It was a frenzy.

Her lips crashed into his, and then her freezing fingers were weaving through his hair, still damp from the cold. His tongue was hot against hers and she moaned. “I need you,” she said against his lips.

He seemed to need her too. With a burst of power, the texts and papers on the table behind them were swept to the floor, and then he was bending her over it. He pulled her stockings down, and then she was filled with pulsing heat. She clawed at the table, sending cracks forming along the thick wood.

They were ravenous, starved; nothing was enough. Soon she was kicking her tights off completely, and he was hauling her against the wall.

No—not a wall. She discovered it was a bookshelf when books began crashing down around them, falling from their shelves.

“Don’t stop,” she said, her ankles locking behind him. She formed a Starling shield around them, the books flying wildly.

“I never intended on it,” he said, as the wood groaned behind her.

She woke up draped in a half dozen blankets. Grim must have portaled them here to make her comfortable. The fire crackled just a few feet away. Somehow, they had ended up on the floor, right beside it. She remembered now, how Grim had groaned as she had climbed atop him, how he had pulled her down against his chest afterward. Their clothing was strewn across the floor, along with dozens of books. There were gaps in the shelves he had pressed her against.

“We made a mess,” she said. Grim waved the thought away.

“I’ll put them back,” he said. His power began to work, but she shook her head.

“I—I want to look through them,” she said. “I’ve never had a library to myself—not like this. Not without restrictions.”

“Now you have several.”

She told the truth. “Maybe there will be something to help find the portal.”

He brought her some fresh clothes, and she slipped them on, before moving to the table. She began stacking books with her power. Grim watched her.

She turned to face him. “You’re distracting.”

“Am I?”

Isla looked from the cracks in the table, to him, laying in the fabrics with nothing on, shadows from the flames playing across his pale skin. He was already ready again, and part of her wanted to go back to him, but—

Grim laughed. He walked over to her, kissed the top of her head, and said, “Enjoy your library.”

Then, he was gone.

The room suddenly felt too empty. But she had a job to do. She found her discarded dress and pulled something from the interior pocket.

The feather.

She struck its point against her palm, watched the blood burble, and wrote on a fresh piece of parchment.

What am I looking for?

A book cursed closed, the feather wrote. Isla wasn’t sure she understood. How could a book be cursed?

She didn’t suppose it would simply be sitting on a shelf, and she hoped it wasn’t one of the ones that had fallen to the floor.

Most of the books didn’t even have titles, or covers; they were simply leather-bound. She had to flip them open and read a few paragraphs before moving on. After doing so for hours, she realized it would be weeks before she got through the entire collection. And she had only a few hours before Grim would summon her for dinner.

If the book was important, it would be hidden. She studied the walls, looking for levers or special panels. She remembered searching the libraries on Lightlark, and looked in the hearth too.

Nothing.

It was only when she was stacking the books she and Grim had knocked down that she realized one book had remained in the middle of the center row, when all others around it had fallen.

Strange.

She shook the shelf, waiting for it to fall loose. But it didn’t move an inch. As if it was stuck.

Or enchanted.

Isla grabbed one of the sliding ladders and climbed to the shelf.

She studied the book carefully without touching it, not wanting to force it out with her abilities and potentially harm it.

It looked just like the others. Thick black leather cover, creased by time. Spine engraved in a swirling pattern. There was just one thing that set it apart. Strange stains against its pages.

Isla expected it would take all her might to pull the book free. But the moment her hand curled around it, the book released its hold, and slid against her fingers.

Strange. She climbed down and set it on the table. It had a force around it, power she could feel clicking against her bones.

It was only when she went to turn the page that she realized the stains upon it were blood.

Isla stumbled back just as the book flew open. Cursed. It was supposed to be cursed closed, according to Aurora. She expected an attack, a storm to rise from its pages, blades to careen through the air . . . but there was nothing.

Only parchment and faded ink.

Her flair had saved her.

Her father was the only person she knew of who’d had her flair. If the book was cursed, then perhaps it hadn’t been read in millennia. Even though, judging by the blood, many had tried.

She sank into a chair and rushed to flip through the pages, reading as quickly as she could.

If she had been expecting page after page of skyres . . . she was wrong. Every page was blank.

She grew more frustrated as she flipped through them. “Help me find the portal,” she begged in a whisper. She needed to close it, stop the storms, stop the death. She needed to use it to extend the time she had. She needed to hope it would be enough to change her fate.

The pages remained empty until the very end.

Undeterred and without any other options, she flipped from the beginning and tried again, to see if she had missed something.

This time, ink began to form. It was as if the book changed every time it was read. A few sentences were revealed, far away from each other. Most didn’t make sense out of context.

Then, on the last page, there was a skyre. An ornate marking that looked almost like a rose, encased in an orb.

It had no description. Part of her itched to simply paint it upon her skin, to test it out . . . but it would be a risk. It could do anything. She remembered the blacksmith’s warning.

She flipped back to the first page and started again.

Grim surprised her by taking her to the village for dinner. He must have noticed how much she had loved it.

The restaurant was full, and Grim frowned at all the noise and chaos, but Isla couldn’t hear enough, couldn’t see enough. It was lively, the villagers dragging chairs to other tables, having conversations over groups of people, laughing, and smiling, as if they weren’t in the middle of the storm season. As if they lived each day to the fullest, anyway.

When she looked at Grim, he was already staring at her.

“What?”

“You . . . would be happy here,” he said slowly, studying her face for her reaction.

She hadn’t really thought about it. But . . . even as much as she hated the cold, this village was alive in a way she hadn’t seen before. The community had survived centuries of curses. It was clear that the same families had known each other through generations. It was beautiful.

Grim ordered charred meat with whipped potatoes and got something completely different delivered by the boisterous owner. Isla smiled behind her hand at the look on his face. Still, he ate it, and she ate off his plate when she decided his was far better than hers.

“Just take it,” he said gruffly, pushing his plate to her, and reaching over to take hers.

“It’s so much worse,” she said, watching his face as he took a bite. “It was a horrible trade.”

“It is,” Grim confirmed. Isla smiled, pushing his food back, but he stopped the plate with his hand. “I told you I would give you anything, remember? That includes my clearly superior mystery dish.”

He dutifully ate everything on his plate, and then the rest of hers when she was done. Afterward, he dragged her into an alley, and she moved first, pinning him against the wall and kissing him until he sighed into her mouth.

“As much as I enjoyed that, I had more innocent motives for bringing you here,” he said, sucking his bottom lip, as if to savor the taste of her. He motioned toward light peeking around the corner. “Chocolate,” he said. “It’s a chocolate shop that—”

She pulled him to her. “That is so incredibly thoughtful,” she said. “And I love chocolate in a way that is probably concerning. But I want something else right now.” She looked at him. “Do you understand?”

By the way he portaled them back to the castle—and what he did afterward—she knew he’d understood perfectly.