I was chosen by the goddess herself, and I will save my people.
I glance at my wrists, noting he didn’t use sunlight cuffs. Why would he? He believes I’m a vampire. Nothing more. My mouth curls into a smile, and I feel it, that cool chaos in my veins. Not my blood—my inner shadows. They coil and stretch with my fear, just as they did the night I visited Bad Witches’ Club and Grog dangled me by my collar. Only this time, I whisper to them, coax them. I am the pied piper of shadows, thrumming a soundless string, vibrating at a frequency that calls them to me.
His heavy footsteps round me again, and he sets down the rod he’s chosen to remove his velvet jacket, leaving him bare-chested in nothing but breeches and boots. And still, he wears that fucking crown.
“You’re giggling, pet. Could it be that you’re going to enjoy this as much as I will?”
He lifts the rod to taunt me with it, then licks it with the flat of his tongue. Gross.
“I’m laughing because I can hear your heart.”
His brow furrows. “Why would that make you laugh?”
My mouth spreads into a wide, Mad Hatter grin. “Because it reminds me I have one too.”
He tips his head, and I know the second he hears my heartbeat, knows I am a shade, knows that the cuffs won’t hold me. His eyes pop, and he raises the rod. But he’s toolate. I break into shadow and jet across the room. Jet right through the center of his chest.
When I form again, I’m holding his heart in a monstrous, beastly hand. My hand, complete with razor-sharp talons and skin as black as leather. The weight on my back shifts, and I see a wing arch over my shoulder. The swish of something behind me is a tail like Damien’s. My tail. I stare down at Entrydal’s dead body from an advantaged height and know that I’ve assumed my battle form for the first time.
The heart in my palm is a repulsive, oily shade of dark blue. It gives one last beat in my palm, releasing a spout of blood that splats across the floor. I removed it fast enough, it still believes it’s alive. The notion makes me laugh.
Once I would have hesitated, held fast to an ideal of what was morally right or wrong. Once I chose to save an evil man’s life to preserve my virtue. And in the end, it changed nothing. In the end, it was him or me.
Never again.
I crush the heart in my fist.
“I am no pet,” I growl at Entrydal’s corpse. I hurl the goop that remains in my hand at the wall. On my way out, I sweep his crown off his head and place the bloody ring of gold on my own. “And now, this is mine.”
I consider taking his entire head with me, but when I bust through the door and into the hall, I see that the crown will send the message. A servant spots it and runs like a rabbit.
I run too. Straight toward the battlefield. I only hope I’m not too late.
DAMIEN
Eloise isn’t here.I slice and kick and use my wings to claw at my enemy, my body a tower of pain and fatigue. I was told she fell. Before we ever reached the battle in the Borderlands, before we ever saw how bad the tide of this war had turned, we saw the bones. Phantom’s bones. Strewn across the battlefield along with the bones of so many others. The grass is wet with blood. Our forces have been pushed back from New Stygarde into Willowgulch territory, where we are sandwiched between sunlight weapons and fresh shade forces that, unlike us, are not weary from battle.
Eloise isn’t here, and I fear she is dead or worse.
We are at the end of this war, and I face the stark possibility that we will not stand the victor.
“Remember your promise!” Jaqual yells to me, his blades swinging furiously in the taloned hands of his battle form. “If I die, you are still bound.”
I snort. “What makes you think that I will live?” We are surrounded by the enemy, six deep on either side.
“You Hymirs are like wagon bugs. You can survive anything.” His head sinks below a throng of silver coats, and I lose sight of him.
“Wagon bug. Can survive anything but the bottom of a shoe.” I grunt, shadoweave, and stab the elf ahead of me, but I take a sunlight blow across the stomach from his brethren. I collapse, where my blood mixes with that of my enemies and soaks into the ground. Opening theshadow channels, I send a message to our troops in Aendor—the dragon roars.
We can’t wait any longer. We need all the help we can get.
As soldiers march over me, assuming I’m dead, I stare into the star-filled sky and see a raven staring down at me. Hovering. Watching. Somewhere in the distance, a horn blows. And then I truly believe I have died because I see something I never thought I would see.
Brooms.
Robes flowing behind them.
The glow of magic.
