Shadows and Shade Box Set

by Amanda Cashure

  Then Killian steps between me and it, taking my full attention. A blade so covered in blood that red droplets fall from the steel still in his white-knuckled-fist. He lifts his other hand and points at me. The scar that cuts across his face is practically glowing with his anger. Roarke and Seth move in, but none of them try to stop their brother. I hope that means I’m not about to die – therefore they don’t need to step in. Or it could mean that my death is inevitable and stepping in is futile.

  None of them pay any attention to the wolf-bear-thing as it prowls forward, if I don’t count Seth bouncing on the balls of his feet and shooting the animal brimming smiles between frowning at me.

  “You didn’t fight,” Killian growls. “You have to fight.”

  “No.” The word escapes my lips, hoarse and struggling. “I have to survive. That’s all. Just survive.”

  I have a mouth that lets out stupid shit, but a body that understands the need for self-preservation. Growing up as Lord Martin’s servant has taught me that if I can’t run, submit – and it’s always worked.

  A snap of light makes me slam my eyes shut and shy away, but I force my eyes open as soon as I can. Seth actually claps, just once, then pumps a fist in the air. His smile is so big that his face can hardly contain it.

  Roarke sighs, relieved, then walks off toward the two remaining horses.

  Killian doesn’t move, still pointing at me, his fist open and his fingers tense like he wants to grab my shirt and shake me. Pax, with his eyes still glowing and absolutely no clothes on, steps up beside him and gently rests his hand on his brother’s arm. Killian responds, lowering his arm before stepping back and storming away.

  Pax.

  The tension inside me melts so suddenly that my knees go weak. I throw myself at him, wrapping my arms around his neck and burying my head in his chest.

  “Don’t ever disappear on me again,” I whisper.

  “Too late now,” Killian grunts, followed by the sound of horse’s hooves tearing down the road.

  Slowly, Pax’s arms wrap around me. His fingers slip through my hair and press me closer to him.

  Seth’s unruly bay gelding thunders behind me. Dashing in and out of the trees, detouring to jump over a fallen branch, snorting and pulling at its reins. Seth’s gaze is focused, but the fool’s smiling. Happy. No clue to the danger our brother is putting that girl in.

  “Shut up, Seth,” I growl.

  My black gelding rushes to eat the distance between us and the thieves.

  “Didn’t say anything, brother.”

  “You don’t need to say it,” I grumble.

  Seth lets out a whoop, spurring his horse faster for a few beats. They zig across the path ahead of me, then slow to almost match my pace.

  “But he’s back,” the fool says.

  I overtake him, and he zags back across the path behind me.

  “Not a good thing,” I say.

  “Don’t tell me you haven’t missed that beast!”

  “It’s the wrong reason.”

  “She’s a pretty good reason. This shouldn’t even be possible – which means it’s amazing.”

  I pull up sharply, but Seth keeps racing past me. It takes a moment to swing his mount around and backtrack to stop right next to me. If we’ve done our thinking right, we should be ahead of the thieves. Now we wait for them to cross our path.

  “You like her?” I question Seth.

  I feel his pulse of excitement. The air carries the slightest hint of lilies – possibly lust – as the man turns the question over in his mind.

  “She’s. Mortal.” I push the logic onto him.

  “I. Know.”

  “Mortals. Die.”

  Conflict grips at him. There’s a bitter edge to indecision, and I don’t like it.

  “Thieves almost had her – highway-bandits. The least of our enemies. They almost ended her without a fight,” I say.

  “She’s stuck with us,” Seth says, as if that should be the end of it.

  “She’s not stuck with all of us. Who do you think will stay behind with her, while the rest of us ride against Lithael?”

  His face hardens, some of his smile shifting into a combination of fear and misery.

  “We end Litheal,” I say. “End this battle his father started. Lucif wanted death – and it will be his son who dies.”

  He nods.

  “Either our Shadow rides into that battle – or we ride into it without Pax.”

