Their eyes jerked wide as the shifting obsidian cage began to change. Solidifying as its sinewy body curled outward, tendrils of darkness sprouting into the air.
Something about its intelligent movements were different than all the times she’d practiced this trick before.
What in the Netherworld?
A strange panic skipped in her chest. Despite the cool storm winds, a trickle of sweat slid between her shoulder blades as she watched her dark magick take shape, torn between fascination and horror.
It was becoming something. Stretching and pulsing through the air, limbs slowly appearing from the nebulous shadows—
Goddess Above.
Stolas had warned her there was a small chance this could happen, but seeing it now . . . the terrible brutality seeping from its form . . .
She stumbled back as shards of ice burrowed into her core.
Every Seraphian had a Shadow Familiar, a creature born of dark magick that eventually manifested itself outside its host. The third night here, during Archeron’s first wave of attack on the island, Haven had spotted a massive shadow blotting out the stars as it circled the night sky.
Its bellows were loud enough to wake the entire city.
Assuming the thing was sent by Archeron, she’d alerted Stolas.
Only to discover it was Nasira’s Shadow Familiar, a firedrake dragon.
And that’s when Stolas had mentioned the possibility that Haven might also have a familiar. He’d said it so casually that she had assumed the possibility was dismal at best.
Which is why she hadn’t paid much attention when he explained what that meant.
In his words, the moment she entered the shores of Shadoria, if the Shadeling had passed on the same gift to her, the sacred transition might be awoken.
Whenever she had entertained the possibility, her mind had conjured a sleek, beautiful dragon, ferocious yet majestic.
This—this thing growing before her eyes was anything but majestic.
She shuddered as a long snout sprouted from a massive head, the darkness condensing into legs and talons and a serpentine tail that whipped with enough force to crack boulders. Skeletal wings sprouted from its misshapen back and sent shadows skittering across the sand. Horns grew and twisted like snakes all over its muscular body.
Bellowing snarls ripped from the crooked, bent creature, the gut-curdling sounds straight from the Netherworld.
She tried to wet her lips but discovered her mouth dry as sand.
How could that . . . thing be a part of her?
The grotesque entity hesitated, waiting for a command.
She could feel its thirst for blood warring with its need to please her. Its primordial desire for pain and destruction tempered by its desire to obey.
But that hold she had over it was fraying every second she waited. She knew she could end them herself. Could wrap them in suffocating darkness.
They wouldn’t feel pain.
Their death would be quick.
But she didn’t want to end them quickly. There had to be consequences for what they had done.
She wasn’t aware she’d made a decision until it surged across that tenuous tether between her and the monstrous creature. With a pleased growl, the beast lifted over the Death Raiders, an amalgamation of Haven’s nightmares.
Her every terror, every buried fear set free to form this sadistic, loathsome thing.
“What in the name of the holy Goddess are you?” the closest Asgardian shrieked as he swung his weapon again and again, blind to the wasted effort.
Haven wished she knew. There was supposed to be some distinguishable form but—she would worry about that later.
The Asgardian’s panicked eyes latched onto hers. “Mercy, Goddess-Born!”
Haven felt nothing as she said, “I offered you mercy, but you refused. I offered you peace, but you chose death. Now every one of your men will follow you to the Netherworld.”
It was true. With the portal closed to reinforcements, the Death Raiders were doomed. Even now, their wounded and dying dragons crashed into the sea all around them. Their dying screeches reverberated off the cliff walls and tugged at her heart.
It didn’t have to be this way. The dragons were only doing their masters bidding, but the Asgardians had been given a choice.
They chose wrong.
She waited until the last Asgardian and his mount death-spiraled across the stars and disappeared into the black ocean. Only once the Asgardians knew that the last of their men would die with them, once that haunting finality made them drop their weapons, did she fully unleash her spectral beast.
She felt nothing as it descended on the males. Nothing as their screams began.
Nothing as the cry of snapped metal and bone pierced the night.
But she had to turn away when they pleaded to the Goddess for mercy.
Mercy they’d refused from her. Spat back at her like poison.
She focused on the storm in the distance as the familiar pang of doubt nagged at her.
Perhaps the prophecy was wrong.
Perhaps she wasn’t born of the Goddess, only the Shadeling, and the monk saw what he wanted to see.
Perhaps she only saw what she wanted to see.
Why else had her mother never tried to reach out to her?
Perhaps what Haven offered wasn’t mercy, but a fool’s errand. An impossible idea. The mortal, Noctis, and Solis nations had warred since the dawn of time.
What made her think she could unite them when even Freya had failed?
Something—a twinge in her belly, a dance of shadow across the cliff’s jagged face—dragged her attention to the dark shape landing softly on a nearby boulder.
Bright red eyes pulsed from the shadows. Stolas. Something also told her he’d been watching her for a while.
Her devoted protector looked every bit the predator as he crouched low, his glorious dark wings crowning the sky, his moon-white wavy hair in sharp contrast to his midnight-black armor. His lips curved with pride as he took in the beast she’d created.
As if recognizing another monster, her dark magick lifted its nebulous black head from its gluttonous feeding to watch the dark prince.
Gravely wounded, the surviving Asgardian dragged himself across the sand until he met the cliff wall. Trapped, his panicked gaze darted between the magickal monster and the real one.
Both were equally bloodthirsty—and equally hers.
3
Stolas drew a quick rune, the electric blue lines sizzling in the air, and the dark beast became a nebulous mist that funneled painlessly back inside her.
Rage slaked, she turned to him, surprised to find she was breathing hard.
Stolas tucked his wings tight to his body as he leapt gracefully from the boulder and prowled toward her. A jagged black crown rose from his white locks, the only indication of his status.
Otherwise, he wore the same standard issue armor as the rest of the Seraphian sentinels that patrolled these skies, every inch of the once glossy material covered in blood and gore.
“Beastie.” His voice was soft, gentle, tempering the otherwise overwhelming savagery that poured from his being. The red circling his irises faded as concern flickered in those silver depths. “Is this the first time your Shadow Familiar has tried to form?”
She nodded as she worked to hide her unease. Familiars were supposed to resemble animal forms. Stolas and his mother both had dire wolf familiars. The rest of the Darkshade line were gifted dragon familiars similar to Nasira’s firedrake.