Getting squished makes a person gasp.
Her jaw clenches tight.
“First, I’m going to have fun with you. Then, I’m going to watch Logan’s face when I deny him the gory details. He wants to dig at the Elorsins. Force them to break their deal with the Crown. I just want to see you bleed.”
I’d gasp again, but I’m running out of air. She twirls her blade and coils, ready to leap.
“Asanta,” Pax booms, the word full of AlphaSeed power.
I can’t twist to see him, but Asanta freezes, looking beyond me, and I feel the minute he steps close as a sudden release of pressure. The wall gone, I slump backward again, my almost freed leg slipping straight back into its stuck position.
“Just a little fun,” Asanta is saying, springing out into the corridor and in front of Pax.
“Logan?” Pax demands.
“I don’t answer to Logan,” she growls back. “And I no longer answer to you.”
“I’d get your friend and your brother out of here before Killian finishes them off,” Pax says way too calmly, and I can see Killian from here – the man’s not riled up enough to kill.
Not yet.
He has made Thom bleed, with a large gash above his eye probably caused by Killian’s fist, and Hennah looks like she has a broken arm. But he’s just playing with them.
“Does that mean you don’t want me to remove this parasite from your midst?” Asanta asks, waving the point of her blade in my general direction. “Soot shouldn’t be in Silva. She will die eventually.”
Pax bares his teeth, his canines elongating. His bone structure doesn’t change, but everything about him right now is more wolf than human.
“Do you want to live?” Pax asks.
Asanta backs up, saying, “You have no power here.”
“I can dispose of the body,” Seth says, a little too cheerfully.
I picture him bouncing on the balls of his feet, though I can’t see him.
I can see Asanta as she keeps backing up, not turning around until she’s at the end of the hall, and not before meeting my gaze and glaring hard. Menacing. Spine tingling and gut twisting.
Seth appears beside me.
“She was in the potions lab,” I gasp.
“I know,” he says, grabbing my arm.
“Does she know I was there?”
“No, this is because of us, not you,” he says, lifting me up, and pulling my leg free.
Then letting me go.
I fall into the stall in a panting heap, shaking and gasping.
I’m fine, I tell myself. Fine. Not because that was fun, but because no part of me is bleeding or broken.
“You’re fine,” Killian says, walking past me.
I can tell me I’m fine. The guy who just pushed me into a battle with a Saber does not get to tell me I’m fine.
I climb to my feet and use the gate to let myself out of the stall.
“Your standards of fine and mine are very different. Happy with your meal?” I accentuate the word ‘meal’ to play on his Seed, on who he is, on the picture that Asanta painted and Killian made come to life.
In a blink, he’s spun and has his face right in front of mine, right in my space. Before I can fall on my ass and regain some distance between us, he grips the front of my shirt and locks me in place.
“You can fight your own battles. I don’t care about what’s in the darkness, only what comes out of it,” he says, opening his fist and letting me hit the hard slate floor.
“I’ll get the horses,” Seth and Roarke say in unison.
Ten minutes later the three boys have four horses saddled. Specifically their horses, which I’ve come to recognize after sharing a section of the stables with them, but even if I didn’t, it’s clear who they belong to by the four arrow tips branded on each of their flanks.
I’m sitting on a hay bale to the side, nervously calculating how fast a horse can run and whether a person can die from being dragged down a road by an invisible wall.
I did tell them I need a horse, and they laughed at me.
And just when I think that maybe we’re going to be lucky enough to go wherever it is we’re going without me having to share space with Killian again, Killian ambles up to us.
Well, not us – them.
Pax seems to have been waiting for him and mounts up without a word. Roarke turns toward me, mouth open, about to speak.
“No,” Pax says, cutting his brother off. “Killian.”
Seth’s on his horse with a quick spring and a gentle swing of his leg – not even bothering with the stirrups.
Nevermind that I’ve never ridden in my life – I’ve also never had to run from a wall moving at the speed of a horse before. So, I’m comfortable with the idea of learning to ride while actually doing it.
Pining isn’t going to help me, though. I gauge which direction we’re leaving the stables by the way their horses are facing and start walking past the stalls. Having a head start could be an advantage, if only for a few seconds. Pax trots past me on a big dapple-gray mare – I check – nope, stallion… then again, it could be gelded. Where do horses keep their balls?
I manage to stop myself before I try to look, and bite my tongue in case the question decides to voice itself.
We take a sharp left and the exit is in sight. Not the side of the stables where the boys have quarters hidden in a dead-end, or the exit that leads toward the castle, this exit leads out into the forest.
A narrow dirt road. Trees with the afternoon light filtering through the high canopy, and lush, thick, green all around. I feel my heart skip a beat at the sight of it. It somehow whispers of both ‘home’ and ‘freedom’.
Pax lets out a ‘ha’ command and his horse lunges from its controlled trot into something faster, a gallop or canter – I’m not sure. The thunderous sound of horses’ hooves on slate echoes through the building before they’ve burst out onto the soft soil.
I start running, even before Seth and Roarke have passed me.
