We’re practically at the border. Then the trees stop, and bare land tumbles to the horizon. Past a dim light way out there.
One sole light, from the one sole Manor crazy enough to exist near the Enchanted Forest.
I press my eyes closed, refusing to open them again. The glass is cool against my temple, and I try to focus on that as my mind grows heavy and my breathing shallow.
* * *
The world moves, and I land with an oomph on the floor – followed by loud groans and numbness radiating from my ass to my back. The numbness is at least better than the bone-deep ache that erupts in my arm. Broken arms, even those strapped to your chest, don’t like it when the person they’re attached to is dropped to the floor. I only manage to hiss in one breath before Roarke’s rushing to my side and snapping out of his unnatural Saber speed.
“Kitten, sorry.”
Seth would have laughed, and Killian would have made some comment about me needing to stay alert even when I’m sleeping, but Roarke actually looks embarrassed. He pulls me to my feet with my back to the window. It’s daylight, but heavily filtered through storm clouds. Gray, gloomy, and highlighted by the occasional flash of lightning.
“Tell me what’s out there,” I request, pointing over my shoulder.
He looks past me, his head tilting a little to the side. Then understanding smooths his features, and his gaze falls back to mine.
“Yes,” he says softly. “But it’s a long way away, and he can’t get to you. He could never get past me.”
I sigh heavily. Lord Martin’s estate.
Lord Martin may not be able to get to me, but I can’t get to them either. Jake, Cook, Alfie and Bella, and everyone else. They were my family for a very long time, and while trying to survive in this almost-fantasy world made it easy to push my homesickness away – that doesn’t remove it altogether. It would be so much easier if I just felt free, but I know they’re back there – they’re not free. So a part of me isn’t either.
“You really trashed this place,” I say, pulling my mind back to the present.
Sometime while I was sleeping, he went from one workbench to three, and everything he didn’t need has been piled up on the remaining bench and the floor. There’s a lot of crap on the floor.
Roarke looks around the room and rubs the back of his neck. When he turns back to me, something on the floor catches his attention. Scooping down, he picks up the black file that I found during the night.
“I thought you’d given up,” he says. “But this is the right file.”
He flips it open, taking the two sheets of paper out and discarding the folder.
“What are they?” I ask.
“This is the recipe. It’s a common recipe:
A feather each from a night owl and a hummingbird.
Two drops from the Truth Spring, one collected at dawn and one collected at dusk.
A leaf from the top of the redwood tree and one from the ground.
A red hair from the gilded possum and one from a dead hole-mole.
And a pinch of blood from the mischievous son.
This other one is a letter…” He trails off, his voice losing its strength.
Silence. His beautiful dark gaze is locked onto a word at the bottom of the page.
“Roarke,” I say, resting my hand on the page so he has to stop and look up at me. “Read it out loud.”
He clears his throat, and I slide my hand out of the way.
“Eydis. Please avail yourself to the task of creating the following: I require the order of things to be changed. For a list from one to seven to reshape itself without the owner’s awareness, the words to reform, and the desired outcome to skew and have the opposite effect. I can’t elaborate on what exactly the potion will be used on, just that it be in the range of the above. Rush the printed edition to each of the tomes and make it readily available at every castle. The Potion Masters are aware that this new recipe will become part of the syllabus.
As per our last correspondence, the child of the mortal must go into the Origin Spring on the day of the new moon, which, if this letter arrives in time, will be tomorrow.
And if it doesn’t arrive in time, we may all be dead too soon to care.
Leave and return.
Crown Raefiya.”
The world spins. My insides waver, and every ounce of strength I had begins to fall to the floor.
“Easy, Kitten,” Roarke says, grabbing my elbow and trying to steady me.
When that doesn’t work, he sinks to the floor with me.
“Raefiya was your mother?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says, nodding slowly.
Most of the room is fuzzy and distant. His face is the only thing even remotely in focus. “Your mother drowned me,” I whisper.
“And she gave Seth the tool to bind us together. She had to have a reason. This was written two hundred and seventy years ago.”
I blink up at him.
“That doesn’t make sense. How many babies did she drown?”
He makes a half-choking, half-laughing noise.
“None. Kitten, this is you,” he says, holding the letter in front of me. “You went into that spring two hundred and seventy years ago.”
“You’re chuckin' nuts,” I tell him. “I know I supposedly drowned or half-drowned or whatever in that spring, but I couldn’t have been under that water for hundreds of years.”
“You could have. It’s a Power Spring for one, and it’s the Origin Spring. Who knows what it can do.”
“Did your mother know?”
He shrugs. “Possibly.”
“Your mother was chuckin’ nuts.”
He shrugs. “No, but ProphecySeeds do tend to do some things that look crazy to everyone else. She was the kind of person to open an umbrella a day before it started to rain.”
I smile at him, my lips pulling a little tight in an effort not to laugh, which paints a smile across his face too.
“I don’t know exactly why she put these pieces into play in this way, and I suppose no one ever will. She was building safe-holds and alternatives, just in case things happened one way or another. But for whatever reason, in the same two decades as she was finding all of us – she found you.”
