The moment they landed in his room, Grim collapsed, sending Isla sliding across the floor. She gasped as she made her way to her feet, toward him. No. To the cabinets. She opened them all, hurriedly looked for healing supplies, and found Moonling gauze. She used her starstick to portal back to her room, grabbed an entire vial of healing elixir, then returned.
Before she could help him, her own leg needed to be dealt with or she would lose too much blood and pass out. Bracing herself for just a moment, she snapped the end of the arrow and pulled it out. She screamed against the back of her hand. Her wound stung as healing elixir dripped onto it. Her fingers trembled as she quickly wrapped her leg with the bandage.
No time to wallow in the pain. She limped over to where Grim had barely managed to sit up and knelt before him.
“I’m going to—”
“Do it,” he said, his breathing labored.
She snapped the first arrow, and he swore. She slid the first arrow out, and when she poured healing elixir over the wound, he bellowed. “Well, you have about another dozen of those, so you better toughen up,” she said, partially echoing his own words, only because she knew it would bother him enough to stay awake. “Or did you forget that pain is useful?”
“Don’t mock me,” he said, teeth bared. “It’s true.”
She rolled her eyes.
“I’ll tell you a secret, Hearteater.” He flinched as she removed the next arrow. “Pain makes you powerful.”
Isla let out a sound of disgust. “It does not,” she said. “Though I suppose that’s a very Nightshade thing to believe.”
“No,” he said, mouth curling in amusement even as he suffered. “It isn’t an ideal. It’s truth. Emotion feeds power. And pain is the strongest.”
Isla frowned. That couldn’t be true.
“It is true,” he said, likely sensing her doubt.
If it was . . . “Have you . . . have you ever purposefully . . .”
“Yes,” he said quickly. “I have purposefully caused myself pain to access deeper levels of power. That was a long time ago. Now, it isn’t so necessary.” As if in afterthought, he said, “And . . . there are many different kinds of pain.”
Isla still couldn’t believe it was real. Did every ruler know about it? Why wouldn’t it be widely used, then?
No. It couldn’t be.
Grim shook his head, reading either her face or her emotions. He tsked, then braced himself as she pulled another arrow out. “Still doubting me,” he said. He looked her right in the eye then. “How, Hearteater, do you think I am so powerful?”
That made her hands still around one of the arrows for just a moment. He had experienced deep pain. That was what he was telling her.
It surprised her, but . . . she wanted to know what had made him this way. Who or what had hurt him.
He stared at her. She stared back.
She removed one of the arrows from his chest, and he roared.
By the time all the arrows were out, she’d heard every curse word she knew and over a dozen she didn’t. He helped her get his shirt off so she could apply the healing elixir. She caught sight of the small charm beneath his clothing. The one that kept him immune from the Nightshade curse. When his chest was bare, she winced at the sight of the dozen wounds.
Grim laughed darkly.
Laughed.
“I’ve never had a woman wince at my naked body,” he said.
She shook her head. “It must be exhausting carrying around such a magnificent ego.”
He laughed faintly as she began applying the serum. The first press of the liquid to his skin, and he hissed. His normally cold body was feverish.
“Your leg,” he said, even as he was bleeding from a dozen places.
“Is already bandaged,” she said before moving on to the next wound. She worked quickly and diligently, brow creased with focus as she made sure all the splinters were out of his skin and that each place was thoroughly cleaned. Through it all, she could feel him studying her.
“What?” she finally said.
Even in what must have been knee-wobbling pain, the demon still managed to sound pleased. He smirked. “I just think it’s ironic that the hearteater who stabbed me through the chest is now tending to my injuries.”
She gave him a look. “I think it’s ironic that the demon who claims he has no shred of humanity left used himself as a blockade against an army of arrows to save me.”
He said nothing.
When she was finished with the last injury, the healing elixir was halfway gone. The gauze was on its last few rounds.
Now that he was taken care of, Isla looked at the mess in front of her: his blood-soaked shirt, the pile of broken arrows. She threw up her hands. “Seriously. Why did you do that?” she said, exasperated.
Grim’s head was lolling to the side. He looked half a moment away from passing out. “That’s an interesting way of saying thank you,” he drawled.
One of his bandages was already soaked in blood, so she moved to make it tighter, to stop the flow. Once she got it in the right position, she went to remove her hands, but one of his own came over both of hers, pressing her fingers to his chest. “The cold, Hearteater,” he said before closing his eyes. His head fell back against the wall. “It helps the pain.”
She sat like that for a few minutes, the only movement the steady beating of Grim’s heart somewhere near her hand. His eyes remained closed the entire time. After her hand warmed against him, she took it back and sat against the wall next to him.
“What happened?” she asked. The arrows had come from nowhere. “I didn’t see anyone, or even where they were coming from—”
“It wasn’t a person; it was a weapon. A mechanism designed to go off against intruders. I’ve seen it before.”
“Where?”
“My own castle.”
Isla turned to look at him. His eyes were still closed, and the crown of his head was still leaned against the wall. “You believe the thief stole it from your castle?”
Grim shrugged a shoulder. “If she did, she really is the best.”
“I take it there aren’t any ways around it.”
He shook his head. “Infallible, unfortunately.”
She sighed. “What do we do now?” There had been yards between them and the sword. Even if they could lure the dragon out of the cave, who knew how many other enchantments the thief had protecting her bounty?
Grim groaned as he straightened himself. “Tonight? I drink my entire store of liquor. Later? I suppose I continue to play shield until we get past all the protections.”
PAIN
Power was metal in her mouth, in her nostrils, down her throat, in her stomach. It lit every inch of her up and through; she was a shining beacon, a blade of power carving the world to her desired shape and measurements.
In her memories, Grim had taught her something no one else had bothered to. To win, she needed more power.
Grim claimed pain was the strongest emotion.
Pain could be useful.
Trees rose from the soil in bursts of dirt. Ground broke and built until it formed the beginnings of mountains. Flowers blanketed in front of her, so many, so quickly, they fell right off the side of the island.
More. She needed more.
Barbed plants, the same ones that had stabbed her everywhere during the Centennial, rose up in thick brambles. Plants with poisoned leaves sprouted. She painted the Mainland in them both, all the parts they needed to block off.
Isla sank her hands into the dirt, fingers in wild shapes, and bellowed, until the ground broke open and more plants formed all around her. Thorn-covered, monstrous plants that would fight back and defend themselves.
It might have been minutes or hours later, but she felt him, a ray of sunlight landing behind her. “Isla?” he said. Her name was a question.
“I finished it,” she said. It had seemed almost impossible to create so much nature in nine days, but she had done it in a single night. “Look, I made walls to block their paths. I covered all the open spaces. Grim can only portal them where you and Zed decided.” She was beaming.
He did not look proud.
He looked . . . horrified. She didn’t think she would ever forget the way he now looked at her. Like she was something wrong.
Like she was a monster.
“What have you done?” he asked.
She tracked the direction of his gaze and saw it. Blood dripped down the front of her dress. Her hands reached up and touched it, coming from her eyes, her nose, the sides of her mouth, her ears.
Power . . . tasted like blood.