Shift of Shadow and Soul (SoulShifter Book 1)

by Hilary Thompson

  The man got past his guard and sliced Sy’s forearm. The bright spark of pain reminded him to focus on the fight before him, not figuring out the boy behind him. Sy latched onto the sound of weapons clashing in the brisk morning air.

  The man fell to his knees in the grass, clutching his bloodied side and holding up his hands in surrender. “Please don’t kill me!” he begged. Sy hesitated, and Nik shrugged.

  “I’ll watch him,” he said cheerfully, moving to stand above the man, sword point pressing into his chest. “Coren and Resh went on. I think the other slaves are right ahead.”

  “Let him live,” Sy said. “I want some questions answered.”

  Nik just grinned, winking. The gesture shot through Sy’s chest in an odd way, and he turned quickly, scanning the trees for Resh and Corentine. He wasn’t worried about either of them, but he had the odd sensation that Nik wanted to tell him a secret, and it might be something he wasn’t ready to hear.

  He saw a flash of wings, and he dashed through the trees, finding Coren swiping her claws across the neck of a third Wesh slaver. She screamed at the man as he yanked at one of her wings on his way down, but before Sy had the chance to intervene, she kicked the man violently in the gut. He sprawled on the ground, his eyes turning dull and lifeless even as he hit the forest floor.

  “Came out of nowhere,” she muttered to herself, jerking her wing back into place with a grimace.

  “That’s three slavers,” Sy said.

  She whirled on him, claws raised and a startled fire in her liquid amber eyes. Sy’s grip on his weapon faltered. Coren looked every bit like a demon from the Sulit forest, or something from deep in the Umbren shadows. But as she focused on Sy, the look softened, and he began to breathe again.

  “Where’s Resh?” she asked, scanning the trees.

  Sy shrugged, but the thrum of an arrow and a shout reached them from beyond a thick copse of trees. They both broke into a run, Coren shoving her wings behind her as they tangled in the foliage.

  “Resh!” she cried out as they entered a wide clearing, but he didn’t turn, his attention focused on fighting the tall, brawny guard before him. The man was decorated with too much brass to be a mere guard.

  “Prodigal Knight!” Sy warned. The man’s head whipped around at the name, but when he saw them, his mouth and his weapon both dropped.

  “Sorenta?” he said, the name floating in the air as he stared at Coren, his face ghostly pale in the shadows of the forest.

  Coren knocked Resh aside and was on the man in a second, her wings stretching wide and blocking the brothers’ view of either of them. Resh kept his bow sword up and ready, glancing back at Sy, who shrugged in uncertainty.

  Coren trembled, holding the man’s jacket tight in her talons, searching his face from a mere few inches. It was older, certainly, but the familiarity was there. The amber eyes matched her own. But it just couldn’t be true.

  Not after all these years. Not here.

  “Corentine…” he said, whispering now. “It’s me. Kashar. Your father.” His voice sounded uncertain of the words it was pronouncing, but his eyes had filled with tears.

  Tears that she wanted nothing more than to smack away. She loosed her hold on his palace uniform and backed up several feet, relishing the awe spilling over his face as he took in her full Vespa form.

  “Traitor,” she spat at him, and his face hardened. She glanced back at Sy and Resh, who were still alternating between scanning the woods around them and the scene before them, ready to fight and protect her. She shook her head at them.

  “If anyone fights this man, it will be me,” she snarled.

  Sy raised his brows in question.

  Turning back to Kashar, she said, “Call your men here. I want no surprises.”

  “This is my father, Kashar the Deserter,” she said to Resh and Sy. The shock on their faces would have made her laugh if not for the rage bubbling in her veins. “This is Kashar…who left me with a suicidal mother and twin babies to care for, and apparently came to work for the one man who his people hate most in all the world.”

  “Corentine, I’m so sorry,” he began, but she snapped her wings at him, their momentum pushing him backward. He stumbled to one knee.

  “You do not get to apologize for those years,” she said, infuriated even more by the obvious hurt in her voice. “Now call your men,” she repeated. “Bring all the Wesh. Or I will slice you open where you stand.”

