A warrior priestess of light and a cursed king of shadows?There was no logic in wanting her. And so I’d stop.
As soon as we’d done what we’d set out to do, I’d never have to see her again.
Pulling my thoughts back to the matter at hand, I glanced at Elena. In the dimness, with her hood concealing her face, she almost looked like any other traveler.
She’d come for me at dusk, where I’d come awake at the edge of the village. After Elena had left the previous night, I’d buried my shadows deep underground where the sun wouldn’t reach them, fencing off the village. If the mage tried to return, I would know, even asleep in the daytime.
But he hadn’t come.
Now, as the hour lengthened, I could feel his presence, growing closer to the house he had marked.
With a twist of whispered magic, I lengthened the path, making him go around in circles. I meant to confound him until I could mark him with my magic, making it easier for us to follow him back to his master.
A flare of magic made its way down my connection to the mage, and I stopped.
“Something’s wrong,” I murmured, trying to put my finger on it. A moment later, the magic flared again and I cursed. “He’s running. He knows we’re on to him.”
Elena frowned, calling up light magic in her palm, but I stayed her hand.
The lights were extinguished now. Darkness had fallen over the village.
My powers surged.
The darkness was mine. It had always been mine. I was made of it, shaped by it, and for nearly a century, it had been the only thing I knew. It was simplicity itself to bend the darkness to my will, to use the shadows to follow the mage we had marked as our quarry.
Wherever the mage thought to go, he couldn’t escape the shadows.
And I was the Shadow King.
Our footsteps echoed in the stillness as we turned down another alley, the faint glow of lanterns casting flickering patterns on the walls of the narrow streets, my shadows surging as they gave chase to my prey.
I could feel the mage’s faint aura just ahead of us, like the scent of sulfur clinging to the air, and my shadows hummed in response, sensing the dark magic that followed him like a trail. He was close; we were nearly on top of him.
Elena tilted her head toward me, her voice soft and low. “Are you sensing him still? He seems to be moving faster.”
I nodded, my eyes narrowing as I felt the traces of his magic weaving through the shadows ahead.
“He’s our only lead,” Elena said, her eyes narrowing as she followed the faint trace of his magic. “We can’t let him escape!”
He could try, but my shadows had marked him. I could taste the sharp tang of his magic in the air, acrid as burnt copper, clinging to the stone walls and damp alleys. It bled desperation. A rat always sensed when the predator was closing in.
He was running not to escape, but to reach something—or someone—before we caught him.
And I would not allow that.
The shadows pulsed at my heels, eager to be unleashed, eager to hunt. I let them out in ribbons, stretching ahead of me like feelers, clinging to every corner, every crack of the cobblestones. They whispered the mage’s direction back to me, a living map of pursuit, guiding me toward my quarry.
Beside me, Elena kept pace, her movements brisk but far too loud for my liking. She was light, and light did not know how to conceal itself in darkness. Even now, with her cloak drawn tight and her hood shadowing her golden hair, she glowed faintly, asif her very skin remembered the sun.
I risked a glance at her, and my chest constricted. She looked nothing like the untouchable High Priestess I had first imagined when she stepped into my forest days ago. Now she looked like a woman walking a knife’s edge: jaw clenched, eyes burning, her lips set in determination that dared anyone—mortal or god—to stop her.
Why did that make something inside me want to stop running, just for a heartbeat, and press her against the alley wall, not to silence her, but to taste that fire?
I bit the thought down savagely. She was not mine to want. She would never be mine to want.
A flash of white above interrupted the dangerous current of thought. Meryn streaked across the rooftops, silent and sharp-eyed, a pale arrow in the dark. Her wings carried her effortlessly over the slanted tiles, and with each beat of her feathers, I felt the bond between us pulse. She had him. She would not lose him.
“Your owl,” Elena murmured, her voice carrying the faintest thread of wonder. Even in pursuit, even with danger ahead, she found awe in the simplest thing. “She doesn’t falter, does she?”
