“Xavier!” Her cheeks split into a grin and she threw her arms around my neck, hugging me tight. “You’ve grown so tall, I thought you were your brother.”
“Who are you?” I demanded, reaching for the door handle behind me with shaking fingers. I didn’t want to be scared, but holy shit this woman looked like a monster fresh out of Resident Evil.
“I’m the princess,” she announced, lowering her head to press her ear to my chest. “And you’re the king’s son,” she breathed. “There’s so much power in you, can you feel them?”
“Feel what?” I asked nervously. I had my hand wrapped around the door handle, but it opened inwards dammit.
“The shadows,” she purred and the cloak around her moved in response, shifting in an invisible breeze. She walked two fingers up my chest and darkness swirled around the tips, pulling on something deep inside me. As she walked them up to my neck, the shadows within me followed like a magnet, drawing me into their sweet embrace.
I forgot my panic as the darkness purred inside me, following the girl’s fingers all the way up to where she stopped at my temple. They curled around my vision and power thrummed through me with every pulse of my heart.
“There,” she breathed. “You don’t have to hide them. They want to be let out.”
“Who are you?” I asked again. “What’s your name?”
“Don’t you remember me, silly?” She stepped back, cocking her head to one side. She wiped at the blood around her mouth and my gaze scraped over her features. My lips parted as I suddenly recognised her pixie nose and the freckles smattering her cheeks. But it was impossible. Darius had told me what had happened to Lance’s sister. How could she be here now?
“Clara?” I gasped and she nodded keenly, looking on the verge of tears.
“You remember me!” She rushed back into my arms and I realised I should have taken the opportunity to run, but the shadows were keeping me calm.
She clung to me with the force of her Order form and I choked out a breath as she started sobbing. “Oh Xavier, he’s gone. Gone, gone, gone.”
“Who’s gone?” I croaked.
“My baby brother,” she sniffed, pulling herself together again in an instant. She stood back to wipe her tears then sighed. “He had to die, he’s not been a good brother at all.”
“Wait, you mean Lance?” I demanded, my panic resurfacing, clawing its way out of the shadows which were slithering around my heart.
She nodded with a pout, then reached past me to the door handle. “Blood for blood for blood.” She shrugged, pushing me aside so hard I nearly fell over as she wrenched the door open. “Take me to him. Where is my king?”
I felt her tugging on the shadows in me and I moved into the corridor to follow her, taking in a slow breath. The shadows were feeding on my grief, and it seemed as if I was standing on the edge of an abyss waiting to fall.
Lance is gone. She killed him.
“Xavier!” Clara said firmly. “Take me to your father.” A tendril of shadow coiled out from her, wrapping around my waist and drawing me to her side.
“What happened to you?” I asked, my voice too strained.
The shadows were promising me relief from this pain, but I resisted them as hard as I could, not wanting to lose myself to them too deeply. I focused on Darius, letting my love for him anchor me to who I was. My heart tugged at the thought of my brother losing his best friend and the grief cut me a little sharper.
“I was lost in the darkness.” Clara turned to me as we walked down the corridor in the direction of my father’s office.
Tears swum in her eyes and for a moment she resembled the girl I’d known growing up. I’d played with her in the gardens with Lance and Darius, we’d made camps in the woods and swum together in the lake. She was so familiar and yet there was something so unfamiliar about her too. Like the shadows had claimed a piece of her for themselves, and that part of her was a violent stranger.
If she’d really hurt her brother…killed him…then this wasn’t the girl I knew and loved.
We made it to my father’s office and fear twisted inside me at the thought of disturbing him here. Even for something as world-altering as this. It was an instinctual reaction. Because disturbing him at work meant meeting the fury of his fists. Period. But I didn’t think it would this time.
I knocked on the door and Clara grabbed the handle.
“Wait-” I gasped a second before she threw it open.
My father looked up from his desk with a sneer, but it dropped away the second he saw Clara, his expression shifting into alarm.
“My king!” She rushed forward, leaping over his desk and landing in his lap.
My mouth fell open as Father reared up, slamming her down onto his desk by the throat with a roar. His other hand was raised, full of flames and his eyes glinted green with his Order form. “Who the fuck do you think you are?!”
Clara was smiling like he wasn’t hurting her, clinging to his arm as if they were sharing a loving embrace. “It’s me,” she rasped. “Clara. Your Guardian.”
Shadows twisted around his arm, forcing him to release her and his face shifted into recognition. He jerked his arm away like she’d burned him then rolled up his right sleeve so hard he ripped it. I spotted a brand there of the Cancer star sign and Clara lifted her own arm, showing a matching one with my Father’s star sign, Aries.
I backed up into the door with a frown pulling at my brow. Clara had been Guardian bonded to my father? Since when?
“By the stars,” Father breathed, taking in the shadows surrounding the girl laying on his desk.
She reached for him with her bloody hands and he tugged her to her feet, seeming to have forgotten I was here. He reached out to brush a lock of hair from her face then pinched her chin hard to study her features. “You’ve been in the shadows all this time?”
She nodded, looking up at him beneath her lashes. “I felt you always, suffering because I couldn’t reach you. Didn’t you feel me too?”
Father pressed a finger to the mark on his arm. “No. But I feel you now.”
He looked at her almost tenderly and I clenched my jaw, unsure what I was witnessing here. I knew Darius and Lance had felt a strange connection between one another because of the bond, but I didn’t know exactly what that was like. At the thought of Lance, the shadows rose again, filling my chest and drinking away my pain.
“She killed Lance,” I forced the words out and my father stiffened, his eyes snapping to me.
“What?” he snarled ferociously and Clara backed up.
“My brother didn’t come and save me,” Clara said defensively. “He abandoned me.”
Lionel snatched her wrist in his grip, baring his teeth. “Tell me this isn’t true!”
She winced from his firm hold and the shadows wrapped around his arm, forcing him off of her. My father swallowed hard, his eyes flickering with concern as he eyed her. She was insanely powerful. A threat. And I could see his mind working out what to do about that.
“I needed blood,” Clara hissed, pure darkness pouring from her. She jabbed a finger to Father’s chest and a snarl rumbled through his throat. “Don’t you dare reprimand me. You may be my king, but I’m the Shadow Princess!”