Crowntide by Alex Aster - 14

An hour later, Lark gasped, released from a memory’s snare. Isla wondered what her ancestor had seen. Centuries of memories? Only an hour’s worth? She didn’t know how the time lined up—if it was compressed, like dreaming.

Lark ripped her arm from Isla’s grip the moment she was conscious.

Isla tried to keep her focus forward, as if that could prevent her from falling into another memory. Even if Lark needed her to escape the forest . . . what if they reached the end of the woods while Isla was stuck in her own mind? She would be an easy target for Lark.

“It must be strange for you. Being in a forest you have no control over,” Isla said.

Lark gave her a scathing look, as if speaking to her was an unforgivable crime.

Isla just shrugged a shoulder. “I’m used to it. It was only recently that I had a connection to nature at all.” She glanced at these strange trees. They were ancient, and even with her powers muted, she could feel the strange power that lived within them. “How did this place survive?” she asked. She had believed that Cronan had reduced this entire world to ashes . . . but clearly, parts of it remained.

Lark didn’t respond. Not that Isla expected her to. Still, Isla clenched her fists in frustration. Her ancestor was from here. She knew Cronan. She had all the answers Isla needed.

But she was her enemy.

Lark was ancient. Untrusting. Isla had portaled them to Skyshade. Lark had left her for dead buried miles under the ground. The only reason they were allies now was because of these strange woods.

This could be Isla’s only chance to ask her ancestor questions. Maybe . . . maybe if she just asked the right one, she could get her to talk.

She turned to Lark—but instead, she saw herself. Darting around a tree and vanishing from view.

No .

She blinked and was plunged back into time.

Isla was surrounded by the trees of a different forest—one she would know anywhere. She glanced down and found a sword gripped in her hand. A twig snapped in front of her, and she looked up to see Terra in an offensive stance with two blades pointed at her. By the level of blade she was using, Isla guessed this was maybe five or six years ago.

Before she could look for more clues of the time that had passed, Terra was upon her, swords slicing impossibly fast, and it took all of Isla’s focus to deflect her guardian’s advances. No matter how fast Isla moved, she couldn’t block both blades.

Isla’s world erupted in pain as one of Terra’s swords tore down her side. Blood seeped through her clothing. Still, teeth gritted, she managed to avoid another strike — but then her guardian turned and stabbed her in the stomach.

A sob nearly spilled from her lips. She just barely closed her mouth against it.

But Terra could tell. Could tell she was about to break. And that was unacceptable. Terra advanced, struck again—and this wound was deeper. Isla’s knees hit the ground as pain exploded behind her eyelids. She struggled to breathe.

Slowly, she peered up at her guardian. And for once, she felt not worthlessness, not shame—but rage.

“This isn’t fair,” Isla yelled, and she couldn’t find it within her to regret the words. What would her guardian do to her that she hadn’t already done before? Isla’s voice was steady. “Two blades against one isn’t fair .”

Terra only smirked. “Do you think anyone will care about fairness at the Centennial? Do you think you will be fighting on equal footing?” She shook her head, then threw both swords to the side. “You don’t want blades? Fine.”

She raised her arms, and the forest swelled with her. The trees around them grew, curved, until they blocked out the sunlight. Isla was plunged into near-darkness.

Vines slithered around her like snakes. They curled around her body, pinning her down to the ground. Her head hit the solid dirt.

A growl escaped her lips as she fought their hold, as she fought to command these woods the way she was supposed to be able to, as the Wildling ruler.

But the woods obeyed Terra, not Isla. She could hear her guardian’s voice right above her.

“You will be fighting against power , foolish girl. And power is not merciful at all.”

With that, the forest fell upon her.

Isla gasped as wood cut through her bones, skewering her to the forest floor. As leaves smothered her screams. As her own realm became a weapon against her.

She wished desperately she was the one who could wield it. That she was not pinned here, powerless. Bleeding everywhere. Gasping with hurt. But Terra was right. She was weak. Useless.

It might have been minutes or hours later when Poppy’s voice broke through the pain. “What did you do?” she demanded. She had never heard her guardian so outraged. “You could have killed her! You could have killed us all.”

She heard Terra’s huff of a laugh. “Do you think I’m that unskilled, Poppy?”

No. Terra had mastered Wilding abilities, and she had ensured the trees had only pierced Isla’s limbs. Painful—but not enough to kill her. Not anything the elixirs couldn’t undo. “I think you’re cruel,” she said. “She . . . she would never have wanted this.”

She . They were talking about her mother. The blood loss was dragging her under. She fought for consciousness, if only to hear more. But she was slipping away, carried off by the endless agony in her bones.

“If she was here, we wouldn’t be dealing with this,” Terra said, her voice sharp with emotion. “We loved her. And she betrayed us . . . she betrayed us all.”

