Skyshade

Isla asks the blacksmith for a way to find her lost ring. He mentions that the dangerous lost art of skyres may offer a solution but urges her not to seek out this destructive power. Recalling that Aurora had markings on her skin, Isla uses the quill to confirm that the Starling knows how to draw skyres. Aurora offers to teach Isla because she wants redemption. When Isla meets up with Sairsha that night, the women bond over their mutual desire for redemption. Sairsha gives Isla a wine that makes her fall unconscious.

When she awakens beside a river, Isla sees Sairsha with all the regulars from the bar gathered around her, wearing hooded cloaks and swords. They are prophet-followers who believe that Isla is destined to save the world or destroy it. Sairsha says that their deaths at her hands will be an honor and that killing them is “the part [Isla] must play” (202). The prophet-followers attack Isla, forcing her to kill them all. Sairsha uses a rare form of magic to animate her shadow, and she is the last prophet-follower to fall.

Isla has the blacksmith remove the shademade bracelets because she believes she could have spared Sairsha and the prophet-followers if she’d had access to her powers. During a visit to the castle’s library, she bonds with Astria over their mutual enjoyment of romances, and the general tells Isla about her late father’s love of maps. Like his daughter, he was “desperate to see outside the world he had been born into” (212). Isla goes to her father’s castle and discovers a map of an uninhabited island to the west of Nightshade named Isla.

Isla pockets the map and reflects on how her parents’ love story parallels her marriage with Grim. Both are unions between a Wildling woman and a Nightshade man who decided to put aside their differences. Isla uses her starstick to teleport to the island of Isla. The landmass teems with plant and animal life, but it’s uninhabited by people, allowing Isla to refamiliarize herself with her powers without fear of hurting anyone. She teleports baskets of fruit from the island to the doorsteps of hungry Nightshade villagers.

Isla returns to her room in Grim’s castle that night, and a group of black-speckled green snakes lead her to a mirror that shows her a reflection of herself entwined with serpents. The snakes vanish as if they were a hallucination. The stormfinch’s song announces the approach of another storm, and Grim and Isla evacuate a remote village. Isla tries to capture a piece of the tempest in the diamond ring Azul returned to her, but tornadoes full of shademade fragments force her to take shelter until the storm passes. After a week of storms, Isla grows desperate and asks Aurora to teach her how to draw skyres.

Aurora teaches Isla how to write skyres using shademade metal. Using Aurora’s quill, she draws a marking on her arm that should allow her to control her powers with precision. The process is agonizing, but she thinks this is her best hope of saving lives. Isla uses her Nightshade powers to make the skyre invisible.

Grim confesses that he never loved anyone before Isla and thought that he was incapable of such feelings. He explains that every Nightshade ruler before him, including his father, had many children and killed them to increase their power. Although Isla knows that she will never stop loving Oro, she accepts that she loves Grim unconditionally. She changes into her first wedding dress and tells him, “I’m ready to try again. To be your wife. Truly” (231). He kneels before her, sheds joyful tears, and promises that they will be happy together. The couple relives their original passionate wedding night.

Grim brings Isla to the winter palace in Nightshade’s perpetually snowy northern region. He spent his childhood there, and he was happy because his father never visited. He brings her to a charming village with a “roof like folded pieces of parchment” and chimneys sprouting smoke “like steam from tea” (240). As a child, Grim was forbidden from sweets, games, and anything else that his father deemed opposed to the purpose of molding him into a ruthless warrior and ruler. The young Grim would use his teleportation power to steal licorice from the sweet shop and watch the village children play, and he reimbursed the shopkeeper with a massive pile of coins one day. At Isla’s prompting, they visit the village’s stores, purchasing licorice and warm, casual clothes. Isla and Grim trade stories from their childhoods.

Grim shows Isla the hedge maze beyond the winter palace’s gardens. No one can use their powers within the labyrinth because Cronan, the first Nightshade ruler, is buried at its center in a shademade coffin. They return to the castle and have sex in a library. After Grim leaves to attend to his royal duties, Isla locates a book on skyres with Aurora’s help. That evening, Isla and Grim enjoy a romantic dinner in the village.

To help Isla become more comfortable using her power, Grim spars with her. She continues to research skyres and learns that the most powerful markings must be formed with bones rather than blood. She intends to take one of Cronan’s bones, but she’s attacked by monsters when she enters the labyrinth. Losing blood, she staggers to the coffin only to discover that it’s empty. Isla faints as she exits the maze, and Grim catches her. Isla theorizes that Cronan’s bones created the portal because he had the ability to teleport. The labyrinth’s power-blocking properties kept Grim from finding the portal despite his thorough searches. Grim sees the skyre on Isla’s arm and asks what it is.