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Energy surged through me.
I was doing it! I was removing—
A shadowy tendril broke from the mass, lashing out at Malyr. It whipped across his face, ripping a hiss from him, leaving bloody streaks across his cheek and chin. Before I could react, it coiled around his wrist, yanking his hand away. His own shadows… attacked him?
Malyr looked at me, his features twisted in pain, his arm trembling. “Focus…”
“I’m sorry.” I shifted my absorbing hand toward Malyr, watching how the tendrils around his wrist slowly dissolved. I had to focus. No distractions. “Why are your shadows attacking you?”
“Because only a fourth of them are truly mine.”
That man rarely made sense, but now was not the time to solve riddles. I passed the skeletal remains of a broken-down carriage, the vibrant colors still strangely well preserved, the red curtains shifting in the window barely faded.
“You caused the blast ten years ago, didn’t you?”
Beside me, Lorn chuckled, a sound too merry, considering we were crossing blighted grounds, sending the hairs up along my arms. “Mmm, the little girl figured out your terrible secret, Malyr.”
Little girl…
My pulse quickened. “This little girl is currently clearing a kingdom.”
“Mmm, can you imagine what might happen if anybody ever breathed a word of this?” She tilted her head just so, her gaze merely brushing Malyr before she added through a grin, “Who will follow the prince who killed his own people by the thousands? His own father, the king. His mothe—”
Malyr sent a hiss her way. “Were my words not clear last night?”
“A simple misunderstanding, my prince,” she crooned in the sweetest of voices. “I blame the way youmoanedthem.”
A knot pulled tight in my chest, but I ignored the unexpected surge of… annoyance. Because she was goading me, costing me my focus, that fucking bitch…
Malyr exhaled deeply, his eyes flicking to mine before they lowered to the ground. No denial there.
Not that I cared if he’d fucked her.
I was hardly such a hypocrite, considering I’d been with Sebian, and even that damn ache in my chest wouldn’t convince me otherwise. The way shadows once more lashed out? Nothing but the stupid bond strangling my focus.
I lifted my gaze to those five black ravens that somersaulted, dived, and soared, almost as if Sebian was determined to cheer me up when I just needed Lorn to quit talking. To quit distracting me.
“Did I say something wrong, sweet little girl?” Lorn mocked as she pushed back at the shadows once more.
My teeth clenched. “Shut up.”
“Stop taunting her and disturbing her bond.” Malyr performed a swift, smooth arc with his hand, sending a rippling wave through the shadows that slowed them. “She’s losing control.”
“I am not,” I ground out.
Whyever would I?
I continued forward.
One step. Two. Three.
Crunch.
My gaze dropped to the ground, my breath hitching in my chest. The snow was barely a dusting here, speckling the elongated thing poking out from beneath my boot. Gray and pale, wrinkled skin drew tight over gnarled fingers that splayed out over the ground, the nails discolored to a deep brown, brittle and chipped. The hand was frozen in a claw-like grasp, reaching out from the ground.
A chill went up my spine as shadows crawled over the corpse, from where they spread out, once more thickening over a scene of death and destruction.Corpses littered the road, their final moments immortalized in chillingly grotesque poses.
Nausea swept onto the back of my tongue. “Why haven’t they decomposed?”
