Crowntide by Alex Aster - 3

Grim wouldn’t sleep until he found her. So late that night, in the silence of the castle that was once full of her voice, he sat at the table and remembered the night he had decided to claim that gemstone.

It was right after he had asked Isla to be his wife. He was the first in his line to ever get married, but he knew tradition called for a diamond to place around her neck. She deserved only the most powerful stone in the universe.

She deserved Infinite.

Everyone who had attempted to claim the diamond had been killed in the process, including his own father, cursed until the end of his days. None of that scared Grim. He would risk anything to keep Isla alive for good after tying his life to hers—which he knew from the start was a temporary solution. The stone might be the only thing powerful enough to save her.

He had tried to portal directly to Atlas, the island where Infinite waited to be claimed, but there was a shield around it. No matter. He portaled as close as he could with a boat and would just have to paddle the rest of the way. The mere thought of losing her had him rowing at a frantic pace through the ice-cold water.

The bottom of his boat shredded as it washed upon a rock-crusted shore. Rising just beyond it was a wall of that same jagged stone. He tipped his head back but couldn’t see the top. It reminded him of his climb up to the ancient blacksmith, with Isla.

This place might have looked similar—but it felt decidedly different.

The moment he stepped foot on the rough crust of land, his every sense was ripped away.

He could no longer hear the waves crashing against the rock, the boat creaking with the tide. The brine of the sea vanished. His vision was extinguished, like the moon and all of the stars had sputtered out above him. He could barely feel his own body.

He exhaled roughly through his nose as he took a hesitant step forward. The living night rippled around him, thick and heavy, pulling him like gravity.

With a flash of pain, the darkness pierced his mind and spoke in a voice that scraped the inside of his skull like a claw, circling around and around.

Take one more step, and your life will hang in the balance , it said. A warning. The last he would get, Grim figured.

But he didn’t come here to cower at the first challenge. He took another step forward.

His senses returned to him in a rush. He was facing a wall of pointed black rocks. The cliffside he was meant to climb.

With a steadying breath, he gripped the pointed stones, flinching as they cut his palms, his blood running down his hands . . . and he began his ascent. He moved for several minutes without any distractions. Just him and strength that he had honed over centuries. Just the sharp bite of pain he was used to.

This wasn’t so bad. Any climb was just repetition. If he could maintain this rhythm, he could make it to the top. He could do this. He reached for his next handhold—

And was on a battlefield, centuries ago. The ground at his feet was blackened ash. Before him lay a field of light green grass that was slowly shriveling away with his every step.

The legion before him was perfectly positioned. If he loosened his hold on his emotions and allowed himself to feel theirs, he had no doubt he would be hit with a wall of crushing fear. Good. They should be afraid. With a flick of his hand, his shadows shot forward, spiraling through the air like a dark wind, scything them down, then circling back, razing the entire battalion.

It was too easy. Almost boring. The men bellowed, some cried, some pissed themselves. All were soon bleeding out. Grim didn’t care. They were faceless. Meaningless.

Solider after soldier fell—until only one remained. But instead of pointlessly raising his sword . . . the man raised his hands and sank to his knees.

“Please,” he said, his gaze steady. He did not seem afraid. Not for himself, anyway. “I have a wife and children I love very much. Please . . . allow me the mercy of returning home to them.”

Grim’s emotions had been folded away long ago. It was easier to kill without them. So, as the man’s lips parted in another plea—

Grim gutted him. The man choked, then looked down as his intestines fell into his hands. His expression was one of pure and utter sadness. Of surprise. Of momentous loss.

Grim stepped on his entrails on his way to the next legion he would cut down.

For years, that was his entire existence. He was his father’s sword. He lived without remorse. Without any feeling at all. Because the alternative was to be filled with regret and pain so fierce, he wouldn’t be able to withstand it. He wouldn’t be able to do what was needed, to ensure his sister’s death—along with the deaths of all his other siblings—wasn’t for nothing.

Grim’s stomach twisted, reliving the man’s demise. Seeing the desperation on his face. Now Grim knew he would do the same. He, the ruler of Nightshade, would gladly beg on his knees for a chance to spend even one more second with Isla.

The regret sunk below his ribs. And the wall seemed to sense that. It rippled back into his vision, all at once.

