Free (Skeleton Key) Princess of the Damned by Wendy Knight

from his soul, and she knew what he would say.
    "My mother is dead, isn't she?" Eiress whispered.
    Landon nodded, taking her hand in his unbroken one, his thumb running over the tattered skin. "I'm sorry, Eiress. But she's a fighter." He smiled, and it had a heartbroken tinge to it, but also pride. Pride in her mother. "She's the reason I could see you in the first place. And then she fought and fought until she could come back to tell me how to save you. She never gave up, and neither will we. We'll find a way out of that mirror." He nodded with finality. "I promise you, we will. I'm not leaving without you, Eiress."
    Her eyes widened as her heart raced. Yes, he'd come all the way here, but he couldn't have truly known what he was getting into, and she wouldn't have blamed him one bit if he'd gone back out to live his life as he had before.
    But he was staying. With her.
    In this hellish Isle.
    I'm not leaving without you, Eiress.
    She knew, in the coming months and years, when she'd be trapped in darkness, fighting not to succumb to the shadows, that those words, whether true or not, would get her through it. Those words would be her light.
    Slowly, he reached up and again brushed a stray curl off her cheek. His gaze dropped to her lips, and his hand followed, running his thumb lightly against her mouth. "I've waited so long to touch you," he said quietly, almost as if he didn't realize he'd spoken. "This is where I belong. Wherever you are."
    More words for her to cling to. More words to fight the darkness with.
    Terrified, heart pounding so loudly she couldn't hear the wind outside, she leaned forward, until she could feel the heat of him, until his eyes widened with understanding and then slowly fell closed, until her lips brushed his, and his hands came up to cup her face, fingers tangled in her hair.
    They were broken. Torn, tattered, wrecked.
    And yet that kiss lit the room, lit her spirit, with a light she hadn't seen for fourteen years. It was like it amplified all the good in his soul and all the hope in hers, and it threw it throughout the cave and chased away the shadows and the nightmares. She wrapped her arms around his neck and held on for dear life, because nothing in the past could ever compare to this and she would not let it go.
    She would hold on.
    Except the Isle of the Damned had a wicked sense of humor, and it was then, when peace threatened to break the darkness completely, that the lost soul stumbled in. Attracted to the light and the warmth, maybe to the peace, it found its way to their haven. Sins writhed through its blackened heart like maggots. Gasping in fear, or in response to the rotten smell of it, she jerked away from Landon and scrambled to her feet. "Get back."
    Landon, too, had risen, and now stood next to her, holding a makeshift torch from the fire. "Stay away from her," he growled.
    Eiress almost smiled. After fourteen years, someone had come to fight by her side. She couldn't even imagine the happiness of it.
    The light shone brighter.
    So bright that, when she turned back on the soul with its writhing sins, hands like claws reaching for her, it took very little effort at all to make it implode into the blackest of ash.
    She did it.
    She'd blown up the door. She'd exploded the chains. She, in her desperation, had discovered a power she had all her own.
    She could chase away the nightmares.
    Landon blinked at the missing soul—or what was left of it, and then turned to her. "That's why they're afraid of you," he breathed.
    She could think of no answer to that, try as she might. So she stared stupidly at him while her mind spun around his words. "What?"
    And his eyes started to dance as a grin lit his entire face. "I knew there was something! When I started watching the balls, I could see their fear but I didn't know why— they knew you could do this before you did!"
    They knew?
    They knew.
    She remembered their conversations. Elizabeth wanting to kill her, Mary saying they needed her.