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

The portal in the Place of Mirrors was crafted from shade-made metal . . . with Wildling blood infused. It had taken her time to figure out the technique, with the auger’s help.

“It’s like a shield with a sword-sized gap in it,” he had said, musing.

That was how she had gotten the idea to come to the maze and infuse her own blood into the metal of Cronan’s tomb. How she decided to create a new skyre, from the metal’s blood.

They were one.

Her power slipped through the shield.

She unleashed that power right at Lark as they landed in the center of the labyrinth, sending her shooting back against the maze.

Lark recovered quickly. Her hands were out, and Isla was swallowed by the hedges. Their entire interior was made of thorns like pointed teeth. Without her armor, they would have ripped her to pieces, but this metal did not scratch, it did not falter.

Isla summoned her strength. She dug deep into herself, to the deepest springs of her power, and began to drag it out.

All the people she had killed, all the death, all the blood, all the dreks, all the things that made her a villain, instead of burying it down, she took hold of it and let it consume her.

Lark was powerful.

But so was she.

Isla stepped out of the hedges and felt herself glow, her abilities radiating out of her, circling her in a galaxy.

Lark forced the hedges behind her down—but they passed right through her: a Nightshade skill she had learned. The Wildling sent roots to chain her ankles and force her onto her knees, but they melted into nothing against her armor and the Starling energy she had coated across it.

The ground beneath Isla parted, attempting to swallow her, but she was faster, making her own tunnel down and appearing behind Lark. She whipped around, but Isla met her vines with a blade of shadow and watched them disappear.

She encased herself in shadows, and every bit of nature Lark threw at her withered away. Lark herself seemed to weaken the closer she got to her, as Isla grew and grew, until her darkness was taller than the hedges. This wasn’t Grim’s power. It was her own. Her father’s. The one she had taken, the one he had willingly given her.

Isla allowed the darkness to claw its way through. She did not fight it, not anymore. It was part of who she was.

Every power she possessed emerged, melding, all six realms’ abilities merging to form something else. Something different.

It was her distraction at finding something new inside that cost her.

Vines shot from the ground and wrapped around and around her head so that she couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, and couldn’t move. Her senses were snuffed out one by one, and she roared just before her mouth was smothered as well, as she felt Lark press a nail into her chest. It was as if she meant to dig right through her flesh, to the part the heart had mended, and take it with her own hands. Isla tried to shoot her powers out into the world; but without most of her senses, she had no focus, no direction.

She whipped wildly around, and she couldn’t breathe—couldn’t think. She was suffocating beneath the vines. They belonged to Lark; she controlled them. Isla’s arms went limp at her sides. Her chest constricted as she sought air.

That was when she felt it. Them. Oro and Grim. Their bonds to her. Getting closer.

No.

Lark grinned wickedly. “The most dangerous people are those who don’t fear death, Isla.” Lark didn’t need to. She was impossible to kill.

“I hope you’re right,” Isla said, a smile spreading across her face. Her own body was smothered, useless—but her shadow was not.

It peeled off the ground, and she directed it as if it was another limb, just as Sairsha had. She instructed it to reach into her pocket and remove the feather hidden inside of it. The shadow began picking off the feather’s barbs, and Isla found the restraints around her loosen. She found the nail that had begun digging into her chest retreating.

Isla took a breath in the space she was given, and unleashed. The vines splattered all around her, and her shadow dropped back onto the floor, but not before handing her the feather.

Lark was on her knees before her, panting, a hand against her chest.

“It took me a while to figure it out,” Isla said. “But then I realized . . . Aurora must have tried talking to you. She must have found out about you somehow. She must have considered freeing you to get what she wanted. She was Starling. She wouldn’t have put part of her soul in something like a feather . . . but you. You would. And you used her handwriting as your own. This was how you knew where I was. You were already rising, spreading poison through Nightshade, but you couldn’t get out. My blood . . . it freed you, didn’t it, when I pricked my finger?” Lark lurched, but Isla filled her palm with flames. She dipped the feather inside, and Lark twisted unnaturally, roaring. “This must hurt . . . right?” Isla said, barely recognizing her own voice, the beast within her preening at the sounds of suffering.

She blew the feather out, just halfway to burning. Lark heaved on the ground before her. And Isla took a step toward the coffin. She placed her hand against it, feeling its power rise and her own rushing to meet it. She poured all of herself inside—the Nightshade, Wildling, and Sunling abilities she had gotten through both love and death. She had portaled hundreds of times with her starstick, and she summoned that ability, Grim’s flair. She shook with her concentration, until she felt the world peel in front of her.

Clouds began to gather overhead.

With a flick of her wrist, the coffin exploded. Only a hole remained. It was dark and endless, a slice of sky breaking open, a burst of color at its center, as if a forever dawn bloomed inside.

“No,” Lark said, still on the ground, choking on her words. “Foolish girl. Push me through, and I will find a way to return. I will come back.”

Isla tilted her head at her. “No,” she said. “You won’t.”

She slung the sword that controlled the dreks across her back. She could feel Oro and Grim fighting against the creatures. She could feel a break in their shield. At her command, they scattered, ordered not to hurt anyone anymore.

She hadn’t had Zed and Grim steal the sword again to control the dreks, though they had been useful.

No, she needed it because it had been enchanted by Cronan himself. It contained his blood.

Which meant she could find him with it.

Remlar had explained the scroll. He confirmed what she had read in the desert—that a portal could only be closed on the other side.

It was why she had stolen the bone from Oro. Why she had started to shape her own plan.

She hauled Lark from the ground, snapping the vines and roots that sought to keep her. Sending Lark through the portal meant saving this world from destruction. But it also meant Isla’s final chance at redemption.

Lark’s power was bringing the dead back to life. Here, it meant little. It meant creating monsters. But in the otherworld . . . Lark could fully resurrect people. Remlar had told her so. There, Isla could kill her. Isla could take her power.

And she could bring everyone she had ever killed back to life.

There was just one more thing she had needed, in order to use the portal. It was why she had visited the augur the night before.

“The prophet’s scroll says to go to another world, I must know its name . . . but it’s been forgotten.”

The auger nodded. “It was on purpose, you see.” He grinned. “But the prophet knew that . . . so he carved the name into himself before he came here, to ensure he never forgot.” The augur had crawled to the back of his cave and returned with something gleaming white. Presented it to her. There, in scrawled script, was a word, etched against bone.

The otherworld’s name . . . was Skyshade.