  The echo of a heartbeat reverberates through time, giving me the slightest glimpse of the man riding toward us. Or men, rather. Three of them. Good.

  I dismount and place myself squarely in the way, a fallen tree to one side and a clump of brambles on the other. Seth vanishes to a vantage point that will end up being behind them. After a few breaths, the thieves, one on each of our horses, ride into view. That sight, those scum on my brothers’ horses, twists me up inside. With a wicked smile I suck the feelings in, inhaling them, fanning the fire. Pulling my magic into seeing the world through the lens of Darkness.

  The men thunder to a stop in front of me, and Seth slips in behind them. He stays on his horse, the crazy thing miraculously moving silently through the brush, blocking their exit without them even knowing.

  A short man with calluses on his left hand and hamstrings coiled tightly, and his friend who has a slightly larger right bicep and a subtle limp, slip down from their saddles. They hand the reins off to their third companion, who considers turning and leaving but spots Seth and cringes.

  My targets draw their weapons, stepping to my left and right. They think it’s possible to surround me. My fists curl as I sort through their darkness. Their desires. Their pain.

  I pick my first target and leak the shadows into the other – forming crippling nightmares in his mind to keep him occupied while I end his comrade. The air cools to mist on both their breaths.

  I turn to my left-handed attacker as he fakes a right swing, but at the last minute switches his weapon. I’m already there, already so close to him that his swing is useless, knocking his sword from his hand.

  “Silvari Scum,” I hiss, my fist clenching around his wrist.

  The bones crush.

  The threads that form his mortality glow. Spiraling around each other. Only four. Four threads to this man’s life. Vulnerability dimmed the first. Pain dims the second. I slam my fist into his jaw and watch him fall, smiling down at him. Ego dims the third.

  Before he can recover, I push tendrils of Darkness into his mind. Creating a pool that will drag him to a slow moment when his desires turn toward his own death. That the end would be a mercy. That his life is in my hands, all manner of Darkness clawing up inside him.

  I leave him and turn to face the other guy. He breaks free of my shadows to swing an axe at my head, which explains the larger right bicep. Doesn’t explain the limp, though. I block, then stomp down on the toe of his boot and feel no resistance. The guy’s missing half his foot.

  And still, he rides with thieves. I tilt my head a little to the side – analyzing what this man is made of. Determination.

  Lots of determination.

  Inhaling slowly, I suck every last bit of that strength straight from him. His eyes go wide, his arms limp. The axe in his hands falls to the ground, then the man drops to his knees – crying.

  Seth has left the third man unconscious. I can still see his threads, swirling and spiraling. Fear. Lust. Hate. He has them all, but not a single whiff of the cinnamon scent of regret.

  “Wait, I need to ask him a question,” Seth pants, covering the distance to the crying man at my feet.

  “Why didn’t you ask him?” I growl, waving a hand toward the guy my brother has knocked out.

  “I did, but he ran out of information.”

  “Information?” What could common thieves possibly know that would benefit us?

  “What were you trying to steal?” Seth asks, grabbing the man by the hair and hauling him to his feet.

  “E
verything. We got the spoils, and Xylon got the status. Legends. Infamous. The ones who took down the Elorsins.”

  “So you knew who we were?” I ask.

  “Twenty-two lizards should have been enough,” the man gasps.

  “Xylon is your boss?” I demand.

  The guys nods, tears still streaming down his face. “Xylon paid us for the manpower. This is the first time we’ve worked together.”

  “Paid you in what?” Seth asks.

  He waves toward where the horses have begun to pull tufts of grass and chew loudly.

  “In your secrets.”

  “Lithael,” I growl.

  But the guy shakes his head, hard. “I don’t know who sent Xylon.”

  “Who else could it be? There’s really only two types of people in this world. Those who love us, and those who love Lithael,” Seth says.

  I really want to slap him up the back of the head, and the way this guy’s eyes go wide confirms my opinion. The world is far more complicated than that.

  “I don’t support Crown Lithael. I support myself. The money would have been worth it.”

