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“Fine, fine.” He raised his hands in a feeble show of surrender. The amused cock of his brows and quivering corners of his lips contradicted the action entirely.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“I am the Lost, and the Lost are me.” His smile twisted. “And you are in my domain.”
Domain?I refused to break his probing stare. There was something about him that didn’t feel quite whole. Isla had mentioned he’d be powerful, but then why the rags? Why the sallow cheeks and depleted figure, as if he hadn’t eaten a proper meal in months? Years, even.
“Why did you need Gaige?” I asked.
The muscle above his brow twitched. “The lost become me, and he was lost.”
“He’d found a way to control his shadows.” Barely constrained anger surged through to my fingertips, but I held my weapon steady. “He wasn’t lost.”
“I have claimed many.” He leaned into my blade, not caring that it drove the tip deeper into his flesh. “I decide who is lost, and I take what is mine.”
Beside me, Calem summoned his own volley of inky blades. They hovered by his body and waited to do his bidding, steady despite Calem’s twitching fingers. Again, the mercury ring around his irises flooded his stare until only that disastrous hue was visible. Even if he couldn’t shift, his body reacted to the rage Calem must’ve felt.
“Enough riddles.” Calem’s words were a deadly whisper. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t kill you now for what you did to our friend.”
The mage’s focus snapped to him. The smile on his face erupted into a full-blown grin. “You’re different, too. I had no idea. How could I have missed you?”
Calem didn’t take the bait. “Let’s kill him.”
A strange hunger tugged at the Lost’s expression, and the shadows about his frame jumped with a visceral, frenetic energy. “Who are you? What power do you possess?”
I pressed the point of my blade deeper, and more blood trickled down my weapon. This time, the undead mage dragged his gaze to the sight and stilled, as if realizing that I did, in fact, pose a threat.
“This is your final warning,” I said. “We will kill you.”
He looked at me directly, and for the first time I noticed a ring of crimson around the brown-black of his irises. It seemed to throb with power, and a dark chuckle slipped from his chapped lips. The blood on my blade—his blood—vaporized into a curl of wispy, black steam as he leaned back and batted my rapier away.
“You couldn’t kill me if you tried. And I’d very much like to see you try.”
He lunged. Not for me, but for Calem, and the shadows that had been spiraling from his frame arced toward us like lightning. They struck with the same force, ricocheting off our bodies and searing the sands, turning the ground into heated, black glass. We were thrust back into a pair of jagged boulders, and the force of the hit had spots blooming across my vision. The roar of the ocean waves coalesced with the rush of adrenaline in my ears, and I braced myself against the rock. Beside me, Calem cursed and spat blood at his feet.
“My turn,” he hissed. Without a second thought, he bolted toward the mage. I made a move to join him when a single shadow in my peripheral vision snagged my focus. It’d streaked forward the moment Calem had abandoned his position, and it licked at the frothy, red-tinged spit he’d left behind. My gaze snapped back to Gaige and the ravenous shadows that had resumed their meal.
“Calem!” I screamed, but I was too late. The mage was all too eager to welcome Calem’s rage-filled assault, and he stood withhis arms thrust wide open as if expecting an embrace instead of a blade to the heart. Calem’s shadows flung to him like armor, and he commanded his weapons to fly right at the Lost’s center mass. He didn’t even bother to dodge. His shadows were too fast, and they cut through Calem’s attack and pierced him clean through his shoulders. Calem shrieked as the mage’s shadows pinned him to the ground. More tendrils raced over him in a flurry, drinking the blood pooling beneath his body.
The Lost shuddered as visible gooseflesh covered his skin. Eyes alight, he stared at his prize. “You bury so much. I can taste it.” He dragged an absent finger along his lips and held it there. “You could have beengreat.”
We needed to get back to the portal. Now.
My gaze cut to Gaige’s crumpled form. He was still breathing but otherwise unconscious. I needed to free Calem first, and then we had to find a way to carry Gaige and escape the Lost’s grasp. I just didn’t know how. I couldn’t analyze the mage’s motives. First he wanted Gaige, and now Calem? The only thing that stuck out was the Lost clearly had no interest in me.
A familiar prickling sensation crawled through my mind. Felicks.
My focus narrowed on the Lost. Images began to flood down the bond I shared with my beast as the world around me slowed. I was surprised his powers worked here, but then again, he wasn’t here. These small flashes of the future were because of our bond. Because of how much time we spent together, learning from each other, loving each other, training together.
That connection surpassed realms. And I would use it to save my family.
Focusing all my energy on the bond I shared with Felicks, I summoned more shadows to my being until another rapier took shape inmy left hand. I rotated them in a large, sweeping arc before rocketing toward the Lost. Shadows gathered beneath my feet and guided me toward my target with unnatural speed, and the mage only glanced my direction when I was already upon him. I raised both swords high and prepared to drive them down through his chest, but the shadows that’d pinned Calem released their grip to form a barricade before the Lost. My blades shattered the mage’s shadows, and they streaked outward in a circle before petering out and dissolving to nothing.
The Lost backstepped and turned his fury on me. “You.” His gaze shifted to the space where I used to be, as if calculating the distance and my movements. Then, he stormed toward me. “How?”
Without looking over my shoulder, I barked an order to Calem. “Take Gaige and go!”
“Like fucking hell I’m leaving you,” Calem growled.
