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I closed my eyes, focusing on the pain, the panic. Screams of men, twangs of bowstrings, whistles of arrows—it was too overwhelming. The chaos around me was too much, drowning out any internal focus.
“What the fuck is going on with your shadows?” Sebian asked, his eyes fixed on the writhing plumes that flickered from between my armor pieces.
Startled, I followed his gaze, noticing the unusual movements of my shadows. They all seemed to flutter in one direction like candle flames bending to the will of the wind, bending toward… toward…
“The bell tower!”
Without another word, Sebian and I burst into motion. Shifting between forms, we weaved through the chaos—dodging deadly slashes, parrying strikes, felling those who dared block our path. Every stroke of my sword, every beat of my wings, was guided by one thought.Anoaley.
We reached the ruins, the lower part of the tower still mostly intact. A large portion of the debris had slipped to one side, a heap of fallen stones and timber jutting out into the chaos of the bailey. For a moment, we both stood, taking in the disastrous sight before us and how my shadows drifted through the cracks, toward the inside on their own accord.
“She’s in there.” My shadows knew. “She’s trapped.”
The way was blocked for us from here.
But not for my ravens.
One quick shift, then we hopped and squeezed through the gaps in the ruins, slipping past broken stones and twisted beams, our black feathers ruffling with each arduous movement.
And then we found her.
Nestled within a makeshift cave formed by several large boulders, the remnants of the staircase offering some protection, lay Galantia, her once-vibrant hair now dulled by dust. A gaping wound slashed to one side of her forehead.
She’s breathing,Sebian’s unkindness said nearby.Her heart’s beating fine.
I shifted back into my human form within the cramped space, the ceiling pressing low above us, the cold stones biting against my back. Galantia lay before me, her chest rising and falling in shallow rhythms that barely stirred the dust around her. My shadows drifted from me, slithering toward her. They caressed her, encapsulated her, streamed around her—no!
Intoher.
Beside me, Sebian shifted out of shadows and darkness, his whisper barely stirring the air between us as he asked, “What is she?”
What I’d always hoped she would be.
My very own void.
ChapterFourteen
Galantia
Present Day, Tidestone
Iwoke with a hole in my chest.
An aching, chasmal, endless crater.
Was I… in my chamber? Yes.
The sun wove honeyed warmth through the ornate windows, my muscles aching beneath the linen that lay smooth against my body. How long had I slept? How had I escaped the rocky tomb?
“Prince Malyr used his shadows to lift the debris off you,” a soft, familiar voice said nearby as if in answer. “It allowed Sebian to carry you to safety. It is midday, a day after the attack. The fighting stopped many hours before the sun rose.”
I glanced around my room.
Marla sat in an armchair beside my bed, her legs propped up on a stool and a book lying upside down on her lap. Her black hair spiraled atop her head in beautiful, pinned-up braids. Still, the dark shadows under her eyes gave away the sickness she’d been through, the hardship, the many months spent in captivity.
“Presume I don’t have to ask who won.” Not with how she looked rather comfortable, my room and the balcony that lay behind my door eerily quiet. “What happened to the amulet? My gift?”
“It once again rests with youranoa,” she said calmly, “as it ought to.”
