AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The degree of humiliation overwhelmed all conscious thought, stunning my mind where I stared into the blackness that lay beyond the hole in the wall. Out. I needed out of this wretched nightmare.
“Malyr, I’m begging you…” Harlen crouched to stare at me from red-rimmed eyes, his breath rancid, his face unrecognizable with how gaunt it had gotten over however long we’d been here. Weeks? Months? He no longer looked like a man grown, but a boy. “You’ve been like this for too long now. I need you to get out of your head. Need you to use your shadows.”
Use my shadows.
Agony punctured through my heart, making me bleed into my chest until it filled with the pressure of a thousand souls on my conscience. Torment was all that existed within me, spiked with guilt and shame. My shadows had killed them. No,Ihad killed them. Had killed them all.
And I would kill again.
I shook my head. “No.”
“Malyr, you have to—”
“No.” My head wouldn’t stop its frantic shaking as Harlen’s face blurred into nothing but sharp bone, smudged skin, and valleys shadowed by starvation. “I killed them. Oh, goddess… I killed our parents.”
“We don’t need your regret, Malyr. We need your shadows.”
“N-no,” I stammered as they crept and crawled at my core. “You cannot make me. You cannot—”
“Malyr.”
“—make me.”
“Stop crying.”
“You cannot make me.”
“I said stop—goddess damn you, Malyr!”Slap.His palm hit my cheek, making the top of my head hit the stone with enough force, nausea welled in my stomach. “We are going to die if you don’t use your shadows. Is that what you want, hmm? Mother and Father aren’t enough; you have to make sure what’s left fades away in here, too?”
Naya!
Mother’s voice screamed at the back of my crumbling mind. Saliva pooled beneath my tongue. A gag tied my throat shut until, with a heave, I retched nothing but yellow slobbery strings of bile onto the damp, dark stone.
“Fuck, I’m sorry. Malyr, I just…” Harlen shoved his naked foot under my cheek, lifting my face from my vomit while his fingers brushed the tousled, greasy strands from my face. “I don’t want to die. Not here… not like this.”
But didn’t he understand?
He would die either way.
I turned my head, wiping my mouth on the tatters of my tunic before I looked up at him, my chest heavy. “I will kill you.”
“No, Malyr, that’s not true.”
“Don’t make me kill you. Please.” What did I have left but my brother? I’d destroyed it all. Our family, our city, our kingdom. “I cannot lose you, too. Please don’t make me. Harlen… please.”
“Malyr, look at me.” He clasped my face between his hands, lifting my gaze to his. “It was a terrible accident, but an accident just the same. If I remain close by your side, like it was in Valtaris, your shadows will do me no harm. I know this.”
“No.” He couldn’t know that. Couldn’t be certain. “They arenotmy shadows. They’re stolen. Stolen all those centuries ago.”
“Nothing but folktales, Malyr,” he said. “I’d rather die in my brother’s shadows than at the hand of our enemy. I trust in you. All you have to do is trust in your—” Movement through the small holes between the weave of iron bars caught his gaze. “He’ll come down again soon. We must be prepared.”
My fingers searched for the amulet around my neck. Empty. Nothing. Lord Brisden had taken it from me—the one thing that had once offered me hope in times of darkness. The one thing I’d promised to protect with my life.
Father was right, I was worthless.
“Malyr,” Harlen said. “Iwilldo this. The question is, are you with me, brother? Will you weave your shadows?”
I fought down another wave of nausea. I didn’t want to do this. Didn’t dare confront my shadows. But how could I deny my brother after what I’d cost us? How could I remain nothing but a disappointment?
