Page 47 of The Shadow Heir

A second longer and I would’ve taken water into my lungs. Then cold air washed over my wet body as I was pulled from the waves and toward the clifftop like a bird.

Grasses prickled against my skin as I hit the earth.

My lungs burned as I sucked in air, and my wheezing was accompanied by the groans of my rescuer.

Casimiro stood a few steps away, hands on his knees, heaving air through clenched teeth as black lines pulsed up from his hands toward his elbows. When he spied me watching him, he straightened and slung his hair backward with one hand, tossing a few water droplets into the sunlight.

“I knew you’d try to leave.”

Fists formed and loosened at his sides. His white shirt stuck to his skin, and his chin dripped water like a garden fountain. He lifted his face toward the sky, eyes squeezed shut and mouth open in an uncharacteristic grimace.

“Stars, Valencia, you could have died.”

The words tumbled from his lips as if by accident, and I found that my inability to stand had nothing to do with the pain in my spine. I stared at him, trying to read the sarcasm that was surely buried somewhere, or the venom that would be hidden in his meaning. I found none.

He leveled his dark eyes at me, his cold veneer quickly returning, then glanced down at the black lines spreading up his arm. “Don’t flatter yourself by thinking your life matters to me,” he said. “When someone bound to our court escapes, the magic that ties your blood to the one who made the bargain will bind your body until you are retrieved.”

Finally, I clambered to my feet in my now heavy dress. “Why not let me die then?” I managed to breathe out.

“Because,” he said simply, his tone calm and even once more, “if you die outside of the prescribed trials you’ve agreed to, my father will suffer. The bargain comes with a price for both parties. And while I’m not opposed to my father suffering, I am opposed to him coming home early.”

My brows lifted. Here was a valuable piece of information, almost like he was handing it to me on a platter. But why would he do that? To establish trust? He’d have to do more than drag me from the waters and tell me that he didn’t love his father to make me trust him. The warm sea breeze loosened a halo of tiny hairs from my wet curls and tossed them in my face. Casimiro’s dark hair whipped backward in the wind, revealing his face in the bright sun in a way that made him look almost boyish—certainly not the grim captor who sulked through his own palace halls.

I glanced at his blackening arms, and though he was trying to hide it, whatever was happening to him was causing him pain. The skin around his eyes was tight and his mouth moved less than usual as he spoke. “And you inherited these bargains from your father?”

His jaw twitched before he answered. “My father left me in charge of ensuringhedoes not suffer.”

“Where is your father?”

Casimiro’s eyes narrowed. “Away.”

“I gathered that. How long will you bein charge?” I parroted his words with mock deference.

He stormed forward, and I matched his movements, stepping backward, barefoot, over the dry grass. “Stop running, Zara. I’m only trying to take us—”

But I’d already stopped at the sound of my name, and his chest bumped into my shoulder. In Avencia, men did not use women’s first names until they were well acquainted. The only men who’d ever called me Zara were my father and a half-dozen past lovers—or rather, men I’d hoped would be my true love.

But it turned out true love wasn’t something I could craft, uncover, or insert within another person, no matter how much I liked them. Love was supposed to be fierce and forever, a force that nothing in the world could stop. Of all the men who’dclaimed to adore me, not one had loved me like that. My true love was still out there, searching, as I was, for the match that would finally make this mad world make sense. I would survive my year of torture and find him—one day.

The heir to the Shadow Court wrapped one cold hand around my upper arm, gently but firmly, and in another blink, a doorway opened up in the very air beside us. Another second and he pulled me through after him.

We stood in a black hallway so dim in comparison to the sunlit clifftop that I felt momentarily blind.

My clothes and hair no longer held a drop of ocean water. Casimiro’s were dry as well. He turned away from me in the dim hall—no, room—and shoved his sleeves back up to his elbows. His arms were streaked black. As my eyes adjusted, I made out rows of shelves dotted with tiny vials and a fur rug beneath a painted wooden desk stacked with books, loose papers, and an ink pot. A few of the vials glowed faintly, creating the only light in the room. Casimiro again grabbed my arm and turned me so that my gaze was averted away from the desk and wall of shelves and toward a wide archway that led into a small anteroom set with two other arches.

“I didn’t bring you to my room so you could stay,” he sneered.

“Your room?” My throat closed up a little in fear. My head whipped around and searched for the doorway we’d come through. There was an etching on the wall, the outline of a door with an eye on it, but it was too dim to make out any other designs. “You have a door to Avencia in yourroom?”

He huffed. “It leads wherever I want it to.” He noticed the tensing in my muscles and added, “And it only ever opens for me.”

He marched me through this small room into a space even darker, with no glowing vials to cast any light. He seemed perfectly capable of seeing in the darkness, and he directed meto another door marked with a small moon-shaped window. Through the tiny window, a thousand stars shone.

Casimiro ripped open the door and starlight revealed the black lines still snaking up his arm. They’d diminished somewhat, now only discoloring his hands and wrists.

“Will that go away?” I asked, staring at his bulging veins. The binding sensation had broken as soon as he’d snatched me from the water, before we’d even returned to these halls. I shivered at the thought that being in his arms counted as beingretrievedby the shadows.

His eyes held a faint blue glow as he fisted his hands at his sides. “Come. I didn’t rescue you just to make you swoon.”

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