Skylings valued choice over all else, as evidenced with their democracy. It was an alluring principle, Isla thought. What she wouldn’t give to hand off all this responsibility to someone else.
“Do I?” she said, her voice more grating than she had meant it. “I have ruling power from Starling now, and Wildling. Who else could rebuild them?” Azul just looked at her, so she continued. His silence angered her for some reason, because all these questions were real ones, ones she wanted answers to. “Hmm?” she said. “Should I just go back to my room and let them all die?”
“You could,” he said. Azul shrugged a shoulder, looked at a perfectly manicured nail. Every part of him was immaculate, as always. “But you’re choosing not to.” He met her eyes. “Right?”
She had requested he meet her. She had declared to the nobles and representatives that she would have a coronation. She had made not just a choice but choices.
“Right,” she murmured.
He flashed his perfect teeth at her. “Good. Now that that’s clear . . . Of course you don’t know how to rule, Isla.” The compassion in his tone caught her off guard. “When I was in my twenties, I was too busy flying off with boys and drinking every shade of haze to even think about anyone other than myself.” His smile turned sad. “When you make the choice to rule, you are making a promise that you will put your people’s well-being and happiness above your own.”
Isla frowned. It shamed her how awful that sounded.
She didn’t want to put others first, not after everything she had just been through. A person could only take so much. Her trust had been broken, along with her heart. There wasn’t much left of her to give. She wanted to be selfish with the parts that remained. Didn’t she deserve that?
“I see,” he said.
“See what?”
Azul began humming to himself, and the wind seemed to mimic it. Somehow a current was moving through the room and jostling her hair, even though all the doors and windows in the bar were closed. “Of course.”
“Of course what?”
The Skyling ruler folded his hands in front of him. “Are you close to your Wildling subjects, Isla?”
“No.”
“They didn’t know you believed yourself powerless?”
She shook her head.
“What was your relationship to them?”
Isla lifted a shoulder. “Nonexistent. My guardians made all the decisions. They ruled. Because of my . . . secret . . . I was kept far away. Only paraded on special occasions, at a distance.” She bit the inside of her mouth, a habit that would have made Poppy flick her on the wrist with her fan. “If I’m honest, they are my blood, they are my responsibility, I would do anything for them . . . but they feel like strangers.”
Azul nodded. “Of course they do,” he said, and the way he validated her feelings . . . the compassion in his voice . . . it was beyond anything she had ever experienced. “And the Starlings here, they are strangers. You don’t care about them.” He shrugged. “You don’t care about this island.”
His voice was without judgment. His eyes held no disgust. Azul only shook his head. “How could you? You’ve only been here a few months. The worst moments of your life were likely spent right here on Lightlark. You don’t have fond memories before the curses to look back on, and most of the people hate you, because of their perception of Wildlings.”
Everything was said so matter-of-factly. Isla couldn’t tell if his even tone made the words hurt less or more.
“Are you going back to the Wildling newland, Isla?”
“I plan to.” She told him about her portaling device and how she had visited. She offered to portal him to the Skyling newland when needed.
Azul’s eyes only glimmered with curiosity. “Charming,” he said. “I appreciate your offer, but I meant . . . are you returning to the Wildling newland for good?”
For good. Before, when the Centennial had ended, Isla could not fathom staying on Lightlark. Now, things were different. She was different.
“No.”
“Then this is your home now,” Azul said. “Your chosen one.” He stood, his light-blue cape billowing behind him in a breeze only he seemed privy to. “Learn to love it, and your two realms. It is up to the leader, not the subject, to connect.” He outstretched his hand. “Come with me.”
She took it without question, the rings on both of their fingers clashing together like wind chimes. “We’re not flying . . . are we?”
Azul smiled. “Do you trust me?”
“I do,” she said, and it was the truth. It was stupid, she realized, to trust anyone after everything. She knew that, but what was the alternative? Closing herself off forever? Ever since the end of the Centennial, she had felt a wall harden around her. If she wasn’t careful, it would become impenetrable.
She had asked Azul for help. The least she could do was let him in.
They stepped out the back door of the bar, into an alleyway. He offered his other hand. “May I?”
She took his hand.
Then she was in the air. And Azul’s flying was far smoother than Oro’s had ever been.
In the aftermath of the curses, Sky Isle was transformed. The city built below had been abandoned for the one floating above, just as most of the Skyling people had promptly deserted walking in favor of flying. A castle sat nestled comfortably in the clouds, with spires pointing at the sky like quills ready to decorate a blank page. A waterfall spilled from the front of the palace in an arc that reflected every color imaginable, into a shimmering pool below.
And they were all flying.
It looked natural, like the air was so much empty space finally being put to good use. Isla had only ever seen Oro fly—and now, Azul. She hadn’t expected there to be so much flourish. Flying seemed to be a bit like handwriting; everyone had their own signature. Some were graceful, like Azul, to the point of making it all look like a choreographed dance. Others were more like Oro, brusquely taking steps in the sky, as if walking on an invisible set of bridges no one else could see.
Some weren’t really flying at all. They glided on contraptions with wings, using their control over wind to power the inventions.
Azul had wrapped her in wind. She floated right beside him—with her hand fully clenched around his wrist, just in case—taking it all in as best as she could.
“Your realm’s curse . . .”
“Was one of the better ones,” he filled in.
Not being able to fly for five hundred years certainly must have been terrible for a society that had clearly woven their power through the fabric of their day-to-day, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as dying at twenty-five or eating hearts to survive. That didn’t mean it wasn’t deadly, though. “Azul. The day it happened—”
“We lost many of our people. They all just . . . fell from the sky.”
Isla closed her eyes. The thought of them, without explanation, falling to their deaths . . . She clutched Azul’s wrist harder.
“Flying comes naturally to us; even those with the smallest shred of power can do it. Those who weren’t skilled enough—or quick enough—to use wind to cushion their fall . . . perished.”
They had reached the castle. Instead of landing in the clouds—which Isla didn’t trust in the slightest—they continued floating, right through the entrance.
The ceiling was nonexistent. One could float right in and through the palace in one smooth motion. The castle had hallways but no stairs. To get to the different levels and out of the main atrium, one had to fly. She could see why this palace had been abandoned after the curses.