  He searched her face for something, and apparently didn’t find it. Casting his eyes down, he put his fingers between his lips and whistled, long and clear.

  Coren hated the relief that began to filter through her.

  No, she didn’t want to kill her father. But she also couldn’t bear to gain a new weakness, just when she’d become so strong.

  Kashar could bring her to her knees if he remembered how to speak just the right words.

  Two men appeared momentarily, both trailing several Wesh behind them, still in their rope bindings. They hadn’t been far, and Coren realized that if they hadn’t come upon the three Weshen slavers first, much more blood would have spilled.

  “Where are the traitors?” she asked Sy.

  “Two dead, and Nik is watching a third,” Sy said quickly.

  “Bring him here,” Coren said. Her control threatened to snap at any second, sending her into the sort of spiral that had already killed a guard in Weshen City, and several more since.

  She felt Resh step next to her, but she ignored him. Kashar was all that mattered.

  They must take the slaves, so he could no longer do harm. “We’re taking all of these Wesh with us. They will not go to the palace, but home to Weshen City,” she said, glaring at Kashar.

  The huddled Wesh muttered to each other, disbelief and fear on their faces. The guards yanked on their ropes, calling threats. Kashar’s expression hardened, and he shook his head.

  “That is impossible. My life is forfeit if I do not bring them.”

  “You are a traitor. Your life is already forfeit.”

  He shook his head, and she bit down on a yell of rage.

  “I am your daughter,” she said instead, taking a menacing step toward him. “These are your people. Or they were, once. Before you traded them for the luxuries of a tyrant.”

  “There’s so much you don’t understand,” he replied, and her vision tunneled to his eyes, everything else turning to darkness. How dare he? “Corentine, these Wesh are safer in StarsHelm with me than anywhere else. The passage through the mountains would kill some of them. As I’m sure you also found out,” he added.

  Coren startled, her thoughts stumbling from black thoughts of murder.

  “You knew I was Wesh?”

  He nodded. “Sorenta was Wesh. Helping her escape Riata through the passage was the worst thing I’d ever had to endure. We were so young, and we knew nothing of Weshen City, except that it waited on the other side of the mountains. It was supposed to be safe. I loved her, and she was dying before my very eyes. There was nothing I could do.”

  “And yet all those years later you abandoned her and your children and your people,” Coren said, her voice slicing like steel through the plea on his face.

  “I’ll explain everything, but we cannot stay here. I promise you, things will be much worse for all of us if I return to StarsHelm without these Wesh.”

  Sy returned with Nik, half-dragging the wounded slaver between them. She spared a second to check on Resh, who was strutting up and down across the line of guards and Wesh, soaking in her words.

  “What do you want?” Sy asked Kashar.

  “He does not get terms!” Coren cried, but Resh stepped forward and drew a hand along her trembling wings, leaning to whisper a warning of calm. She made a noise nearly like a growl, but then she nodded to Kashar. “What is it that you want?”

  Kashar hesitated, then nodded. “I will compromise. These are good men. My guards, loyal to me even above their pledge to Zorander Graeme. For years, we’ve
helped collect the Wesh and bring them to the palace, but you must believe me. I swear on the Mirror Magi themselves that I help the Wesh in every way I can. You’ve seen what happens to them on their own,” he said, gesturing to Nik, who stiffened and stepped closer to Sy.

  “The king mandates his Alchemists to learn from the Wesh, and while it’s true they are prisoners, if I’m in charge, I can ensure they’re treated better than many of the king’s friends. I’m learning from them, Corentine. We’re collecting the magic again, and recording its ways for the time when the magic returns to Weshen.”

  “In case you hadn’t noticed, the magic is here,” Resh said, stepping slightly between Coren and her father. “That means you no longer need to carry on this sham. Simply free these Wesh and return home. I will see to it that my father pardons you.”

  “A First Son?” Kashar asked, raising a brow. Resh flushed.

  “I am First Son,” Sy responded, stepping next to Resh. “And my father is not one to discuss magic lightly.” He glared at Resh. “But we can ensure their safety in other ways.”