I swallow hard. Which doesn’t help. So I do it again, and again.
“Kitten,” Roarke’s voice is soft, brushing across my consciousness. “Are you okay?”
I nod, swallowing hard one more time. “No.”
He chuckles, then moves across the room to grab a glass of water and the last of the bread.
“Here, eat something,” he says, handing them to me.
“I knew that woman looked familiar,” I say. Taking a hesitant bite. “Eydis. She was in my memories.”
Roarke nods. “Makes sense. That means she’s the keeper of the Origin Spring – and the spring must be somewhere nearby.”
“I don’t understand why your mother dropped me in the damned spring.” A part of me wants to add ‘instead of raising me in lavish luxury like you four,’ but I can’t.
I’m still a soot-servant. Her decision made me a soot-servant, while her choices with her sons turned them into Elite Saber badass princes. So, yeah, I feel a really good pity-party coming on.
“I don’t either,” Roarke says, running his thumb along my jawline. “But if we’d grown up with you, you’d be our sister.”
I almost blurt out that if we were brother and sister, we wouldn’t be in this tug-of-war of get-close versus keep-our-distance… all of us. But the real question is whether she was trying to keep us away from each other or not. After all, she did send them to find me – eventually. The woman knew stuff, futures-to-come type stuff. Does this mean she was trying to position us for a different kind of relationship? Or does it still mean that my mostly-mortal-ass is destined to die, and being mostly-mortal with these guys two hundred and something years ago would have made me definitely dead by now.
“There’s a chance you wouldn’t have survi
ved living in the Black Castle. Your mother was mortal. Living with us full time might have destroyed your soul long ago. Not to mention Pax tried to kill us more than once before his power accepted us. Did you know Seth once lit fireworks under Killian’s bed? Even if your soul had survived, the rest of you might not have.”
I press my lips together to help bottle down my laughter. “Fireworks?”
“Killian almost put him through the Veil for it too.”
“Kind of removes any possibility that my part in this prophecy was purely as Seth’s puppet at the White Castle. Clearly that note Jada gave me was meant for me.”
Roarke frowns. “Yes, I think it does. Are you going to stay on the floor, Kitten? I have a few things I want to look up.”
I nod, drinking the last of my glass of water. He snaps into super-speed and rushes around the room, pulling down new books and rearranging one of the work benches to accommodate several large glass bowls. He tosses a few ingredients in and begins mixing and inspecting what he’s created.
Thunder claps outside, startling me. The sky finally opens up, and heavy raindrops pelt down against the glass. The sound soothes my racing mind, washing over me and making my worries heavy enough to sink to the bottom of my consciousness.
I don’t know how long I sit listening to the storm and the melody of raindrops on glass. It’s so much nicer than rain dripping on my head through holes in the apple-cellar roof – and the thought makes me think once again of Lord Martin’s estate.
Pulling myself up, I turn and stare out over the landscape for the first time in the daylight. Not that there’s much daylight. Heavy black storm clouds have muffled anything bright and cheerful – and yet I still feel comfortable.
The giant tree reaches up into the storm. I don’t remember ever seeing it from the estate, but the view of the Enchanted Forest was mostly of a green mist that always looked hungry and angry. Trees could be seen through it – but no real detail.
None of that is in the way of my view out of the forest. The trees stop sharply. The dead land beyond sprawls out, streaked with stone fences, Brahman, and a small number of sheep. Some crops no bigger than the size of a house that struggle, through hard labor, to mature and have any yield. An apple orchard.
And the Manor.
A two-story stone building with a high peaked roof and three stone chimneys that are streaming thin grey smoke. One from his chambers. One from the kitchen.
And one from the great hall on the first floor, up through his private dining hall on the second story. It’s mid-morning, but the man is never in a hurry to get out of bed. He takes all his meals in his private dining room. Always has.
He’d have the fire burning hot and two plates in front of him. One piled high with meat and vegetables and the other with fresh baked bread. He’d have whiskey in his glass, rum if he was already in a bad mood. His boots off. His pants unbuttoned. The short, dark window of time when I would try to keep out of his reach.
A shiver runs through me as the details in my imagination drown out the real world before my eyes.
I can’t actually see what’s happening inside the manor. The high stone walls around the kitchen gardens are only just visible.
“Roarke,” I say.
“Yes, Kitten,” he mumbles, his words drawn out as if his speed somehow alters the way sound is moving.
“I…” I begin, struggling for an option. An exit. A distraction from the view and the memories. “I… I need to pee.”
Roarke Callon Demari Elorsin, Shade is not your pet, I repeat the mantra over and over. Sure, for the first hundred times I used the endearment Kitten instead of Shade. And a kitten is generally a pet – but I’ve amended that now. She is Shade.
“Roarke,” she says softly behind me.
“Yes, Kitten?” I absently reply – then wince.
Roarke Callon Demari Elorsin, Kitten is not your Shade – Shade is not your Kitten – Kitten Shade pet not!
“I… I… I need to pee,” she says.
