Page 144 of Stalked By Seduction and Shadows

“Percy, was there a shrine to Lillian in any of the rooms?” That was where the passageways had always begun upon their discovery, after we’d conquered Nyx. We’d restructured all entrances and the arrangement of the labyrinth soon after.

Percy shouted to fighters under him, and one of them nodded. After an order from Mason, we all linked back up to follow the woman to the statue of Lillian.

Past a blasted wall lay rows and rows of beds, sheets strewn all about and the smell of blood and sex in the air. My stomach churned, anger boiling my blood.

A statue of Lillian stood against a wall, right in the center, as if she were watching over all the slaves as they slept. This was clearly one of the many places trafficked mortals stayed before they were auctioned off. Or perhaps if they weren’t deemed worthy of private auctions, only to be lent out to clubs and events at will.

Hanson rushed forward, chanting a spell to reveal what was hidden as the chaos upstairs grew louder.

He shook his head. “This isn’t it.”

“They wouldn’t use the same marker as they did centuries ago, surely,” Mason pointed out.

I opened my mouth to command everyone to keep searching, for Hanson to read every single room for signs until we figured it out, but I knew we didn’t have that kind of time. We needed to get out of here. We’d already taken too long.

We couldn’t leave empty-handed. Not again. We needed this. Those slaves deserved their freedom, the born deserved the first blow of the war, and the mortals and turned in Valentin needed an empowering inciting event.

I studied Lillian with a heavy glare. My eyes roamed her figure, stopping on the sharp dagger she held in her left hand.

Craning my head, I smelled the air around her dagger.

“Rune?” Mason asked, unsteadily.

“Hanson, I need you to use that dagger to shed your blood in offering,” I said quickly.

Hanson stepped forward without question, nicking his arm on the blade’s pointed tip.

“The born stubbornly stick to tradition, even when it’s not in their best interest,” I said. “But of course, they would ward against our presence. And as Durian and his unholy book love to remind us, Lillian requires sacrifice of mortal blood.”

I might’ve held my breath when Hanson’s blood dropped to Lillian’s feet, but my clan didn’t need to know that.

I released that breath when a spark of magick erupted, and a door manifested next to the statue as if it had been there the whole time. I gave Hanson a nod before we left him behind with a couple others to guard the entrance. The rest of us used our inhuman speed to catch up to the fleeing handlers, slowed down by the batch of slaves they thankfully hadn’t yet disposed of.

Stupidly cocky and endlessly devoted to nonsensical traditionalism. At least the born remained predictable.

The passageway smelled of damp sediment, earth, and stone, dim witch lights hovering above. Shouts broke out, and I knew we had mere seconds before they’d kill every last one of their captives.

My shadows got to them before I did, grabbing ahold of born and yanking them, throwing them against walls.

Frightened screams pierced through the air. We rounded a corner and found several born surrounding a group of humans, mostly women, treating them like merely a herd of cattle. As if I wasn’t already livid enough, I unleashed a feral growl when I saw that one of the girls couldn’t have been much older than sixteen.

I exploded in a fit of wrath. My fists raised, and my eyes rolled back as my shadows acted as my extended sight and limbs. They grabbed weapons straight out of borns’ hands, twisting through the air and acting as shields for the humans and deathly weapons for their captors. At the sudden jolt of intuition from my magick, I opened my real eyes again, just in time for two born who’d lunged at me with poisoned long swords.

I pulled a few shadows back toward me. Mason took one of the born, her waves of shadow swiping at his feet and sending him sprawling. She lunged at him, a stream of razor-sharp shadow cutting open his chest and rotting him from the inside out.

The second one I took out by hand, reveling in the way my dagger pierced right through his neck. I loved bathing in born blood. Another of life’s simplest pleasures.

The clan made short work of the rest, but as I dodged and moved, I noticed an unattended born woman lunge for a slave. She grabbed the human by the hair and slit her throat just as one of my shadows had pierced through her skull. They both dropped to the ground, and the girls nearest to the fallen enslaved woman wailed and reached for her limp body.

My heart clenched. Two other pieces of information made themselves known in a split second. First, we’d still been left fighting underlings. Evangeline’s scent lingered in the passageway, along with several other sources of ancient born power, but none of those players had stuck around to face us. They’d likely hightailed it straight for Durian. Fucking cowards.

Second, I was expending a great deal of power. I would need to feed soon upon return, and the thought of feeding again made me sick. Which of course made me think of Scarlett.

I scanned the group, as well as the slain blonde on the ground. It didn’t take long to spot Isabella, upright, arms crossed, and glaring like a feral alley cat.

“What are you staring at?” she hissed.

At first, I thought she had no idea who she was snarling at, but the far likelier truth was that she knew exactly who I was.

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