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Once she’d adjusted to the almost orgasmic joy that came with welcoming her magic, she opened her eyes. After a quick check to make sure her skin, a light gold, wasn’t glowing like a beacon to give her away, she flashed Amy a look.
Amy had her arms over her chest, annoyance in her eyes...and worry.
“Hurry up,” her friend said. “If you’re gonna do it, do it, so we can get out of here.”
Her shadow peeled away from her and moved to stand at her.
Gia smiled, angling her head.
The shadow that echoed her shape did the same.
“Hello.”
She heard a soft murmur that was her shadow’s own way of greeting, understanding the response in a way no other could. The shadow wasn’t sentient in a way some might understand, but to Gia, her shadow was both friend and protector, guide and counselor. Having to keep her locked away so often sucked.
“So does death,”the shadow said in her strange way that only Gia could hear, much less understand.
They both smiled at the echo of Gia’s earlier thought.
Next to her, Amy grumbled under her breath. “Why do you have to talk to it? That’s so fucking creepy.”
Irritated, but too focused on the task at hand, Gia ignored the other woman. Pushing her thoughts out, she waited until her shade ‘accepted’ the command. Out loud, she said, “Go. You know what to look for.”
That done, she turned to Amy and urged her into the shadows—normal ones, this time—cast by the trees all around. “Let’s get out of sight so I can concentrate.”
Amy went along, lingering long enough to look back, but if she had doubts about the shade being able to do what Gia needed, she kept them to herself.
With one facet of Gia’s attention moving along with her shade, she shifted the rest of her mind to focus on their surroundings.
Amy talked softly, a sign of her nerves and Gia let her, unaffected by the speech, her control on her magic and her shade keen after so many years.
Shadow magic wasn’t common.
Her father had been Fae, a shadow witch himself and he’d had trained Gia up until his death well over a century earlier. Gia had still been young, her training incomplete when she and her mother had been forced to run. Her mother had been human, mostly, although an Atargarian shifter some generations back along the paternal line of the family had blessed her with uncanny instincts and strength.
It taken almost a decade for Gia’s mother, Eionie, to locate another shadow witch who could complete Gia’s training. In the years that followed, Eionie all but became a shade herself, lost to the grief of losing her beloved husband, clinging to life only because she wouldn’t leave her daughter while Gia was still young and vulnerable.
In the end, Eionie had been stolen from Gia, just like her father had been, and by the very same monster. It had just taken years for her death to catch up, for the broken heart to kill her.
A murmur in the back of her mind had Gia’s internal focus sharpening and she squinted absently, her attention narrowing as she locked in on what her shade had discovered.
Pain gripped her. But it didn’t throw her, because some part of her had known this was coming. She’d expected it, this knife in the back—the betrayal of a friend. She’d suspected it for a while now. While her shade lowered the first piece of evidence she’d found, Gia steadied herself.
“How much longer?” Amy demanded.
“Find the knife. He might have it on his person, but if he doesn’t, he’ll know when it goes missing and he’ll come running.”After giving her shadow instructions, Gia looked to Amy.
Blinking big blue eyes, Amy gave Gia a puzzled, slightly worried look.
But the mask didn’t quite reach her eyes this time. Panic jittered there for a brief moment, then disappeared, the same worried expression that Gia had seen earlier firmly back in place.
“How much longer?” Amy said again.
Instead of answering the question, Gia asked one of her own. “Why did you do it, Amy?”
I have it, her shade said, the excitement making her voice all but ricochet in Gia’s mind.
That alone wouldn’t have rocked her.