  Coren bit back a snort, and Sy gritted his teeth. “Let us take the children, then,” he said, gesturing to the few small bodies in the lineup of Wesh. “Tell the king they didn’t make the journey, or they didn’t have magic. I’m sure you can figure out a believable story. Take the healthy adults, and leave us the children and the wounded,” he requested.

  Kashar was silent, seeming to consider the offer.

  “Or, we can simply kill you now,” Nik said, raising his stolen bow sword. Sy held up his hand, and Nik sighed, disappointment slouching his shoulders.

  “Fine,” Kashar bit out. “But only because of my daughter.”

  Coren felt her rage reach a tipping point. She was about to lift her father from the grass when Sy jumped and shoved her back, sending her stumbling into Resh’s arms.

  “Watch out!” Sy yelled, waving his arms at everyone in the clearing. The guards yanked at the Wesh, pulling them together automatically against the unseen threat. Nik and Resh and even Kashar whirled in circles, trying to locate the new danger.

  “Shadow! It wants the magic!” Sy cried, and several of the Wesh screamed.

  Coren brushed Resh away and prowled the trees, soon finding the type of darkening mass and flickering movement she would never again take for granted.

  She let out a wordless scream of rage just as Shadow slunk from behind a tree, its form the most substantial she’d seen it yet. Low rumbles of something between a creature’s growl and the threat of thunder echoed through the forest, and more of the Wesh screamed, huddling closer to each other.

  Kashar and his guards circled the group, weapons brandished as Shadow dissolved again between the trees, reappearing several feet closer each time.

  “What is it?” one of the guards yelled, just as the darkness slithered over him, and his scream was cut short with the severing of his head. Blood gushed into the grass, and Coren heard someone retching among the screams and whimpers.

  Leaping into the air, she flapped her wings and located Shadow. She dove, ignoring the crunch of feather against tree branch as she bore down on the darkness, but Shadow was too fast. Colliding with a Wesh woman at the edge of the circle, it sliced her deep enough that the red of her insides became a gruesome tangle on the forest floor.

  Shadow flickered and grew more defined, as Coren’s stomach churned at the mess of a human before her. But in the split second she had looked to the dying woman, Shadow darted to her and sliced at her with its trailing talons, opening her leather vest and tunic from her waist nearly to her neck.

  Old instincts took over, and her whip slid down her arm to flick at the air like the tongue of a snakka.

  The remaining Wesh and even the guards were panicking behind her, crushing each other in their haste to flee. But she focused on the darkness before her, and the odd stretch of light within it, almost as though the creature were trying to smile at her.

  A low rumble shook the ground at her feet, and she sliced the whip through its middle. It dissolved like smoke, and she flapped her wings at it, spreading it farther. The rumble turned to something more like laughter as the bits of darkness slipped away.

  Its kills had been making it stronger.

  “Blood magic,” she whispered, glancing behind her. Sy and Nik were struggling to corral the hysterical Wesh, and Kashar was tending to a wounded guard.

  She spotted Shadow gathering itself together at the edge of the clearing. She began to run, but Resh was also striding toward the monster, bow sword drawn and murder on his beautiful face.

  “Reshra, no!” she cried, but it was too late. He was too close.

  Shadow leaped at him with a guttural roar that seemed to shake leaves from the trees, the edges of darkness twining around Resh’s arms and legs, tumbling him to the ground.

  Coren half-flew, half-ran and crashed into the black mass settled above Resh’s chest. Swiping her talons through the amorphous form, she shrieked and beat her wings, loosing all her rage on the creature as they rolled together into the grass. Its form was solid and smoke, darkness and light, all at once.

  Finally, it burst and shattered into pieces that fell like shards of glass and scraps of sodden fabric into the grass around them. Heaving, she picked up a piece and felt nothing in it, no living source.

  She crawled and knelt in the blood-soaked grass next to Resh, her wings enclosing them in a different sort of shadow, draped like a shroud.

