Page 138 of Taken By Shadows

“If you’d like to tell me … I’d like to hear about her.” I tried, searching his eyes.

I wasn’t sure he was even listening. His gaze was distant as he stared through the canopy overhead to the stars.

Long moments passed.

There was something so fragile about the air around us. One breath before its time, and the tethers to this peaceful place would fray.

“She loved to grow things.” His voice was softer, like mist in moonlight. “Nothing ever grew in Hayden, so when we would come here, to Viverna, she would spend all of her time in the allotments and gardens.” He paused as his eyes swam with memories melting before him. “But this was her favourite place …” I could see why anyone would surrender to the beauty here. Here, the walls bowed to the earth and flowers and growth. Not the demands of the walls around them. “She would come here for hours.” His eyes lingered on the statue. “Before—When we were younger, she would bring my brother and me, and later, our sister.”

There was something tender under the unbreakable fae who stood before me, dark shadows in his blood.

“I was your age when I let it happen.” He swallowed, the apple of his neck bobbing as he fought the words.

My eyes searched his. “Tell me?”

His jaw was set in a hard line. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked. I knew so little about him, and I knew I already cared. I didn’t know what that meant to me. But the tangled knot of roots that was taking hold in me was so many different things. He was still the male who had taken me. He was also the male I thought about at night, in my dreams. He was also the one I’d kissed another male to protect, as twisted as that seemed.

Everything that had been between us was shifting beneath my feet. A dune of sand giving way under the forces of fate and time. And I couldn’t explain how it happened. Kissing Eryk had felt wrong, but being beside Kaed felt carnal, almost hedonistic in my need to indulge the desire that poured through me. And there was something else there too. The same feeling I’d had when I saw him bound and in the Cage.

I didn’t want him to suffer. I didn’t owe him that. But I couldn’t watch it happen to him. His pain felt like mine, carved into my bones. Deeper than anything the skin could sense.

There was pain I could feel crawling through him, down his back, like a spider with a hundred legs and poisoned barbs that dug their way in as they clawed. How I could feel his magic in me, I didn’t know. Perhaps it was the only fae part of me desperately trying to kindle a connection with another.

A rumble of thunder sounded overhead.

I blinked up at Kaed as he looked to the dimming stars.

“My father found my brother and me amongst the dozens of bodies … We were the only ones who survived the attack.” His words were nearly lost under the clouds shattering. “Hart had never seen blood. He was barely ten. He didn’t speak for a year afterwards.” Kaed paused as if to take a breath, but his chest was as still as the stone around us. “I’d barely reached fae maturity, and my magic was still unpredictable.” His lip shuddered, but he dipped his head, and when he pulled up, his mouth was an unbroken line. “They never recovered their bodies, and I don’t think my father ever forgave me for that. My sister, Tempest, wasn’t even five … My mother … She—I let them die. Both of them. He was right not to forgive me.”

There was no warmth in his voice, no life. All emotion was completely cut off from his words. It was like he had found death and worn their cloak.

“He let the fae witches have me then.”

Have him?

Audrie said there had been rumours of Kaed’s father punishing him.

A humourless laugh chuffed from him as he got lost in the dark memories. “They’ve all but left these shores now. But not before they left their mark.”

Witches hadn’t been a part of the Corners originally as far as books knew. Audrie had said they’d fought in the war on both sides. And they left? Perhaps the violence and the bloodshed were too great to bear witness to anymore.

“I think Hart mistook my father’s … interest”—he snapped the word off—“for favouritism. Whether Hart wanted what I had or just wanted his father, a parent …” Kaed still didn’t look at me. His eyes were like glass orbs, searching for answers as they scanned the skies. “And I had robbed him of both his mother and father. As brothers, we were never anything other than what Tir made us after that …”

Silence stretched like a dark horizon.

My heart ached for the family he’d lost in so many ways.

“I don’t know what happened, and you don’t have to tell me. But I know it wasn’t your fault.” I reached for him tentatively.

Kaed pulled away, his entire body rigid. “You don’t know that.” Anger seeped into his words. And it vibrated his magic, causing it to flow out. Coils of shadow crept up the window frames and through the beds of moss.

“I let her do it. I did nothing. I watched. I watched as my mother and sister were swallowed by a darkness, and all I could see”—his eyes finally fell to me—“all I could see was her bright hair and piercing eyes.” His voice had risen, and it barrelled into me like the clattering of boulders across the sky. “She haunts my sleep. She follows me in the day. And there is nothing I can do to block her out. I am as much to blame for the war by not saving my mother ans sister.” He was towering over me, rage slashing across his features. He was like a wild cat whipping its tail back and forth. Prepared to lash out if needed.

“Kaed.” I tried. “I know you won’t hurt me.”

My voice was moondust on the air, and no part of it landed on him.

The magic from his palms now covered the stone slabs in the ruins where we stood. There was night above us and darkness below us as his shadows began to crawl up the walls.