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And beyond the gate? I swear… yes, there are shadow beasts.Everywhere. Pacing outside the walls around the castle like hellhounds.
It all hits me at once. I’minthe Void. In the shadow world. I remember using my light to help my men, and then the pain on the back of my head. But until now I stupidly didn’t put it altogether.
Reaching behind me, I feel the lump.Do I have a fucking concussion? Hell.
Phantom kidnapped me, brought me here, and made love to me… no, it wasn’t love making. It was hard and rough and left me sore, unlike what it’s usually like with my men. I had sex with the ghost of Phantom. A creature that looks like him but isn’t any more.
And then I let him lock me in here. A high tower with no escape.
A sob catches in the back of my throat and I press my hand to my mouth to keep from crying. I hate that I allowed myself to be taken, that I left behind my men who need my light to keep fighting our enemies. I’m so damn angry at myself for being so stupid, but more than that, I feel dirty and sick. I had sex with that… that thing. That cold, cruel man who saw nothing wrong with using me and throwing me away.
I don’t know what to do, but I know right now I can’t escape, can’t communicate with my men, and can’t reach Phantom to try to shake some sense into him. So, I do the only thing I can think of, the most useless thing I can do: I collapse onto the ground and cry big, ugly tears while I wish that I didn’t smell like Phantom.
If only this was a fairy tale, then my wishes might come true.
EIGHT
Phantom
The land is dark and dead. It’s a cause-and-effect relationship and one I can see for miles in every direction beyond the top of the castle tower where I’m standing. Without the moon stone, our lands are no longer just dim enough for us to survive and for the unique plantation and animals to survive. Now nothing but the animals that hover between life and death can exist here.
Before, I would’ve despaired about the lands and the death in and around this place. But quite honestly, I don’t feel anything except a thirst for more. More power. More land. More respect. More everything. I feel it deeply. Strongly. It vibrates through me like an insatiable hunger. It’s a desire so powerful I can feel it in every fiber of my being, and I know that I’ll never be satisfied until it’s quenched.
If it ever can be.
My gaze moves to the outside of the walls that surround our castle and goes to our people. Well, what’s left of them. Right now, there’s no need for the shadow beasts to join the fight against my brother and the others. No, we were wasting too many of them when right now we simply need distractions and for the moon shards to be planted on earth. Things that can easily be left to the creatures whose numbers are almost limitless.
Which leaves the shadow beasts bored. Perhaps even more miserable than when they’re forced to fight their brethren.
They’re huddled together in their beast-forms, camped outside the castle walls in groups, waiting, prowling, probably tasting the battle in the air, wishing, hoping for a good kill, a brave death. Wishing to be the one in power. Wanting it for themselves.
Or maybe that’s just me.
Actually, it’s probably just me. The moment my father took control of the Moonstone, he took control ofthem. Unfortunately for my people, they’re not mindless animals, they’ve just given up inside the forms that are now their prisons. My father said that at first they tried to fight for control once more, but with enough time, they realized it was pointless.
It’ll always be pointless. They will never have willpower again. My father is confident of that. But then, he’s confident in everything, never showing an ounce of uncertainty, and now I understand why. The way I am now, I only feel that hunger for power. There’s no room for anything else.
As I stand at the top of the tower looking out, the Shadow King comes to stand beside me, surveying the same landscape I am. I felt him coming, but didn’t react. Because, why bother?
He smiles as he stares around us. This is his realm. He’s strong here and powerful. His word is law. And he wants to keep it that way. Despite what my brother and his little friends want to happen. They’re weak without Ann and I am stronger than all of them.
I. Will. Win.
Yet, there’s no true happiness in my father’s smile. It’s strange, like a ghost of the smile I saw on his face as a boy. The knowledge used to bring me pain, but it doesn’t now. His long brown hair, almost black like my own, is left loose, although no breeze stirs the air or ruffles the strands. He wears dark clothes and a dark cloak on his shoulders at all times, even though the temperature here is perfect. Strangely, he’s less kingly than when I was younger, but more fitting for what he’s become now.
“How did things go with the woman?” His voice is gruff and hardened by years, and his smile fades away as he waits for my answer.
I don’t want to disappoint him. Not because he’s my father. Not because I particularly care what he thinks. But because he’s my king and pleasing him is essential to staying alive. The need to prove myself worthy burns inside me, but I don’t have news that he wants to hear.
I sigh. “She won’t agree with our plan.” But I don’t look at him. I can’t. I don’t want to see the disappointment I know is bound to be there. It’s a hard thing to disappoint my king.
“She will. In time.” He’s confident. As a king, confidence is his birthright.
“Is this what happened with Shenra?” It isn’t that I care about her, the woman who was my first love. It’s that I want to know the details I’ve never been told. Knowledge, after all, is its own kind of power.
“Shenra was killed because she was unwilling to behave as a king’s wife. She was unwilling tobecomea king’s wife.” He’d forced her to become his wife anyway, so that is a moot point, and I don’t need the explanation, just an answer to what happened to her. I never saw her body once they told me she was dead. I suspected the body in the moat was hers, but suspecting and knowing are two different things.
All I know for certain is that when she failed to bring him the power he desired, the power he thought bonding with her would give him, he erased her. How he did that… I still don’t know.
