“It’s impossible,” I tell the creature. Impossible, but very real. “Stop looking at me.”
He doesn’t.
“And don’t judge me.”
But the way she fell so willingly into my Darkness when we trained – perfect. So easily became a part of the world of shadows, I hadn’t been able to hold them back from her. I should have known, I mean, I did nickname her after them long before anything like this was possible.
I can’t deny I want her. My cock, half hard at just the thought, agrees. Her icy skin in my grip, her honey lips against mine, her desires on my tongue.
“She has no idea what I am. What I need. What satisfies me,” I growl down at Fleck, at myself. What I want and what I can have are two very, very different things.
Even with our mutual agreement that all four of us have laid equal claim to her, I could never share my bed with a being as soft and beautiful as Shadow. I would break her, and she would never forgive me.
She doesn’t want this. Doesn’t need this. Doesn’t need me – not in that way.
“You can’t understand,” I snap at the creature. I will not hurt my woman, even if that means never letting this bond form.
After all of this, if I survive, I’m going to die a lonely old man – but that feels like my fate.
It just lifts its chin and glares back at me with defiance and something else written across its expression. Maybe sass. Sure looks a lot like the kind of look Shadow gives Pax.
I draw in a long breath then ask, “What are you, anyway?”
Reaching down, partly changing the subject and partly relaxing my guard with the creature I have ignored for years, I pinch its shadowy tail between my thumb and forefinger. Then lift it to my eye level and poke a finger at its abdomen.
“Cat?” I ask it.
He folds his arms over his chest, shifting from a kind of four-legged structure to more of a two arms and two legs design. Less cat and more sprite.
“Doesn’t matter,” I reply, lifting him up and dumping him into the hood resting behind my grown-scruffy hair.
What does matter is that Shadow is coming back to the White Castle, maybe not immediately, but eventually, and Pax’s room isn’t big enough for the extra weapons. Hooks and shelves will need to be installed in the entranceway, and I’ll train her to grab her weapons every time she leaves the suite. The walls are eleven or twelve feet high, might be adequate.
“She’ll need lighter swords,” I mutter aloud, surprised at how nice it is to have someone listening. Even if that someone is a Veil creature curled up in my hood. “At least two long, two short, a dozen knives, spare darts… and the glass.”
I pause in my musings, part realizing that Fleck has fallen asleep, its chest vibrating in a purr that I would normally find about as annoying as Seth at sunrise. Not today.
Today, it feels right. And that’s a whole new feeling that I’m shoving in a box to deal with later.
Instead, I let myself fall into thinking about Shadow’s glass. Silvari glass is incredibly strong, nothing like common glass at all. It’d be better described as a metal than a glass, but it’s clear, and when it finally does break, it shatters into razor sharp shards. It’s impervious to magic, making it the perfect armor for the likes of Eyv and the other Tanakan escapees who were wearing it.
And their weapons. I rub my shoulder where the oversized glass spear pinned me to a tree far too recently. On the outside, it has healed, thanks to Shadow. Inside, it’s tender, also thanks to Shadow. Healing at that speed leaves the body aching and sore, and it needs another day worth of mending before it’s strong again.
Which would be a different story if it had hit the joint or major bones.
I couldn’t budge it. Couldn’t pull it out or break it – Shadow did that. She saved us all.
Where did Lithael manage to secure enough glass to begin turning it into weapons and armor? It’s not a precious commodity, but it’s also not mass produced. Reserved mostly for trinkets. The bracelet I purchased Shadow cost the equivalent of six months of a Saber’s wages, almost half the purse I was carrying. The feather she broke just by touching cost us a full year’s coin.
Is the Crown emptying every cent into the production of fancy armor for criminals?
And are the stolen weapons Shadow and I were accused of taking in the Lackshir marketplace also glass?
Seems sinister and dangerous – so it’s most likely true.
Glass weapons are being made by one evil asshole and then stolen, possibly by an even more evil asshole. But who?
Who has a big enough axe to grind with Lithael, with this whole kingdom, aside from us?
And if they’re arming themselves with weapons impervious to magic, what do they plan on doing next?
I keep turning this over in my mind, the White Castle growing ever closer as the night wears into early morning and a vibrant pink sunrise stalks the sky. The weather is turning, but hopefully we can outrun it.
We might have a whole list of bad guys, and bad problems, and even badder ideas, but beyond that, there is always something worse.
And I was born to look it in the eye.
I am the Darkness, and the Shadows obey me.
Well, me and one sassy as fuck woman who’d better be practicing her knife skills and not letting all our hard work go to waste.
(She of many pet names)
Two
14th day of SnowMoon
I grit my teeth, suck in another stuttered breath, and squeeze my eyes closed against the pain – of being stuck in the saddle for two days as we ride hard toward Hirana, and from being almost cut in two by a ShimmerSeed who is now very, very dead.
“I know she’s hurting,” Pax mutters – not to me, to Thane.
Over the past two days I’ve learned that Pax and Thane talk to each other.
A lot.
It’s endearing and a nice distraction, even if I can only hear one half of the conversation.
A lemon-peach sky paints the backdrop of tall shadows and silhouettes on the horizon, Hirana. The market city, or so I’m told.
Pax’s arms cocoon me in the saddle. Another horse trails behind us with all our packs strapped to his back. We stopped in Drayden long enough to stable Pax and Roarke’s horses and purchase fresh mounts. Apparently, horses don’t like endless running.
“We just have to make it to Hirana. We can rest there for as long as you need,” Pax says, kissing the top of my head, then he clicks his tongue at the horses, and we surge forward.
Multiple parts of me hurt, like my legs from rubbing against the saddle and my ass from remaining seated pretty much this whole time. And the long, recently healed wound from my shoulder down my back, almost through my spine, burns with movement and throbs without it.
The blow that almost killed me.
I don’t know how much of me is mortal anymore. I’ve lived for eighteen years with half a soul – mostly the mortal half – and now that I have my Saber half humming inside my chest, I feel somehow different.
More alive.
Like the world was shaded, and I didn’t even know it. Now the sun has come out, and damn, the colors are bright.
But pain, pain still feels the same no matter what kind of soul I have.
Killian heals his own broken wounds all the time, and he doesn’t complain about it. I’m pretty sure nothing in me is broken anymore, but I still hurt like a mortal who wants to cry and complain.