  “Resh?” she whispered, unashamed at the desperation in her voice. She wasn’t sure why yet, but she needed him to be alive. His eyes fluttered open, and his face was drawn in pain. She carefully sliced away the tattered shirt to reveal deep gashes across his stomach and up his side, the skin flayed back to expose several white ribs.

  “Thank you,” he said, reaching a bloodied hand to cup her cheek. She smiled into his fingers, about to tease him, but something grabbed her from behind.

  White pain ripped through her abdomen, and she curled around herself, moaning.

  Agony reverberated through every limb in her body, and the world flashed dark and light, dark and light.

  Someone screamed her name, but she was lost again on the MagiSea, just a pebble skipping over the salty water, stumbling over the ripples but no longer making them.

  Chapter 31

  Despite his own injuries, Resh had barely left Coren’s side in three days.

  Three days he had watched her wrestle with her mind, muttering incoherently about ripples and shadows and the cruelty of family. He’d never cared enough for anyone to spend this much time with them, but when Sy had questioned him, Resh used the last of his resolve to avoid punching his brother.

  Whatever hold this girl had over him, it hadn’t been exclusive to her beautiful, sensual Vespa wings.

  Resh was certain of that because now, the wings were gone.

  Sy told him later that Shadow had ripped the claw from Coren’s stomach, sending her into this dreamlike state. Her wings had begun to shrivel and shrink into her back immediately.

  Resh remembered none of this. Neither did he remember Sy’s story of shifting apart the forest floor with Nik’s help, then overturning the dirt, trapping Shadow deep in the earth.

  All Resh remembered after being attacked were Coren’s eyes, locked onto his, fear and pain and desperation swirling there and tugging him under like a drowning man with a weight on his chest. So he stayed by her side, watching for the slightest change.

  He wasn’t certain why, but he needed her to live.

  “Any change?” Sy asked, opening the door to the attic room of the NightGuard.

  Resh shook his head, standing to stretch and wincing as the bandages pulled at the edges of his wounds. “Is Shanta here? I need to change these bandages and take a piss,” he said. Sy nodded, and Resh shoved past his brother before he could ask another question.

  Coming out of the bathroom, he sought Shanta in the boys’ room. She’d been visiting two and three t
imes a day, checking on Coren and bandaging Resh’s ribs and stomach.

  “How are the Wesh?” he asked, peeling the cloth from his skin.

  “You’re healing nicely,” she answered instead. Her ice-blue eyes blinked up at him. “So far Kashar hasn’t bothered us. He let me take the kids and the few wounded ones. He didn’t even have a guard follow me.”

  “How can you be certain?”

  She glared, taping the clean cloth to his skin with more force than was necessary. “Because I know my city, Resh. I know everything that goes on in my quarter.”

  Nik entered the room just then, bearing yet another full tray of food. “I sure hope you have some money. We’re starting to run quite the tab here,” he said, grinning. Resh only narrowed his eyes. Something about Nik bothered him, but other than the boy’s incessant cheerfulness, he had yet to figure it out. Sy seemed intent on keeping him around, though, so Resh tolerated the feeling.

  He would figure it out eventually.

  “Any luck finding the source of the magic?” Resh asked, trying to keep his voice neutral. Shanta and her crew had been interviewing people and scouring the city for reasons why some of the Wesh had magic while others did not. So far they’d found nothing new - most of the patterns traced back to powerful families, when the lineage could be discovered.

  “I’m sure you’ll get your powers soon.” She knew what he really wanted.

  Resh scoffed. “I’m fine with my bow sword, thanks. Leave the wings to that one.” He gestured above them to the attic.

  “I’d be happy to torture the magic from you,” Nik added. “I’ve seen lots of techniques.”

  Resh grimaced. “None of that. But if you can play nice, I think you’d do well to come to Weshen City when we take the Wesh there. You can help smooth things over with the General.”

  Nik scowled. “I’d rather not help that man.” He sat down before the food and began to eat, closing his expression from Resh and Shanta.

  “Well, I’m off,” Shanta said abruptly. “Send a message if bird-girl wakes up.”