Isla knew that part of the story. The cautionary tale of her mother falling in love, despite the curse, leading to both her parents’ deaths. It had happened the day Isla was born.

This story was a warning against love. It proved love was ruinous, especially for rulers. A message her guardians seemed especially eager to make clear, given Isla didn’t suffer from her realm’s curse.

She didn’t eat hearts to survive. She wouldn’t need to kill whoever she fell in love with. Not that she ever had a chance to, locked in her room.

It was the other reason she was hidden away, far from notice. If anyone realized she didn’t suffer from the bloodthirsty Wildling curse, they might guess at what else she was lacking.

“Isla—she is not her mother,” Poppy finally said.

Isla didn’t know what that meant. If it was a good thing or a bad thing.

A bad thing , Isla decided, when she heard Terra say, “That’s the problem, isn’t it?”

With that, all the brush that was crushing her lifted away. Poppy gasped. Isla could hardly feel her body anymore. All she could do was blink up at the sun.

Its warmth was an anchor. A promise—that there would be light at the end of this darkness.

There had to be an end to this pain.

There had to be better days and nights ahead.

She decided at that moment that she would survive the Centennial. Not just for her guardians, or for her people, but for herself .

She would break the curse upon her people and then she would break herself out of this prison.

She clung to that the entire time Poppy pulled wood from her skin, splashed the elixir on her wounds, set her broken bones.

As she drifted into sleep, she thought about a world beyond her room. A world beyond the patch of forest she trained in. A world where she could finally be free to discover who she was, without the heaviness of this crown. That dream was shattered by a voice through the darkness.

“What is this, little bird?”

It took Isla a moment to fully wake. She wiped the sleep from her eyes and took in Terra standing in the center of her room.

Holding her collection.

The doll. The comb. The paintbrush.

Roaring filled Isla’s ears. Her mouth went suddenly dry, and she swallowed. “It’s nothing, I—”

“I found these hidden in the corner of your closet. It’s clearly not nothing.”

Terra examined the objects, frowning in recognition. “These were your mother’s,” she said.

Panic flooded through Isla’s veins, but she fought to keep her voice steady. “Yes. I—I just wanted to . . . I just—” She couldn’t find the words, didn’t know how to convince Terra to let her keep them. She didn’t know what to say . . . so she would beg. “ Please .”

That one word seemed to seal her fate. Terra’s gaze slowly met hers again. “This is your problem, Isla. You are weak. You are foolish. You cling to”—she shook the contents in her hands—“meaningless things, when you should be solely focused on training.”

“I am focused. I just—” Her voice broke with a sob. “ Please— ”

Terra’s hand splayed—

And she turned the wood and bone to dust.

“No!” Isla screamed, the word a guttural rasp at the back of her throat as she lurched out of bed. Everything she had from her mother . . . gone .

She knelt and reached for the ashes, wishing she had any power at all to turn them back into what they were.

Terra only shook her head. She stepped over the pile, leaving Isla on her knees, sobbing.

Isla wrapped her arms around herself, rocking back and forth. “No. No . . .” she whispered. Her body ached as she moved, but she didn’t care. This pain was so much worse than any of her injuries.

“I want to leave,” she said to a quiet night that never listened. “I want—I want to get out of here. Please ,” she begged anyone. Everyone . “I want, I just want—”

She clawed at the floorboards like an animal, as if she could claw her way out of this room, out of this life . Like if she just wished hard enough, someone would hear her and give her what she wanted—freedom.

She dragged her hands across the panel—and one of its corners lifted.

Isla froze, shooting a look at the door. It was closed. Terra and Poppy wouldn’t be back until the next morning for training. With trembling fingers, she slowly lifted the floorboard high. Higher.

Until it revealed a hidden compartment.

And she knew in her very soul that this was something left behind by her mother. For her . Isla reached inside . . . and pulled out a long, thin stick made of a strange material. It looked almost like her mother’s paintbrush, without the end. It glimmered in her hand, shining silver before settling.

She felt a jolt, as if her blood was called to it.

She dropped the stick, and it clattered to the floor, rolling a few feet away. But . . . but for a moment . . . she saw it. A tiny window.

The flash of somewhere else completely.

Slowly, she reached for the stick again and pressed its point to the floor. There was a burst of sparks before a keyhole formed, and she knelt, pressing her eye to it.

There, she glimpsed a world with land that sloped high into the clouds. Mountains. She had only ever seen pictures of them in one of the books she got as a reward for training. Their tops were covered in white—snow, Isla realized. She wondered if it was as cold to the touch as her books said.

She spent the entire night looking through the keyhole, into another world, and, for the first time, she didn’t feel alone.

Isla awoke from the memory to blinding pain and darkness.

