Crowntide by Alex Aster - 8

Hours later, the horse began to slow.

It seemed these scavengers didn’t have much water. Isla’s throat burned with thirst as she watched the captors argue over a pouch before giving it to the horse. Another one of them looked up at the sky, eyes narrowed, shook his head, then stalked over to the cart.

He lifted the tarp, and Isla dry-heaved at the stench. With hurried movements, and yells of indignation from the others, he began tossing bodies onto the sand. All of them mangled. Some missing entire limbs. He threw them far and wide.

Then, they kept going. They only made it a few minutes, down the side of a dusty hill, when the same man suddenly tensed, body jolting. He turned.

An arrow was sticking through his brow. He stepped once more before collapsing.

Isla ducked as all hell broke loose.

Arrows whistled through the ash-heavy air, landing in the sand, until one pierced right through a scavenger’s chest. He went down. The dust turned crimson below him. Only two remained.

One of those two raised her arms, and the sand in the distance shifted like a blanket before dancing in the air like a glittering galaxy. A muffled scream sounded as someone was buried, and the arrows stopped.

Isla turned toward the sound of a battle cry as six people crested a dune, weapons raised. Their swords and daggers were no more than scrap metal.

Her two remaining captors swept their arms in coordinated movements, and the sand smothered them all like a tidal wave.

The desert trembled with their screams and attempts to claw their way out. It didn’t seem like they had powers . . . or perhaps they could not access them, not like her captors could. The scavengers kept their hold, until the fight stopped. Only then did they retrieve their lifeless bodies. They picked at them, emptying their pockets. There was a shout of triumph when a canteen of water was found, followed by two others.

One of those canteens was roughly pressed to Isla’s lips. This close, she noticed something around the scavenger’s neck. A shard of glittering silver. Not shademade metal, no . . . almost like a piece of a storm. Was that why some could wield, and some couldn’t?

Her hair was roughly pulled back, forcing her to drink. Not that she needed to be forced. She gulped the water down desperately. Some of it drippled over her chin, and the way her skin stung made her realize she was burning in this heat.

Lark didn’t need water like Isla did, she knew that. Her ancestor had been trapped for centuries underground by Cronan. But the block on her abilities here had clearly taken its toll. Lark accepted the water, surprising Isla with her ability to keep still and quiet. Why wasn’t Lark trying to get away? Was she saving her energy? What did she know that Isla didn’t? When the scavenger left, Isla watched Lark’s chest slowly piece together, a little closer to fully healed.

The bodies were left behind as the cart kept moving.

Isla needed another plan, another way to escape. Who knew where they were being taken, and what awaited them there?

Still . . . she wouldn’t survive out here on her own. Not with the creatures that lurked in the sands, and the scavengers, and the clear lack of resources.

Though this world had been decimated, there were clearly survivors. They had to have food. Shelter. But where?

Did they all serve Cronan? Did they fear him? Could she try to make allies?

Who would listen to her? She wouldn’t even want to work with her, powerless as she was. She didn’t know anything about this world, beyond this wasteland. Maybe she could speak to her captors. She hadn’t tried yet.

“Where are you taking us?” she said, her voice rough and hoarse.

They didn’t even glance at her.

“Do you serve Cronan?”

Isla noticed the slight tightening of one of the captors’ shoulders. Still, they all remained silent.

“What is that around your neck?”

Silence.

“Do you—”

Lark clicked her tongue. “My line certainly devolved over time. Coming to another world without a single plan . . .”

Isla flashed her teeth at her. “My goal was to get you far away from my world,” she spat. “This is where you’re from. You’re home.” Isla’s eyes dipped to the still gaping chest. “It seems you’re not welcomed here.”

Lark said nothing. She just looked at Isla as if she was a fool with no idea what she had walked into.

Cronan, Lark, and Horus—the original Nightshade, Wildling, and Sunling founders of Lightlark—had escaped this world to build a better one. They had taken their people with them.

Only now did Isla wonder what, exactly, they had been escaping.

Had Cronan turned this place to ruin after he had returned? Or had this been why they fled in the first place? Why had the others taken Cronan with them?

Lark knew the answers to these questions. Of course, she did—she had been there. But Isla knew she wouldn’t tell her. Lark only smirked, as if she could sense Isla’s thoughts.

“So young. So reckless,” Lark said. “Solving one problem by creating an even greater one.”

Isla had a retort on her tongue when she felt something hit the top of her head with a force that made her jolt. An attack? No. A cool droplet of water slipped right between her brows.

Rain.

She slowly lifted her head to the sky, only to see that its color had abruptly darkened into violet and blue, closer to the sky back home. Other parts were purple and green. The rain picked up slowly, wiping her face clean of the dust that had coated it. She opened her mouth and nearly cried as the fresh water smoothed down her throat.

Though rain was a welcomed sight in a place like this, Isla knew something was very wrong. Because these scavengers had defended their loot for days. Against creatures. Against other scavengers.

But at the first sign of the sky turning, they abandoned their cart and prisoners—and ran.

The weather was intensifying into a storm. Isla could feel its energy, just as she felt the force of the ones that had formed over Nightshade. This tempest, though . . . it was infinitely stronger.

And though the storms on Nightshade—brought in from Skyshade and filled with shademade metal—had leeched her powers . . . the ones here seemed to have the opposite effect.

Her abilities awoke, one by one, and it felt better than the sip of water in the desert. It felt like sinking into a cold pool. It felt like she could finally fully breathe. She groaned, stretching out her fingers. She could feel her blood igniting, her strength returning.

She wasn’t the only one.

Lark laughed, long and slow. She straightened, flexed her hands—and broke through the rope. As the sky began to shift, she rolled her shoulders back, and her chest healed before Isla’s eyes.

Lark turned to Isla, gaze blazing. “You really should have stayed buried,” she said. She lifted an arm over her head.

Above, a storm portal opened, as if called to her power. Through the swirling clouds, it looked like a window to another world completely, one with an endless stretch of enormous trees. A thick forest of towering pines.

Lark made a fist—and sent it all hurtling down toward Isla.