Sylvan’s white brows gather into a frown. “Just mentally. You just have towantto accept it. You are not picking it up, but helping me hold it, so I’m transferring it to you. It will feel like physical weight, that’s what a lot of shadowcraft is like. You learn to use the shadow as an additional source of strength, but you also need to be fit to carry it in some instances—like this one. It can feel counterintuitive at the start, and it will leave your muscles exhausted.”
I nod, assessing the illusive box enveloping Tristan. A strange, but manageable weight lands in my hands. It feels like we’re holding a table together.
“Then… is it best to be physically strong in order to use shadowcraft effectively? Is that why your skill at it is lower than your brother and sister’s? Because you’re small?”
I wasn’t intending to offend him, just trying to make sense of new information and how it might affect my future. But Sylvan’s gaze pierces me like a dagger made of ice.
“Shut up,” he says, and when an invisible weight drops into my open palms I swear he’s added more to spite me.
Chapter 35
Kyran
Power tastes very much like rare meat, with a bit of char to keep the senses sharp, and a sweet glaze for indulgence. There’s a hint of personality in it too, but I can no longer recognize who grew the energy running through my veins, even though I’ve been wearing it on my skin in the form of an eel for a while.
I have never lost a serious fight, but by choosing the wrong moment to let my guard down, I risked my own life as well as Luke’s, and now Tristan lies dying like a testament to my failure. I like him. Trust him. But I did not think he’d be ready to throw his life on the line to save mine. And whether he survives or not, I will have vengeance.
The moon seems so much brighter as I let shadows creep up my body, covering it whole until I become one with every dark spot looming beneath the trees. It’s a risk to do such things outside the shadowild, but fury burns deep in my heart, and I want to let it run wild. My eyes roll back as my form stretches, passing from shadow to shadow, on the hunt for the elusive presence ahead.
I can almost smell the venom infecting Tristan’s flesh. There’s a trace of it in the air, but it marks my way to the elf who came here to put me down, the elf who hurt my cousin and endangered my promised.
There can be no mercy.
So I don’t hold back and send my shadows to explore every crevice of darkness in the woods around me.
That’s when I see it—the hitman is not alone. The mossy ground pulses beneath his feet far ahead, stained with the bitter aroma of poison, but two others stand in my way, thickening the shadows and confusing me with their presence.
I need to get rid of them fast.
I’m barely sapient as I leap from branch to branch, a predator living on rage and vengeance. There’s an element of greed as well, because I used an eel to power myself for this, and here are two shadow wielders. Enemies. Their shadowcraft ripe for plucking. My thoughts scatter in a moment of hesitation, but Luke told me to take their lives, and it’s an imperative burning deep in my chest.
I almost miss the first assassin creeping in the shadows. He’s one with the bark of a tree, but once spotted, he’s a beacon pulsing in the dark. Gloomdancer is missing from its place at my hip, but I don’t need it to carry out revenge on behalf of my promised. At Vinia’s execution, I made myself clear—anyone endangering Luke is as good as dead.
I dash through shadow, down the trunk, and land my feet on a pair of slender shoulders. The first would-be killer attempts to flee, grabbing me with her shadow, but she is young, inexperienced. She doesn’t even manage to scream before I twist her head off as if it were a cog inside a clock.
A small shadow eel joins the others on my flesh.
The rush of the kill propels me forward. I’m in my element, chasing the man who could have taken my life today. I might resent my upbringing, but it taught me how to be ruthless with my enemies.
The Goldweeds arrived right after the assassination attempt, like clockwork, and ifIhad been hit with the poisoned bolt, any of the other princes and princesses could reach their dirty hands out for Luke. They might have locked him up and given him a miserable existence, and if he resisted the one who claimed him? Death would have been the easiest solution.
When I chose to take my brother’s place, all I thought about was my own survival, my own freedom and happiness, but within the weeks since, Luke has wormed his way into my soul, and I cannot stand the thought of leaving him to the vultures. He deserves better.
He deserves the peace and happiness I can provide. The freedom he fought for as a child.
I will keep him safe.
He and I will rule together as Lord and his Dark Companion, and the Goldweeds, or whoever else ordered the hit on me, will pay the price for their betrayal once I get the assassin to confess.
The forest pulses around me. The beasts retreat, the birds go quiet, and as I dash through the shadows, no longer just an elf, I’m overwhelmed by every breath, every creak for miles around me.
The second assassin freezes on the path ahead. When he spots me, the veil he created to protect the retreat of the one who smells of poison drops. He holds my gaze, sinking into the shadowild. His eyes grow wide when I accelerate. I see him from afar in one moment, only to grab his hair in the next. With the dagger in my free hand, I slash at the bastard’s exposed throat, and blood erupts from it in a lush fountain.
His eyes roll back when I release his mane, letting him fall into the nothingness of the other side. One more killer is left, and I amnotletting that bastard get away.
Without his two accomplices to shroud him from me, I can practically taste his sweat. I don’t know if he’s aware how close he is to death now, but it doesn’t matter. I shall hunt him down and then drag him back to the palace, so he can cry out the name of the one who sent him.
The dark trees turn into a blur as my gaze focuses on the path ahead, and I skirt through the shadows, moving at the speed of a leviathan slinking through the dark waves of Grief Ocean. Ever closer to the pathetic creature who believed itself capable of flickingmeoff the chessboard.
