She felt a bite of hurt and didn’t know why. He was asking her to leave his quarters, when she was injured. Why was she shocked? He didn’t care about her.
The second thing she needed from him. Isla collected her torn top from the floor and said, “Can you . . . destroy this? I can’t bring it home. All the blood . . .”
A moment later, the top was only ash.
She grabbed her starstick and, without another word, portaled back to her room.
In the middle of the night, she woke and almost screamed.
Grim was sitting across from her bed, watching her.
“What are you—”
“I’m making sure you don’t bleed out in your sleep,” he grumbled.
Isla looked down at her bandages. Blood was already peeking through again. She got a few rags she used to clean her swords and pressed them to her, so she wouldn’t stain her sheets. She would need to ask Grim to destroy them before he left.
“I’m fine,” she said, though she certainly wasn’t. All she could do was hope the bleeding stopped by the time her training started. “You can leave.”
Grim gave her a look that made her think he didn’t believe her for a second. He leaned back in the chaise he had decided to sit on. It was decorated with roses, and far too small, but he made himself comfortable and stretched his long legs out in front of him. “Your death would be most inconvenient. I’ll stay a little longer.”
“Inconvenient?” she said, scoffing at him.
He didn’t look fazed. “Inconvenient,” he repeated. “You are an investment.”
Her voice raised to a high pitch. “An investment?”
He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “My time is valuable. I have a lot to do. Choosing to work with you . . . fitting you into my plan. You are an investment. You’re no good to me dead.”
She glared at him.
Fine. Let him stay. If he wanted to watch her sleep, that was his decision.
She made it ten minutes this way, willing sleep to come down and find her again. It did not, and the only thing more uncomfortable than having him sit and watch her was the pain pulsing like a second heartbeat in her chest.
When she carefully sat upright and pulled her knees to her chest, she found him still watching her.
“I can’t sleep,” she said.
His chin rested on his hand. “Clearly.” He studied her. “If you weren’t going to sleep, I suppose I could have allowed you to stay at my palace. Let you heal there.”
“I hate your palace,” she said.
That seemed to surprise him. “Why?”
“Besides the fact that you live there?” Grim looked faintly amused. “There’s no color. It’s so . . . dark. I could never live in a place like that.” He said nothing. “You know,” she said, staring at her glass wall. “My guardians closed my window because of you.”
He raised an eyebrow at her.
“There was . . . a loose pane. You saw it when we dueled. It was the only way I could sneak out. I had to tell them about it, to explain my ankle injury.”
“Can’t you use your portaling device to go outside?”
Her eyes found the floor. “I—I’m awful at traveling short distances with it. And I can only reliably go places I’ve been before.”
The portaling device was born of his own power, which he clearly had complete mastery of. She wondered if he would think less of her than he already did.
“I’m sorry,” he said suddenly. Her eyes abruptly met his again. “About the window.”
Isla asked a question she’d had for a while. “If you created my device, then how did it get to Wildling?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” he said.
All at once, a thought gripped her mind and chest. “Did you . . . did you know my mother?”
Grim frowned. “No. I haven’t met a Wildling since the curses,” he said.
So how had her mother come to possess the starstick?
They just stared at each other. Isla watched him watch her and wondered if he would be the first to look away.
“Do you always play with your hair when you’re uncomfortable?”
It wasn’t until then that she realized she was raking her fingers through her damp hair like they were two combs. She immediately put her hands in her lap. “No.”
“Liar. I’ve watched you do it on no less than three occasions.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. Without breaking his gaze, she made her way to the end of the bed, so she was sitting right in front of him. “Here I was thinking that you couldn’t even bear to look at me, and you’ve apparently been studying me quite carefully.”
Grim’s expression did not change. “You are my enemy. Of course I study you carefully.”
“Right. Tell me, Nightshade,” she said. “What do you do when you’re uncomfortable?”
“I rarely am.”
“You seemed pretty uncomfortable when I stabbed you in the chest.”
Grim looked bored. “I’m used to being stabbed.”
“By someone you were trying to bed?”
That got a reaction from him. His jaw tensed. “You tricked me. Had I known who you were, I never would have touched you.” The disgust in his tone was clear.
Isla scoffed. “Had I known what was about to occur, I never would have joined that line.”
“Why were you there, then?” he snapped.
She recoiled, taken aback by his sudden rush of anger. “I accidentally portaled there with the starstick. It wouldn’t work, and I was chased by your idiotic group of guards. The head woman grabbed me, and the next thing I knew I was in that line.”
Grim crossed his arms. “I should take that thing away from you. All it’s bringing you is closer to death.”
“You could try,” she said, her voice as threatening as she could make it.
Grim looked at her and said nothing.
“So. You have a harem?” she asked. Since that night, she had wondered who those women were. Their function was clear.
“No.”
Isla laughed, disbelieving. “So, women just line up to sleep with you? They volunteer for the honor?”
Grim glared at her.
He had the reputation of an accomplished killer. There was no way the women didn’t know about it. “Who would want to sleep with you?”
Grim stood from the chair, until he was right in front of her. He towered over her, his shadow even bigger behind him, filling her wall. “I don’t know, Hearteater,” he said. “You seemed pretty willing.”
Isla swallowed. He was so close. She was breathing too quickly, and it only made her wound more painful. “No. I was disgusted.”
Grim grinned. “Is that so?”
She nodded, even as he placed his hands on either side of her on the bed and leaned down so his face was right in front of hers.
“I can feel flashes of emotions,” he said. He could? Now that she thought about it, it was a rumored Nightshade ability, one only the most powerful possessed. The blood drained from her face. “And yours were very, very clear—”
She wasn’t breathing.
“—just as they are now.”
Her heart was beating wildly. She told herself it was because she could feel the power rolling from him in waves. She told herself she was afraid. “Your powers are wrong.”
He tilted his head at her. She watched his eyes move from her collarbones to her neck to her lips. “No. I don’t think so.”
Then he went back to his chair. “Go to sleep,” he said.
She crawled back to her place and covered herself in bedding so he wouldn’t see the heat of her face.
LINE BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH
Isla blinked. She had just had a memory. It didn’t seem as though any time had passed, however.
Was it because her Nightshade abilities were getting stronger? Had it always been this way?
The Vinderland warrior was frozen in front of her. She had just demolished his weapon with a single touch. “What are you?” he asked. “You’re . . . Wildling.”
“I’m more than that,” she said, stepping forward. Suddenly, she had Enya’s confidence. She had seen her own death too.
She would not die today.
“You are going to join us in battle, or we are going to all perish,” she said, her voice taking on an edge. “It’s as simple as that.”