One, Two, Three… I wait for Four to go past. My legs work as hard as they can and the realization that this is impossible sinks in. Pax is already at the first bend in the road. It’s been seconds.
In a few more seconds Killian will be past me and that far away too.
If I launch myself into the air when the wall is moving at this speed, will I press to it like a stone presses into the pocket of a rock-sling?
A bell sounds, and on cue, conversations drift out across the expanse of castle grounds somewhere behind us, beyond the stables.
“We don’t have time for this,” Killian says, yanking me from the ground and depositing me in front of him.
I swallow a few hard breaths, trying to wet my throat. It wasn’t the run that has made me gasp. It wasn’t bloody fear either. It’s definitely the thick forest air.
Yes – I think I’ll keep telling myself that.
“Why don’t we have time?” I ask, trying to steady myself as the horse moves jarringly fast.
“Afternoon riding tuition,” he says, leaving me to fill the gap.
The bell. The explosion of voices. Sabers are currently on their way to the stables, a lot of them. Filling the corridors, the stalls, the training grounds outside.
“Will they follow us?” I ask, gripping tight to the saddle.
“They can’t leave.”
“If we can leave anytime we want, then why did we spend the morning doing the Stable Master’s dirty work?”
“We can’t.”
I give up trying to hold onto the saddle and instead bury my hands in the mass of white mane. With a sudden rush, the whole back end of the horse bounces into the air.
I yelp. Killian wraps an arm around my middle and yanks me back into his lap. With his other arm, he steadies the horse, guiding us back onto the road before making a clicking sound. The horse obeys and once again, we’re rushing off with a trail of kicked up dirt behind us.
“He’s sensitive,” Killian says.
Except now that the distraction of a horse having a tantrum has passed, I’m all too aware of the fact that my legs are resting on Killian’s, that my back is against his chest, that his hand is flush to my stomach, with nothing between him and me. His heartbeat vibrates through his chest, and his breath is a steady rhythm above my head.
I tense a little. Not because I’m against the comfort of not bouncing around like an idiot. Or because he’s doing anything specifically wrong. He couldn’t be more of a gentleman about having me in his lap… but I am in his lap.
I’ve been in laps before…
Lord Martin’s…
Shivers rake across my skin.
“Don’t do it,” Killian says.
I swallow hard.
“Do what?” I ask, my head happy that my mouth has something to do and my memories can shut up.
“Don’t think.”
“How do you know what I’m thinking?”
“I can –” he pauses for a breath. “Smell it on you.”
“Smell what?” I demand, these boys and their super-sensitive noses are starting to piss me off.
“Not smell, but like smell. Not feel. But like feel – with my magic.”
“But what are you smell-feeling? You should be getting an aroma of horse sh –”
“Fear,” he cuts in.
I swallow.
Lord Martin.
Fear.
“Don’t,” he says again.
“Then stop smelling me. I can’t help remembering.”
He lets out a little ‘huh’ grunt.
“Remembering?” he asks, his tone softening.
I sit quietly. Yes – I was remembering. No – I don’t want to share those memories.
“You smell like a person facing their worst nightmare. You smell like your nightmare is here.”
And that has to be the longest sentence the guy has ever spoken, so I give myself an extra beat before responding.
“You are an ass. I’ve discovered all Sabers are asses. I will have my retribution. Mud in your boots, or your breeches, maybe. But my memories are worse.”
The horse keeps a steady pace far enough back from the others that we can’t hear their conversation. Though I can see in Seth’s wild gestures, the kind that encourage his horse to dance back and forth across the road, that they are talking.
And if I can’t hear them, they probably can’t hear us.
“I smell fear,” he says.
I don’t interrupt, sensing that there’s more to come.
“I feel pain. Intensify it. They –” And I get the feeling he’s talking about the people up in the castle. “– think I fight efficiently because my Seed is Darkness, like I enjoy being in the dark places of people’s minds. I understand the darkness. That’s different. What fills me up like a meal is when someone is surviving – knowing how a person is doing that allows me to kill them. Very quickly or very slowly. I can kill them, or I can make them stronger. Make that darkness a strength.”
I was wrong. New longest sentence record right there.
Added bonus, he used Asanta’s meal analogy with no mention of sex.
“I don’t have darkness,” I say dismissively.
He huffs, sending strands of my hair down over my face and making me wipe them back, my fingers brushing underneath his chin.
Yep – the guy is right there.
“You amused me,” he says, each word very deliberate. “The moment I saw a chain on your wrist.”
“I do try,” I drawl.
I’m sure I amused Lord Martin, too.
“Don’t,” he says, a warning to his tone. “You. Relaxing on a post two stories in the air. Wind in your hair. Smile on your face. Curiosity in stupid questions. Questions you should have been too scared to ask a Saber. We shouldn’t feel right, and we were leaking power because we wanted Lord Martin to fear us.”
He plucks each detail out of the past and as he talks, and I can picture it all. The view of the forest, way off in the distance. The sound of Cook’s voice just moments before these four arrived. The sense that I would find a way to fix everything.
