Page 109 of The Rose in the Shadows

I could feel them inside of her, the shadows. They filled every part of her, and they were… evil. They whispered to her of death and destruction. They were poisoning her with hate and violence. She may have chosen to invite this darkness into her initially, but there was no choice in this. She was consumed by them.

The shadows themselves were the enemy.

I realized suddenly that I didn’t have to be ashamed of being a Descendant of Hyrax. Even if Hyrax was as evil of a God as the history books foretold, wehadto be more than just our bloodlines. Because I could feel the existence of true evil inside of her and that… it wasn’t me.

I wasn’t a monster simply because I was a daughter of Hyrax.

There had to be more to our existence than just our ancestors. We were the ones who got to decide whether we were good or evil, regardless of where we came from.

Camilla had chosen to accept this evil. She chose to kill in the name of power.

I didn’t have to make that same choice.

“You must die,” she whispered again, diving to strangle me once more.

“No, Camilla.” I gasped, struggling against her fingers around my throat. “I will not die tonight, and neither will you.”

It took every ounce of strength in me, but I saw her eyes widen when she realized what I was doing. She didn’t expect it; no onedid. No one expected I would be strong enough to surround each member of the shadow army with my electric power, but I did, and Ipulled.I tore them from the battle until they catapulted through the sky toward us.

“No!” she screamed, wincing as they hit her one by one, sinking themselves back into her flesh.

With each shadow returning home to her, she quivered until the power was too much for her body to contain. Camilla wasn’t a goddess. She lived in a mortal body and had been gifted the ability to wield a fraction of a Gods power. She’d tried to take more than she could handle, and now her human body couldn’t support it.

Her eyes bled, her screams echoed, her veins darkened. We watched, every eye on the battlefield, attuned to her, as she lifted from the ground, screeching in agony.

The power eventually overwhelmed her completely, and finally, her cries quieted. She must have fallen at that point, but my attention was on the massive golden Dragon lying impossibly still across the field. I tried to crawl to him, but with my magic sufficiently drained and my wounds becoming more painful than I could bear, I slipped off into unconsciousness once more with his name on my lips.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

When I finally woke, I had woken back in that damn infirmary room, screaming and causing chaos with unchecked power. The nurses calmed me as best they could, but I had spent that day receiving minor details about what had happened between sleeping potions.

Camilla had, in fact, lived through the power surge as I hoped she would and had been taken to the palace dungeons to detox from the black magic. The power was addictive, and the shadows would fight to stay in her system. They weren’t sure if she would live through the process. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

Geia was gone. They’d determined she was Camilla’s half-sister, born from Camilla’s mortal mother. No one in the castle even knew Camilla’s mother was alive, let alone that she’d had another child. We weren’t entirely sure how Camilla and Geia had first come to know each other, but it didn’t matter. Geia had left the palace, and while they had sent a team to look for her, part of me hoped they wouldn’t find her. I wasn’t sure I couldbear to see her again. I couldn’t even begin to think of what I would say to the young girl I had befriended who had ultimately betrayed me.

The nurses were diligent in tending to my wounds. Most of the cuts were simple enough to heal. The broken ankle had needed to be set before they could heal it, which had been… uncomfortable. But thank the Gods for magical tonics that healed most of the injuries in just a few days.

The one thing that hadn’t seemed to heal was the Mark of Hyrax. No one was quite sure how I had stayed connected to my magic after the power stripping. They all assured me it was impossible, and the missing tattoo on my chest seemed to confirm that the tie to Hyrax had been severed. And yet, I felt more connected to that electricity than ever before. The only explanation anyone had brainstormed was that Camilla hadn’t completed the blood transfusion to the extent she needed to. She had given me just enough mortal blood to suppress my powers for an extended time, and apparently remove my mark, but not enough to remove my magic permanently.

It was hardly the loss of a tattoo that pained me most, though. There had been plenty of casualties on the field that day. They’d had a memorial service while I was in the infirmary. The nurses had offered to summarize the Dragon’s speech for me, but I refused. I’d been at the battle. The faces of the dead weren’t ones I was likely to forget.

And yet, I couldn’t bring myself to really care about Camilla, Geia, the Dragon, or anyone else, for that matter. There was only one person I truly cared to hear about in those days when I was locked away in my hospital bed.

During the first few days, they had been strict about not allowing me out of bed. They insisted I needed time to heal, but once it was clear that I was on the mend, the nurses let me know I was free to leave and I wasted no time doing so. I dressed in thetunic and cotton pants Nessira had brought me the day before and tied my hair back. Dimitri waited for me on the other side of the door, but thankfully, the rest of the guard team was finally gone. The threat had passed, which meant my days traveling with a group of ten were over.

Clay had been badly injured. That was all they would tell me. Each time I asked about him, they repeated the same story. That he had fought bravely, been severely wounded, and that they were doing everything they could. My stomach dropped when the nurse had first whispered those words to me, and it hadn’t steadied itself since.

“Shall I escort you to your suites, my lady?” Dimitri asked, bowing respectfully as I finally stepped into the hall.

I shook my head firmly. “No. Take me to him.”

“My lady,” a nurse called, overhearing. “I cannot allow that. The Prince needs his rest. His father will surely keep the Council updated on his health.”

“I don’t care about thePrince’shealth,” I insisted, words clipped and tense. My concern wasn’t for the Crown Prince or the fate of the Council. I cared only for the man underneath the title. “Take me to see Clayton.”

“My lady, please-”

“I’m not asking.”

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