As he started to climb again, the darkness around him swirled. Through the quiet night, he heard the faint echoes of battle. Smothered screams. Slowly, he looked up and instead of the stars, he saw a tunnel of memories awaiting him, of all the people he had cut down during his centuries as a warrior.

Fuck. He would have to relive every death, every mistake. That was going to be his journey to claiming the diamond. He’d have to face this endless pain that he had pushed away for so long.

Everything within him pleaded to turn around. To start his descent . . .

But he knew what awaited beyond this test. That diamond could save Isla.

Isla. His wife. His world. His universe.

He thought of the way she had smiled in that field of nightbane, when he had gotten down on both knees to beg her to be with him forever. He never knew he could feel such pure unfiltered ecstasy after centuries of misery.

She was his eternal bliss. For her, he would face anything.

So he kept going. Through the shame and regret and sadness, Isla’s love was like a shield, protecting him from his worst self.

He climbed to the next death. The next. The next.

How they begged. How they fought. How they pleaded .

Over and over and over, he felt it all, crashing into him like a relentless wave, trying to pull him off this cliff. Centuries before, it would be enough to ruin him, to make him give up, to make him lose his grip on this rockface. But Isla was a rope, pulling him upward.

Reliving centuries worth of killing must have taken hours. Maybe days. He didn’t know. It was still dark when he could finally see the edge of the cliff above him. He was almost at the top. His heart soared with hope.

“So,” a familiar voice said. “You decided to try and claim Infinite.”

He would know that voice anywhere.

Laila . His sister.

He blinked and his hands were far smaller, far smoother, as they moved up a snowy hill instead of a jagged rockface. He swallowed. Still, he continued, climbing with far less strength, before he finally reached the top of the frost-slicked mountain.

And there she was. Her cat-like eyes were twinkling with mischief. He took a shuddering breath, seeing her. He almost couldn’t move. Laila was the one who had first told him about the diamond, about what infinite meant.

His sister sighed impatiently, shaking her head, her crudely cut hair swinging. “What is it? Still feel guilty for what you did to me?”

Of course, he still felt guilty. That guilt had nearly eaten him alive over the centuries. It was why he had turned his emotions off for years. The pain had been too great.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice that of a child. Of the twelve-year-old boy who had killed his sister when he lost control of his shadows. He was never meant to be the one who lived. He had always wanted it to be her.

Laila took a step toward him, and her smile dropped. “Sorry doesn’t bring me back,” she hissed, taking another step. “You knew I wanted to be ruler. You knew I would have put our realm above everything.”

“I know,” he said, meaning it. “I never wanted this.”

She laughed, her head falling back. He could see the faint scars along her throat. “Yet, this is how it is.” Her cold eyes met his. “You promised yourself my death would not be for nothing. That you would follow your duty to protect our people.”

It was true. It was the only way he could keep going, past his hatred for his father. Past his hatred for himself , over what he had done.

Laila sneered at him. “Now, look at you. Beholden to one woman. Willing to risk everyone and everything for her life.”

In a flash, all those scars on her body broke open. Her throat was suddenly sliced across and gushing blood. Crimson began to seep through her clothes, until it was dripping onto the snow, dark and glittering.

“What about my life?” his sister asked, choking on the words. “What about the life you took from me?”

Grim couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t move. His body was numb, and he—no. It was too much, seeing her like this. Seeing what he had done.

She lurched toward him. He managed to break free from his panic to stumble back and heard ice falling down the steep slope of the hill. It clattered down the cliffside.

Laila didn’t stop. She surged closer and closer until Grim was nearly at the hill’s edge, and he could smell the blood on her. It puddled toward his boots. “What about our realm?” she demanded. “What about our legacy? What about all of us who died for you to become heir?”

He took another step back. He could feel the wind behind him.

She huffed a cruel laugh. “You bound your life to hers, and now every single person in your realm is at risk.” She looked at him with nothing short of disgust. “Father always said love kills kingdoms. Congratulations. It seems you’re close.”

Then, she shoved him right off the edge.

As Grim plummeted, reality suddenly returned to his vision and he saw a rush of black, his hands sliding down the rock— no . He gripped the wall with all his might, skin shredding in the process, and managed to stop his descent. His legs swung in the open air beneath him, his stomach turning.

Too close.

