Crowntide (Lightlark #4)

by Alex Aster

Oro Rey never thought he would see Grim Malvere, demon ruler of Nightshade, cry.

“I would gladly slit your throat right now, king. But I love her more than I hate you.” His gaze blazed with determination. “I love her more than anything. I will tear apart this world, and the next, and the one after that, until I find her and bring her back. Are you with me?”

She doesn’t even have to be mine. She might never be mine, but the mere fact that she lives proves perfection exists. It proves this world has wonders in it yet.

She was a breath of spring in the middle of winter. She was a guiding star in his dark sky, the axis on which his world turned.

“Nothing in this universe can keep me from you,” Grim said to the night sky. He hoped, wherever she was, she could hear him. “I will rip down the constellations themselves to see you again.”

“The portal is closed. The only other one is on Lightlark, and though I have no problem using it and destroying all of you, I know my wife would.” He didn’t miss the Sunling flinching at the word wife. Good. Flinch, Sunling.

“Let me get this straight. You claimed the most powerful object in the universe . . . and put it around her neck? What were you thinking?” Zed asked, looking a breath from breaking what was left of the windows. Slowly, Grim turned to him. “I was thinking that the most important person in the entire universe should wear it.”

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.

“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.”

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.”

“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.”

She was here to fight for everything and everyone she loved. Including her husband. He had given his life for her, he had started a war for her, he had been ready to turn their world to ash, just to save her.

Because he might have felt kind of bad about killing people before, after meeting Isla. But if these prisoners were standing in the way of him getting his wife back . . . well, they were fair game, then.

“But he’ll have gotten himself imprisoned?” Grim sighed. Forget being grateful for the Sunling’s presence. He would have preferred the silence. “I don’t know, Oro. Why don’t you ask each of them before you kill them? Have a little interview while they’re trying to rip your throat open?”

“I still think that love is for fools.” He shrugged. “But she makes me not mind being one.”

You make her the monster you want her to be, so that the monster within you isn’t alone.”

“Thank you,” Grim breathed, begrudgingly. Oro sighed. “Don’t say that.” “Why?” Oro turned to him. He looked tired. His crown was off-kilter and filthy. “Because then I’ll really think the world is fucking ending.”

“She is not a villain.” He looked pointedly at Grim. “She’s just a ruler who has been given too much power, too quickly. Any wrong she has done was done by accident.” The lost king’s look was almost pitying. “And Cronan was once just a boy who killed his parents.” Grim swallowed. Just like Isla. Just like he was once a boy who killed his sister.

“I do trust that you love her,” Grim said. “But I also know you love your people. Your friends. I would choose her over the world. Can you say the same?”

“It’s okay, little bird,” she said. “You won’t scar.” That wasn’t true. Some scars, Isla thought, weren’t visible at all.

If Grim had a skyre, it would be an infinity symbol. With Isla, he felt infinite, for the first time in his long life. Even now, she gave him strength from worlds away.

“I want everything with you, Hearteater,” he had said. “I want marriage, I want children, I want to be standing next to you, holding your hand, at the end of the world. I want to live endless lifetimes with you, because one isn’t enough. Not for me. Not even close. If we live a thousand years—I’ll want a million more. I’m selfish, I’m greedy, I want you for endless eternities. We are infinite.”

“Endure, Isla. Persist. When the world pushes you—you push back.” Her mother squeezed her hands. “Wildflowers bloom even in dead places. There are those who tried to bury you deep, but you are a seed. And you are only now growing. They are going to regret ever thinking you were anything different.”

Isla could feel him, cleaving through the world like a blade, racing to her in a great burst of energy. Blood spilling from the corner of her mouth, Isla smiled and said, “That’s my husband.”

A tear hit the water, and the entire island trembled. He was tied to it, irrevocably, by the curse of nexus. And as his heart and soul fractured, the very island seemed to break with him.

The smart thing for her to do would be to leave this place. But Isla did not make smart decisions.

“I love you,” she said. And then Cronan broke her neck.

Isla looked over at Lark’s corpse. “Good riddance, you murderous bitch,” she said.