Lark was killing her. That was her first thought. She seized, reaching for her sword—only for her vision to clear enough to see her ancestor had it in her hand.

She wasn’t about to kill Isla with it, though. She was battling something above her.

“Nice of you to wake up,” Lark spat. Her teeth gritted as she fought off a human-like creature with pallid skin, sharp claws, and fangs that were already dripping blood. It wore tattered green fabric and snarled at Lark.

Isla blinked—and the beast became a beautiful woman, with long, smooth hair, glimmering skin, and eyes like diamonds.

But in the next instant, the creature was back, slashing her claws across Lark’s chest. Isla’s ancestor folded over, the sword held loosely in front of her. She was either too weakened from this world and her injuries to fight, or she had never been skilled with weapons at all, having always relied on her powers.

Isla was no stranger to powerlessness. And perhaps that would now be the key to their survival.

She raced forward, wincing as she realized the blood on the creature’s teeth hadn’t been just from Lark. Her calf was torn almost completely. But she had been trained to fight, even with injuries.

She reached her arm out. “Throw it!” she said.

Lark hesitated. The creature lurched forward, and the Wildling wasn’t able to block it before it sank its teeth into her shoulder.

She bellowed and heaved the sword to Isla.

Isla caught it. She smiled, feeling the metal against her palm.

With one fluid arch, the creature’s head was on the ground.

Isla folded over. That one simple movement had cost her, and she panted. This entire planet was like a poison, draining both her powers and strength. She stared at the body, now motionless on the ground, remembering the flash of what she had seen. The bitter luster of this place clearly wasn’t just affecting her.

“They weren’t always like this,” Isla said, and Lark scoffed as she pressed a hand to her shoulder.

Of course, Lark already knew that. She must have seen them when they were the glimmering beings Isla had only glimpsed.

Cronan hadn’t only disrupted this world . . . he had cursed it. Isla could feel the sheen of darkness everywhere, like everything that had dared to survive had been changed. Distorted.

Would that happen to them, if they stayed here long enough?

Lark looked like she was going to say something. Perhaps make a comment about what this world used to be like. But the moment her lips parted—

She froze.

Not again , Isla thought, taking her ancestor’s arm. Her shoulder was bleeding. Her chest was in ruins.

Isla had spent hours in her last memory. Who knew how long Lark would be trapped in hers? Isla could barely walk straight with her injured leg. Still, she sighed and dragged Lark along, hoping they wouldn’t face anything else.

That was when the trees to her left and right began to tremble.

Something was coming. Isla gripped Lark’s arm tighter and ran, her calf roaring with pain.

No. She was wrong.

It was already here.

Bark splintered around her as a woman fully broke out of the closest tree. Then another, from behind her. Wood cracked like thunder as figure after figure emerged from the forest on all sides. The women were half bark, half rotted flesh and sinew, holding gnarled roots shaped into weapons. Their eyes were onyx holes. Lifeless.

They controlled this forest. Isla took one look at them—

And ran.

Lark’s feet stumbled next to her. She was still lost in her mind, but at least she could use her legs.

“Wake up!” Isla screamed, pressing into the wound on Lark’s shoulder, hoping the pain would knock her from her mind. But it didn’t work. And the whole forest was shaking now, as if an entire army awaited them in these trees. Isla raced as fast as she could, ignoring her injury with focus honed from years of training.

An arm shattered through the tree she was passing, gripping Isla’s neck with a hand hard as wood. She dropped Lark’s arm, and her ancestor stood there blankly, useless to help her. The bark-crusted woman lifted Isla into the air with extraordinary strength. Isla’s legs scrambled for purchase, a choking sound leaving her lips. Her vision was starting to dim.

With every shred of energy she had left, she raised her sword hand—and cut the woman’s arm clean off. Isla collapsed into a heap on the leaves and dirt and gasped for air. Her lungs felt like they could burst with the effort.

She only allowed herself a moment before she scrambled to her feet, dragging Lark behind her. But she knew there was no outrunning this. Tree after tree burst around them until they were surrounded by a legion. An army of women closing in.

And the women . . . they reminded her of—

There was a girl, in the back of the group. With green eyes, wild dark hair, and freckles splashed across her cheeks.

No . Isla clung to consciousness. Lark was already out. They would both die if she got sucked into another memory now. She ran to the closest tree and shredded her hand down it, hoping the pain would keep her grounded.

It didn’t work. Her vision began to fog. The women began to close in, jagged blades lifted, sharp teeth bared. Closer. Closer. Isla lifted her sword, but even if she could remain awake, she was wildly outnumbered.

There was one moment of stillness, of silence. Then all the warrior women lunged at her as one, weapons lifted.

And as Isla was swept back into the past, she was certain she wouldn’t survive the present.