With a groan, he hauled himself higher, his palms slick with blood, his arms trembling. He found placements for his feet. His heart was racing, right against the rockface. He closed his eyes against the memories, against the pain.

Everything he had tried to bury was rearing up, and he wasn’t strong enough. He couldn’t keep going.

But he had to. For Isla. For them .

He took a shaking breath. His soul was in tatters, but hers was forever bound to his, and he leaned on that strength. For he was not alone. He had her in his heart, and that was enough to make it through impossible journeys. It was enough to reach the pit of his strength and find that there was more .

This island had tried to break him. But it was no match for who he was when loved by her.

“Nothing, nothing you could show me will keep me from completing this climb,” he said to the sky as he hauled himself up another few feet. His voice was hoarse from thirst but unwavering. “I don’t care what you throw at me. I’m getting that diamond for my wife.”

Through the star-speckled darkness, a voice as sharp as a carving knife spoke a single word into his mind: Why?

“Because I love her,” Grim said, like it was the most natural thing in the world. “Which means I will do anything to save her.”

The voice hummed, making his skull tremble with its resonance. And just how strong is that love?

“Stronger than you,” he said.

The voice laughed.

“It is infinite,” Grim said.

Before he could say anything else, a roar sounded from above. And a sharp, battering wind barreled right toward him. He clung to the rock, gritting his teeth as the tempest fought to tear him off. The storm howled around him like a beast. He tried to push against it, to haul himself up those last few yards, but he might as well have been fighting a hurricane. He bellowed, forcing himself forward a few inches—

And was thrust back into a whorl of memories. But they weren’t his.

They were hers . Key moments in her life.

He saw the death of countless Wildlings, because she didn’t know how to wield her powers.

He saw the village Isla decimated. Hundreds of people turned to ash. An entire village razed to the ground in seconds.

You love . . . her ? the voice asked, shrill with cruelty. This blight? This . . . monster ?

Even as this brutal wind fought to tear him away, Grim couldn’t help but laugh. It echoed against the spiked shards of stone he couldn’t see.

“Yes, I love her,” Grim said. “I love her at her weakest, at her strongest, at her best, at her worst. Ours is not a perfect love but a bleeding one. Not a flawless love but a relentless one. I have seen the worst in her, and she has seen the worst in me. And yet . . . I love her as much at her worst as I do at her best. I love her for everything she is and everything she isn’t. And that . . . that is why our love is infinite.”

The voice seemed to consider his words. Grim felt it wriggling through his thoughts, as if searching for any hint of hesitation or deception. And if she betrayed you? If she . . . killed you?

He laughed again, a huff against the cold night air. “Then I would thank her for giving me any of her time at all.”

The wind fell away. Grim almost fell with it. But he kept his grip, and the only thing that was left was that voice, buried in the darkest corner of his mind.

What do you want most? Why do you truly want this diamond? Power? Riches?

Grim didn’t waste his time, hurrying up the rest of the rockface, and said, “I don’t want power. I don’t want riches. I want something far more precious. I want her . Forever. Until the end of time, and then a while after that. That is all I want.”

He could feel a claw scraping through his thoughts. Through his very soul , with blade-like precision. Burrowing. Searching.

His body tensed as he felt a cut deep within himself, but he did not stop moving. And finally, that voice was ripped from his head. Along with a small, critical part of him.

Finally, his hand gripped the edge.

He pulled himself into a cave and collapsed against the ground, his heart hammering against the smooth, lustrous stone. He had used almost all his strength, both physical and mental. Finally, he looked up, dark hair plastered to his face in sweat. And there, in the center of this cave, sat a magnificent black diamond.

He could feel its power in his bones, in his blood, in his soul. Endless, infinite power. Calling out. Drawing in. Awakening. Uncurling.

He was struck by how much he didn’t want to claim it. He didn’t want more power.

But it wasn’t for him.

“Will this save her?” he asked the cave.

And in its echo, he heard a response. It will give you your greatest wish . Them. Together. Forever .

With that, he reached for the diamond.

And he claimed it.

In that moment, he knew for certain that it was the most powerful object in the entire universe. He could feel the ancient energy shifting within the gem.

The journey was worth it. All of it, every obstacle. This would keep her safe. It had to.

For Grim had the unsettling thought that Isla’s troubles were only just beginning.