Skyshade

Isla resolves to gain Grim’s trust so that she will be included in all of his plans and, ultimately, be able to thwart his efforts to use the portal. She hides the golden necklace Oro gifted her and dons a black diamond necklace from Grim instead. Isla secretly teleports most of Nightshade’s healing elixir to Lightlark in the hope that it will save the lives of injured soldiers. Many of Grim’s subjects have loathed Isla since he made her his queen, and their hatred toward her is deeper now because she fought on the opposing side of the war. During a council meeting, a soldier named Tynan is furious that Nightshade’s forces retreated even though they were winning, and he blames Isla. Grim forces Tynan to prostrate himself before the queen and then leads his people to believe that Isla made Oro fall in love with her so that she could gain access to his power. After the meeting, Grim assures Isla that he has no intention of invading Lightlark and that he merely told his people what they want to hear. He informs her that Nightshade will soon be struck by supernatural storms accompanied by illnesses and beasts. She promises to help him find a solution to the storms, and she hopes this will buy her the time she needs to find an alternative to the portal.

Afraid that her emotions will unleash her powers and harm more innocent people, Isla asks a blacksmith to create a device that can restrain her power. The man once tried to kill her so that he could use her magical blood in his inventions, but he agrees to help her because she is the only person who can break the curse keeping him immortal and grant him “the mercy of rest” (23). She reluctantly agrees to his terms, and he crafts two bracelets made of a glittering metal called shademade, which seal away her powers.

When Grim sees the bracelets, he tells her that she doesn’t need to hide herself, especially from him. He has the power to sense emotions, so he knows that part of Isla still loves him. She angrily retorts, “You’re only lying to yourself if you thought waging a war would get me back here to be your loving, naïve, idiotic wife!” (27). Grim pleads with Isla to stay with him even if she hates him, but she blames him for the distance between them and storms off.

Isla decides that her best hope of changing her fate is finding one of the deceased oracle’s sisters. Cleo, the ruler of Moonling, has captured them and is likely sailing toward Nightshade. Isla remembers Wraith, the little black dragon she nursed back to health during the year of her marriage to Grim. The dragon is now fully grown and bonded with Grim the way that Isla is bonded with her leopard, Lynx. When the dragon suddenly takes flight with Isla and Grim on his back, she has to cling tightly to Grim to keep from falling and feels “an ember of heat” in her stomach (33). When they land, he apologizes to Isla for taking away her memories, and she makes him promise never to keep his plans from her again. Isla realizes that Wraith could help her search for Cleo’s fleet, so she asks Grim to teach her how to ride the dragon. Wraith carries Isla and Grim to a village that was struck by a storm a few years ago. The villagers describe a murderous, shadowy monster with many teeth, and an elderly woman somberly calls the tempests “harbingers of the end” (42).

When a storm approaches the castle, Isla uses the tempest as a cover so she can search for Cleo’s fleet. Wraith carries Isla through battering winds and rain, and he saves her when she falls off his back. Isla spots Cleo’s fleet and uses her starstick to teleport herself aboard the Moonling ruler’s vessel. Cleo claims that she obtained the oracles’ prophecies and killed them so that she would have exclusive knowledge of the future. Isla begs Cleo for information, but she refuses. All the Moonling wants is to be reunited with her deceased child, and the only way for her to do so is to use the portal and doom Lightlark. With no hope of the oracles’ help, Isla fears that she will have to kill either Oro or Grim.

The next morning, Isla’s guardians, Terra and Poppy, pay her a visit. Isla believes the women killed her parents, but Terra says that this is not true. The guardians inform Grim and Isla that the recent storm killed nearly all of the nightbane used to make healing elixirs. Isla needs more information about the tempests. Grim informs her that although Nightshade’s prophet is dead, members of his order will speak to those who make an arduous climb up their mountain. Grim resolves to join Isla on the trek because he is the only person who has survived the journey in a century. The order refused to speak to him because his father killed the prophet, but he knows the way. Isla would prefer to go alone, but she recognizes that his fate is bound to hers.

Isla and Grim begin their ascent up the prophet-followers’ mountain. When creatures with horns and talons chase them, Isla leaves the path Grim knows and enters a tunnel too narrow for the monsters to pass. As they travel, Grim explains that he conspired with Aurora because he thought that Oro had to fall in love with Isla to fulfill the prophecy, granting Grim the power to keep Isla alive for centuries. Grim says that she’s meant to use her godlike power, but Isla wishes Grim hadn’t brought her back to life and declares that she hates him. When the tunnel suddenly fills with water, Isla fears that they will drown and apologizes to Grim. At her suggestion, they stop fighting the current and let it carry them to safety instead. To stave off hypothermia, Isla and Grim take off their soaked outer layers and fall asleep embracing one another.

When she awakens, Isla is filled with desire for Grim, but she quickly dresses, and they resume their journey. Their path is blocked by a monster that senses blood, and Isla slays it by cutting her leg and tricking the creature into leaping onto her sword. The prophet’s followers permit Isla to enter their base but make Grim wait outside. A woman named Eta tells Isla that the storms on Nightshade can be stopped by closing the portal on Nightshade, something Isla and Grim didn’t know existed. Eta refuses to reveal everything the prophet wrote about Isla, but she tells her, “[Y]ou will plunge a blade into a powerful heart, and it will mark the start of a new age” (81). The woman reveals that a Wildling ruined the nightbane and that Isla must follow the snakes to find the traitor before they destroy her. She also tells Isla that an augur who reads blood may be able to tell her how long she has left to live.

Isla and Grim return to his palace, where he tends to her injuries with healing elixir. Isla admits that she sent most of the elixir to Lightlark. This pains Grim, but he tries to understand the ties of love and trust that bind her to Lightlark. He promises that he will “learn the right way to love” her if she gives him another chance (86).

Isla visits Azul, the Skylings’ ruler, to obtain information about storms. He urges her to leave Grim and return to Oro. Isla has never told anyone the prophecy about her, but she tells Azul because her heart clouds her judgment and she wants someone to stop her from making a bad decision. Their conversation turns to the tempests that threaten the realms, and Azul says that he’s seen omens of “a storm to end all storms” (89). He gives her a bird called a stormfinch that can sense storms’ approach. Azul also gives her a stormstone ring that can lead her to a storm’s source and the diamond ring she asked him to keep safe before the battle. She’s touched by his trust in her but doesn’t believe she deserves it. Next, Isla goes to her old room on the Wildling newland and recovers the only thing she has left of Aurora, a white quill. She accidentally pricks her finger on the quill’s sharp point, writes her name on a piece of paper, and is disappointed when nothing happens.