That everything would somehow be alright.
“I’m the only Seed of Darkness,” he finally says.
I don’t get to push for details. The trees part, the road ends, and a massive open space is before us. Pax, Seth and Roarke have already dismounted and tied their horses to the trunks of trees. Killian lifts me up and passes me down to Seth, who quickly lets me stand on my own two feet.
“Done?” Pax asks.
“Mmm,” Killian says, and I have no idea if that’s in agreement or not.
I also have no idea what it was that Killian was supposed to get done.
Seth nudges me forward and at a distracted pace, we move toward the center of the arena. It’s just forest and trees, no fences, nothing obviously man-made, except that the space has been cleared.
Leaves litter the ground, which is too soft underfoot to be soil. I run a handful through my fingers – its sand. This is a training yard.
Or it used to be. It looks abandoned now.
Was it for horses or people? But I push that thought aside for the more important question.
“Is what done?” I ask Seth, trying not to be too obviously interested.
He places a hand on my shoulder, managing to cover the whole joint, and suggests we keep walking. Then he drops it, a comfortable space between us. Not that his touch wasn’t warm, or soft – or that I don’t want it back again.
I run a hand across my middle, where Killian’s arm held me close.
Safety.
That’s what safety feels like.
Which is such a weird concept. The guy with the Seed of Darkness that almost got me killed feels like safety.
“Pax wanted you two to talk. Killian has a strong personality,” Seth says. “The man didn’t mean for you –”
I cut in. “To get stuck hanging upside down in the most impractical building material ever invented, with an invisible wall making me the perfect target for a chick who thinks seeing me bleed would be entertaining?”
Seth runs a hand through his short hair.
“Something like that.”
“In the middle,” Pax calls out, interrupting us before I can throw out some line about not expecting Killian to care about me at all.
The rest of the Elorsin brothers meet us smack-bang in the middle of the space. I turn, nervously checking the treeline.
“Find the wall,” Pax says, and the whole reason we’re here becomes clear.
I obey, walking away from them a few good steps. Just walking.
But they’re not moving. A coldness threads itself down my spine that has nothing to do with the wall. My legs slow like the air has thickened – which it hasn’t.
I force myself not to turn back, not to give myself a glimpse at their expressions.
They’re all watching me – of course they are – and that is doing odd twisting things to my insides.
I hug my arms around my middle, lower my gaze, and force everything inside me to walk away.
Right into the wall – like an idiot.
I groan, rubbing my forehead.
Seth laughs. “Not with your head.”
“It’s right here,” I moan, tapping on the wall.
It gives my fingers a zap in return, and I pull away sharply.
“Follow it,” Pax orders.
Twenty-two steps from the Elorsin brothers to the invisible wall. I use my hand and not my head to keep contact with the cool surface and begin to walk. The boys all turn in a slow circle as I move around them in a perfect arc. They turn with me, watching, until I’m back where I started.
It’s a bubble. The thing’s a freaking bubble with the ground cutting through the middle of it. A dishwashing sink soap bubble – of course my life would be reduced to this.
“Interesting,” Roarke says.
&nbs
p; He takes three long strides toward me. I take three away. We repeat the process until we’ve run out of space.
“Now walk back to them,” he says, waving toward where the others have moved way off next to the horses.
“I can’t. I won’t make it.”
“You can see the wall?”
“Bubble,” I grumble. “And no.”
“Bubble,” he repeats, smiling. “If you can’t see it, then how do you know you won’t make it to the others?”
“Experience,” I drawl.
“Try?” he asks, not orders like Pax, and not in his Alluring voice. Just asks.
So I do. Throwing my arms up a few steps before walking into the thing. Not even halfway to the others. I press my palms flat to the surface, getting a static tingle from it. But I’m not here to caress an invisible prison cell, so I push harder. Leaning into it, trying to dig my boots into the soft ground, and struggling, until finally they grip and I put everything I have into pushing through the wall.
Lightning bolts of pain shoot through my palms, radiating into my fingernails and then up my arms.
I pull back, hissing, and hugging myself.
What the bralls was that?
Magic, that’s what that was. And it’s not impressed with me trying to get out.
Screw you, magic, I think, kicking at the sand, sending it flying away but connecting my toe with the bubble at full speed. I growl, rubbing the toe of my boot and leaning against the wall for support. Not even noticing the others step closer until my support has vanished and I’m crashing toward the ground.
“She likes falling a lot,” Killian says – amused.
I lay there on my back until they step into view. Into my view.
Into my space.
Into kicking distance. I scramble to my feet and Killian grunts.
“We have rules,” he says, walking off to the horses.
“Can those rules include not laughing at me when I fall over? Better yet, just don’t let me fall over.”
And none of them answer me. Did I really think they would?
A leaf catches my eye, half buried in the sand, and I scoop down to pick it up. Seth moves with me, crouching down in front of me. I freeze, my attention on Seth’s blue eyes.
“Those rules mean we won’t hurt you,” he says. “Even if you’re lying in the dirt – we won’t hurt you.”
Shadows and Shade Box Set Page 16