Crowntide by Alex Aster - 12

“Where’s my mom?”

Isla was eight years old, and in the middle of dueling with her guardian, Terra. Dappled rays of sunrise peeked through the forest in broken fragments.

Terra’s metal met hers, and Isla’s teeth sung with the force. Her guardian’s sword was much bigger, but that didn’t mean she held back.

“She’s dead, Isla. You know this.” Terra’s voice was flat, though a rush of emotion filled her eyes before it withered. She turned, and Isla barely blocked her blade in time.

Isla did know that her mom was gone. But sometimes, she wished that when she asked, the answer might be different.

After all, the Wildlings could turn dry seeds into flowers. Dirt . . . into life. She always wondered if, somehow, the same could be done for people.

“And my dad?” Isla asked, gasping when she stumbled over a vine, then parried hard against her guardian’s next knee-rattling strike.

“He’s dead too.” Terra’s next hit was fast as lightning, easily outmaneuvering her defenses. Her unchecked sword sliced down Isla’s arm, right through the fabric of her training clothes, and Isla gritted her teeth against the pain. Hot blood gushed from the wound. She didn’t dare whimper. That would only make Terra wait an extra hour before she’d be allowed to heal her wounds of the day. “Stop with the foolish questions. You’re wasting time.”

Everything besides training, to Terra, was a waste.

She was a waste.

No. She was worse.

Isla was the reason so many Wildlings were dead. She was the reason why she overheard her guardians saying their realm had no chance of surviving the next Centennial.

She was born powerless. Wrong.

Her eyes stung. She fought to breathe, panic clenching her chest the way it sometimes did. Taking hold of her mind.

What if they were right? What if all this training was for nothing? What if she failed her people, the same way she had failed everyone around her since she was born? What if—

She didn’t see Terra’s blade until it was too late. Until the hilt slammed against her temple. And when her head hit the forest ground, only then did her mind quiet.

When her eyes finally opened again, the sky was the pink bruise of sunset.

Sunset . An entire day wasted.

She had to move. But everything hurt. Slowly, she reached to feel the side of her head. She winced as her fingers slid through crusted blood. There was a thick puddle of it in the dirt beneath her sore arm.

The world turned as she tried to sit up. It took several minutes before she was able to finally stand. Even then, she leaned against a tree for support.

“Weak.”

The word seemed to echo from the woods themselves. But when Isla blinked away the remaining blurriness of her vision, she saw Terra across the clearing. Arms folded in front of her in disappointment.

A pang of regret pierced her heart. “I’m sorry, I—”

“ You .” Terra took a step toward her. “You will be the end of this realm. You will be its ruin.”

Isla’s eyes burned. She didn’t want to be weak. She would be better. She would try harder tomorrow.

No day could be wasted. There were only so many years before the Centennial. The number always felt large in her head, but Terra and Poppy insisted that it was no time at all.

Terra was right in front of her now, frowning at the blood on her temple and long wound down her arm. “Do you think I train you so hard because I enjoy watching you fail? Seeing you bleed?”

Isla wasn’t sure if she should answer.

“ I do not enjoy it . I do it because you are our only hope. And you . . . you . . .” She didn’t finish the sentence, but Isla saw that look in her eyes. The one she noticed often.

Like Isla was not just weak. But like . . . she had done something unforgivable, simply by being born.

Like she was monstrous.

“I’ll try harder,” Isla said, quickly. “I’ll . . . I’ll train earlier. Later. Everything. I promise—I promise I’ll get better. I won’t let you down.”

From Terra’s expression, Isla knew she already had.

Her guardian made her train through the night to make up for the time she had missed while she had been unconscious. Only then was she allowed a bath and healing elixirs.

Poppy, her other guardian, gently wrapped her wounds. “It’s okay, little bird,” she said. “You won’t scar.”

That wasn’t true. Some scars, Isla thought, weren’t visible at all.

By the time Poppy left her quarters, Isla slumped forward. Finally, she was alone. Tears stung her eyes, but she pressed her hands against them. There were only a couple of hours for her to sleep before training began again.

She slipped from her blankets, went into her closet, and pushed past the training clothes. There, in the very back, was her collection. Pieces she had found in her room, over the years, that together formed a mosaic of her mother.

There was the doll, shaped from wood, with its dress made of petals that were somehow still soft and everlasting.

There was the jagged broken comb. She slowly traced her finger along its edge. Did her mother hate when Poppy brushed her hair as much as Isla did?

Did she sometimes get hurt during training too?

Finally . . . there was a paintbrush. The wood was long and slender, with soft hair at the top. Bits of color still clung to the strands.

Was her mother a painter? She didn’t know. She searched and searched, but the room didn’t reveal any other secrets.

“I wish I could fall through time and know you,” she whispered into the darkness of her closet. “Maybe then, I wouldn’t feel so alone.”

Isla wasn’t allowed to leave her room, except for training. It was to keep herself safe. Her people could not find out their ruler was powerless. Their realm was already in enough trouble. Without her power to inject into her lands, people were dying. Hiding her, Terra said, was an act of love.

Isla’s only solace in spending day after day locked away was that she knew her mother had once lived here too. Isla would look for cracks in the wall, marks on the floor, any sign that her family had existed.

Isla fell asleep clutching the paintbrush, desperate to feel a whisper of her mother.

Isla swallowed, a knot formed in her throat—and blinked out of the memory. The child she had seen in the forest was gone.

What—

A branch broke behind her. Isla turned, only to see Lark leaning against a tree, folded over. Panting.

Maybe this was her chance. Isla still had Cronan’s blade and the god-bone. Perhaps she could plunge both right through Lark’s heart while she was weakened.

As if sensing the thought, Lark’s head snapped up. Her green eyes were as bright as ever, even as her body was in tatters.

“That won’t kill me, so don’t waste your precious energy,” she spat. Her frown deepened at Isla’s incredulous expression. “I do not lie.”

Isla wondered why Lark wouldn’t have escaped while she had the chance. She knew Isla wanted her dead.

But Lark shuddered, looking haunted.

“You see them too,” Isla said. “The memories.”

Lark sighed. “This is a wicked place. The forest forces you to walk through your past.”

“Which way do we go?” Isla asked. She spun around and saw nothing but endless woods on all sides. She didn’t even know where her destination was.

“The only way out is through,” Lark grumbled. She took a step—

And Lark’s eyes went blank, like their spark had been smothered. She stood still as a corpse, her brow furrowed in concentration.

Was that what Isla had looked like, while she had walked through her memories?

Isla realized a person could be lost in these woods forever. Lost in their own mind. She exhaled deeply, the reality of her situation truly crashing upon her. Lark was a monster. She had killed hundreds of people, including Wren. And Remlar. But they had to work together, to keep each other moving forward when the other was ensnared by the past. She could only hope that Lark didn’t kill her when she herself was unresponsive.

Isla took her ancestor’s arm, picked a direction, and started walking.