Lightlark by Alex Aster EPUB & PDF – eBook Details
- Author: Alex Aster
- Language: English
- Formats: PDF / EPUB
- Status: Available for Download
- Series: None
- Price: Free
- File Size: 1 MB
ISLA
Isla Crown often fell through puddles of stars and into faraway places.
Always without permission—and seemingly on the worst occasions. Even
after five years, portaling still made her bones groan. She held her starstick
tightly, her breath bottled in her chest like the rare perfumes on her vanity,
the glass room spinning and fractured colors bleeding together, until gravity
finally pinned her down like a loose thread in the universe.
And it was safely tucked down the back of her dress, along her spine, by
the time the door swung open.
“What happened to your hair?” Poppy shrieked so loudly, Terra came
rushing in behind her, the many knives and swords at her waist clanking
together.
Her hair was the least of her worries, though she didn’t doubt it
resembled a bed of moss. Traveling between the realms’ newlands with her
starstick had the habit of undoing even Poppy’s most tightly wound coils and
firmly made braids—an unexpected perk, really.
Isla didn’t pretend to be an expert at using the device. In the beginning,
the puddle of stars took her unexpected places. The snow villages of the
Moonling newlands. The airy jubilees of the Skyling newlands. A few lands
that hadn’t been settled by any of the six realms at all. Little by little, she
learned how to return to locations she had been to before. And that was the
extent of her mastering of the starstick. All she knew for certain was that
somehow the mysterious device allowed her to travel hundreds of miles in
seconds.
Terra sighed, hand dropping from the hilt of her blade. “It’s just a few
loose strands, Poppy.”
Poppy ignored her. She rushed over to Isla, wielding a brush and a vial of
syrupy leaf oil the same way Terra had taught Isla to brandish weapons years
before. Isla grinned at her fighting teacher over her charm teacher’s shoulder
and cried out as Poppy roughly removed the pins. Poppy shook her head.
“Have to start from scratch.” She stuck the clips between her lips and spoke
around them. “I leave you alone for an hour, and you’re a mess. Even locked
the door for good measure! How in the realm did you manage to mess it up in
your own room, little bird?”
Own room. Her room was not her own. It was an orb of glass, the
remnants of an ancient greenhouse. But the panes had been painted over. The
windows had been sealed. All except one door had been removed.
She was a little bird, just like Poppy and sometimes even Terra called her.
A bird in a cage.
Isla shrugged. “Just some swordplay.” Poppy and Terra were her only
family—though they weren’t family at all. Everyone who shared blood with
her was long dead. Still, even they didn’t know about the starstick. If they
did, they would never let her use it. It was the only key out of the bird’s cage.
And Isla had been locked inside not just for her own safety—
But for everyone else’s.
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