“I won’t look,” I say – too late, I’m already imagining her pants dropping to her ankles.
Roarke Callon Demari Elorsin, just keep it under control for a few more hours. Find the answers. Pop this bubble… Deep breaths and push the idea of her being… satisfying… into the dark.
Into the shadows.
Into the Shade.
I groan.
Fifteen Paces
“I won’t look,” he says.
“What?” I gasp.
I stare at him in horror. Not the your-life-is-ending kind, but the pure embarrassment kind. Like maybe he expects me to pee in a bottle because there’s no bathroom in here, which I am not agreeing to in any way.
He stops, and the lack of motion makes me feel dizzy.
“Where?” I ask.
His cheeks burn pink, and he settles the jar of something buzzing onto the bench before motioning for me to follow him.
“Sorry. I was in my own world,” he says.
“I know,” I mutter, trotting after him.
“There’s a bathroom on the second story, isn’t there?” he says.
We pad down the stairs, me behind him and perving on his ass – again.
There is a bathroom, tucked back around the corner. No door, though. It’s not even really a room. Just a wooden seat and plumbing system for a toilet, and a piped shower running on gravity or something. Silvari technology is far more advanced than anything on the soot side of the border.
I count the steps from the spiral staircase to the toilet. Current bubble size is fifteen paces, and I use nine of them getting from Roarke on the staircase to the toilet. Which keeps him around the corner from me. Doesn’t mean my bubble will stay this big, though, and if it keeps shrinking, one of the guys is going to have to be in here with me.
While I pee.
Or worse.
Not a pleasant thought.
A flicker of pink and blue in the sky catches my attention, but I make sure I’m off the toilet and my pants are up before I ask, “What was that?”
“What was what?” Roarke echoes.
I cross the room, finding him with his back turned in the stairwell, so of course he didn’t see anything.
“Outside, there was a flash of light,” I say, waving toward the window.
The window doesn’t look over the stream or towards the tree but kind of cuts down the middle of the other levels, with a view directly at the border.
“Lightning?” Roarke asks.
“No, it was pink and blue, and it kind of ran from the left to the right.”
“I don’t know,” he says, stepping up next to me and examining the skyline.
“You don’t know?” How doesn’t the guy know?
“Yes, Kitten. There’s plenty of things I don’t know.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to insult you.”
He snorts.
The sky shimmers and rolls again, right on the edge of the tree line. Straight up from the ground to the sky. Like there’s a giant piece of cloth pulled tight and someone just gave it a shake.
“There, that.”
“I didn’t see anything, but where you are pointing is where the border is.”
“Ximena,” I whisper, a little awed, though I’m not sure why.
“What?”
“The border – I named her Ximena back at the White Castle, remember? Look, there it is again.”
“I don’t remember, and I didn’t see anything,” Roarke says, turning towards me. More interested in me talking crazy than in me actually seeing something that he can’t. “Kitten, it’s a border. A powerful and omniscient border – but just a border.”
“Omniscient?” I ask, still looking out the window.
“Some people think it is.”
“Not what I meant,” I mutter.
“Think of it as similar to a mortal’s god.”
“So she can see everything and understand our fates?”
“Some people think so. It chooses the
triunes, and it has a lot of control over the flow of power through our realm.”
“Is she close?” I ask, which is a much simpler question.
“Yes. Eydis’ domain practically touches the border.”
“I thought she was supposed to smell bad.”
“It, she, does from the outside,” he says, but he sounds rather like he’s talking to a toddler who’s beginning to get annoying. “Why are you still staring out there? What can you see?”
“Um, I’m not seeing anything right now, but I’m looking for shimmers, or waves, or power rippling, or something. Won’t being this close to her weaken you guys?”
“Not while we’re inside Eydis’ domain. Her wards cocoon the magic in here. Hm, not cocoon – that implies nothing can escape. More like filter. And the nearby spring will draw the border’s attention. We won’t be affected.”
“There, that shimmer – did you see it this time?” I ask.
He hooks his finger under my chin and tries to turn my face, his dark eyes searching mine. For half a beat I wonder if he thinks I’m broken, then I lose my ability to think altogether. Staring back into those intense eyes, like black pools, impossibly dark, but full of the kind of depth that sad and lost things fall into to find a home.
My attention drops to his chest, then abs. Damn, even this guy’s legs are hot.
What the bralls has gotten into me?!
“My power is hijacking the way you see me,” he mutters. “Probably the way you see others too – but it shouldn’t change the way you see magic or objects.”
My focus shifts back to the trees. On the spot where they thin out, then stop all together, creating the cleared space around us. A man riding a black horse ambles into view. Not a Silvari. His cloak is heavy with the hood pulled up against the rain. The horse is bulky; even the saddle looks bulky and almost primitive. Silvari fashion is light and made from finer things than the wet dog he’s wearing, and Silvari horses look like they’re bred from the wind.
It amazes me how obviously mortal he is. I must really stand out among these people.
“What about him?” I ask. “Can you see him?”
Shadows and Shade Box Set Page 73