  “Those bags are filled with our clothes. What things of value do you honestly think we would be traveling with?” Seth says.

  “The reason you turned a soot slave into a Saber,” the man says.

  “Oohh,” Seth exaggerates the sound. “Yeah, I can see how that would get your interest. So Lithael sent this Xylon to kill us, but Xylon needed more men. You had the men, and were willing to risk your lives in return for the slim chance we’d be traveling with some kind of secret in our bags?”

  “I don’t believe him either,” I say, lifting my blade a little to get the man’s attention. “I could start cutting things off until he tells the truth.”

  “No, no, no,” he stammers. “We didn’t really have a choice. Xylon’s a BeastSeed. The lizards were susceptible to his powers.”

  “Fuck.” The word slips between my teeth.

  “Pax,” Seth catches the same thread of thought.

  He hauls the guy toward the horses and practically throws him on before we’re riding hard back toward the others.

  Back toward Roarke, Shade, Pax, and his wolf.

  But this isn’t the Darkness I sensed earlier, that gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach. It didn’t quite taste the same.

  No, there’s something worse waiting for us.

  39.5 Miles from Potion Master Eydis

  “What were those things?” I demand.

  “They were lizards,” Roarke says.

  “No, they weren’t. I’ve seen lizards. They’re small and cute and don’t carry weapons.”

  Roarke leans down, grips one of the thing’s oversized gills-that-might-be-ears, and pulls its head back.

  “Also a lizard,” he says, before running the edge of his blade across its neck.

  The wound spills out blood, as well as an assortment of gunky things – what looks like a half-eaten fish and seaweed. Gagging, turning sharply to look for an escape, I eyeball the track out of here that Seth and Killian tore down minutes ago. Nearby, Pax paces, back in his wolf form. I try not to stare, mostly because all I can picture is the guy naked, and all I can think about is being close to him while he’s naked – again. When his arms were around me, it was like the world seemed to stop – the only moment where things felt right since we left the White Castle.

  Roarke wipes his blade clean in a clump of grass before slipping it into the sheath at his side.

  Pax trots up behind me, his breathing heavy. His coat is that shade of coffee and ash that his hair goes when he gets angry. Now I know why.

  He takes a few long strides, sniffs at my back, then backs off until there’s distance between us again.

  It’s unnerving and weirdly comforting.

  And having both of those emotions inside me at the same time feels like insanity. I haven’t had much to do with wolves, but I imagine they’re like large dogs. He’s bigger. When Pax stretches forward to sniff at me, his nose almost touches the middle of my back. His legs are almost as long as mine. The thick, brownish-like-coffee and dusty-gray-black fur moves like silk. I clench my fists to remind myself that I can’t touch it. Can’t pat him – that would be rude, wouldn’t it?

  I mean, I wouldn’t scratch the man behind the ear normally, so I probably shouldn’t go scratching him behind the ear while he has sharp teeth. But the swirls of molten gold that dance underneath his coat are too beautiful not to want to touch.

  Pax turns sharply, eyeballing the road in the direction that Seth and Killian had vanished. A few breaths later, the horses thunder into sight, both of them riding into our midst.

  “Human, now,” Killian growls.

  Pax doesn’t obey – snapping and snarling in defiance as if Killian isn’t his long trusted brother.

  “BeastSeed,” Seth says, pushing a man from the front of his saddle.

  Not just any man. A thief with thick black hair, eyebrows that stretch across to form one long line of hair, and tears streaming down his face.

  “What did you do to him?” I gasp.

  And get ignored by all of them.

  In a flash, Pax is human again, human and wrapping an arm around me to pull me back tight into his chest… Nope, wait. I barely brush his chest before being shoved behind him and into Roarke’s arms.

  Roarke, however, does pull me into his chest and continue to hold me close, while Seth reaches down and pulls his hostage to his feet.

  “Which one?” Pax growls.

  “What’s a BeastSeed?” I whisper, tilting my head back a little.

  “Their power is like Allure, but to animals.”

  “Eww,” I cringe at the idea.

