Page 116 of The Edge of Darkness

I searched the trees, scanning the shadows between them, trying to pinpoint where he was. I knew better than to seek out a physical form, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to try. Looking someone in the eyes while they spoke was the quickest way to gauge everything they weren’t saying. That tactic had never failed me when it came to deciphering whether or not someone was telling the truth.

With Eathril, I would just have to give him the benefit of the doubt.

“I came to ask you some questions,” I said.

This time, Eathril responded from above. He was in the trees. “I hope I can provide the answers you seek.”

I stared ahead, getting my thoughts in order. “Tell me how a wraith from another world knows who you are.”

A gentle laugh danced through the tree canopy. “Sahren.”

“She did not give her name, nor did I ask her for it.”

“That is her name,” Eathril said. “It has been ages since I have spoken with her. We have a lot in common. The shadows call to us.”

Shadows, yes. The thing we all had in common. Eathril dwelled in them, I wielded a form of them, and the wraith, Sahren, could not live without them.

“Why would she ask if I was akin to you?”

As if he were standing in my midst, I sensed him go stiff. Even the rain seemed to ease, as if it were listening, waiting to hear his answer.

“My Lord⁠—”

“Tell me the truth, Eathril—all of it. I need to know. I—” I cut myself off, taking a breath to keep my frustration from radiating through my voice. “I think I’ve known for a while, but I need to hear someone tell me.”

I closed my eyes, and waited for him to choose the words he wanted to say.

“The place where she and I come from, and the place your power originates from, are one in the same.”

“Say it.”

“Skotos.” The word seemed to echo through the forest, despite the sound of the pelting rain.

“Is it Erebus’s power?” I asked.

There was something like pity in his voice. Perhaps regret, as he said, “It is.”

I kept my eyes closed, letting his words sink in. Hearing him say it somehow filled a gap within me that had been hollow for so long. And yet, at the same time, something else fissured, another crack in what was once a perfectly-fortified façade. I waited to feel the long-anticipated sense of relief I thought I would gain by having confirmation, but dread crept in instead.

Fates, the wraith had been right.

And if Eathril knew all of this, who, or what, did that make him?

“Who are you, Eathril? How are you here, in this world, if you are neither a wraith, nor a witch?”

The shadows within the tree canopy shifted, then settled, as if he had found a place where he was content to perch and spill both our secrets. When he spoke, his voice was more solemn than I’d ever heard. “I knew that the time for this conversation would eventually come. And so it has, arriving on a day when the sky is crying.”

I flicked my eyes up to the rain, taking his statement into consideration. That must mean I wasn’t going to like what I was about to hear.

“Aleris was the only other fae to ever question my origins. When we stumbled across each other here, in these very woods, he did not fear me, nor did he raise the alarm that there was a strange, formless being living in his territory. I had dwelled here for quite some time without anyone discovering my existence, but the moment we crossed paths, he knew he was in the midst of someone he could not see. He was a special one—open-minded, gifted with an exceptional ability to sense things that others were not privy to, and talented with glamours, just like your mother was. He was also a bit mischievous, which is why he and I got along so well.

“To this day, I still believe that whatever power allowed him to be so in-tune with the world around him also allowed him to actually see me, in some sense. The real me. Not just the essence that is bound to the shadows.

“All that to say, Aleris and Sahren are the only beings who have ever known where I came from. They are two of the three souls I have had the pleasure of calling friends. You see, I did not consider myself someone who was deserving of friends. Not in the past. Perhaps not even now. Not with what I—” He cut himself off with a pause, as if he needed to work up the courage to say the rest. His tone dropped menacingly low as he finally said, “I was never supposed to come with the witches and the wraiths—they didn’t even know I fled with them. But I . . . I couldn’t stay. Not after what I had done.”

“What did you do?” I asked, equally as quiet.

It took him a moment to answer.