  “What? No. Not like that. They can make any animal do anything they want.”

  “There,” the hostage is saying, waving to the torn-up body on the other side of our bloody battlefield. “That’s Xylon.”

  Seth lets the hostage fall back to the ground.

  “Well, he’s clearly not a problem anymore,” he says, rolling his shoulders and looking like there was some genuine tension there.

  Killian reaches across and presses his palm to the hostage’s forehead, knocking the guy backward in a fit of tears.

  “What’s he doing?” I whisper, obviously too loudly, because Killian meets my gaze.

  “Getting answers.”

  “By making the guy cry?”

  “By playing with his Darkness,” Roarke explains.

  Pax, still naked, crouches before the man and asks, “Who sent you?”

  “Xylon,” the man sobs, waving a hand toward the torn body of the man who tried to lick my face, and who Pax tore to pieces as a freaking ginormous wolf.

  “Who sent him?”

  “The Crown, I guess. All I know is that he wanted to get to you first. There are others.”

  Roarke covers my ears before saying, “Tell us every detail, free your soul from the burden.” Then adding, just for good measure, “Not you, Shade.”

  “That is everything I know,” the thief wails.

  My guys look from one to the other, like they’re silently agreeing on something, before Killian reaches across and smacks the guy over the head hard enough to knock him out.

  “I can’t make out his features anymore,” Pax grumbles, inspecting the body of the man now known as Xylon, but previously known as the face-licker.

  I avoid looking. The lizard things are gross, but in a surreal kind of way. That other thing… it’s human – or at least it was.

  “When’s the last time you saw a BeastSeed?” he asks, coming back to stand with us.

  “Never,” Roarke answers.

  “That time when you were fifty-six and –” Seth begins, but Roarke cuts in.

  “Oh yeah, there was that one.”

  “Two,” Killian grunts.

  “You mean there’s another one of him out there?” I ask.

  “Brothers, from my memory. But the men we knew weren’t the att
ack-you-in-the-forest type,” Seth says.

  “In all fairness, we didn’t actually know them. They weren’t residents of the White Castle, and I can’t even remember their names. If this is one of those brothers, I can’t imagine they’d keep a grudge over losing a few tournaments for more than two hundred years,” Roarke says. “But the other is definitely going to be pissed off now.”

  “They’re attacking us for revenge?” I say.

  “Lithael,” Killian grunts.

  “Oh, yeah. Everything happens because of Lithael,” I mutter. “Lithael and revenge.”

  “Roarke’s right – this isn’t revenge. Sabers lose in tournament all the time. Every time, actually. There can only be one winner on the sand, so there is always a loser,” Seth says.

  “So this is purely because of Lithael?” I ask.

  “No doubt,” Pax growls. “But where did Lithael find this BeastSeed hiding, and where’s his brother?”

  Because, like Roarke said, if this wasn’t already personal, it is now.

  “You,” Killian growls, pointing sharply at Pax, “better get that wolf up out of his primitive darkness before we find out.”

  In a flash of light Pax is a wolf again, turning to glare at me like maybe he feels all of this is my fault.

  Great.

  “Why?” I ask, but the word is choked, and only the nearest Elorsin, Roarke, seems to hear me.

  “BeastSeeds control primitive creatures. Pax, at full strength, shouldn’t be susceptible.” He nudges me toward the horses, and I take the hint.

  I’m the reason he’s not at full strength.

  Killian walks up to Pax’s horse, pulls out some clothes, and pretty much throws them at the wolf. I’m expecting some more growling, but the wolf picks up the clothes in his jaw, then disappears into the trees.

  I watch the empty forest for several long minutes before turning back to the horses – which are nowhere near as interesting as where Pax has gone.

  By the time I’ve played with my horse’s reins and gotten to the point where I think I actually might be able to do this, Pax walks back out to join us – dressed and human Pax. With his golden eyes troubled, and looking anywhere but at me, he mounts up, then kicks his horse into a gallop and tears off down the track. I feel like the wind’s been knocked out of me.