Page 4 of Shade of Ruin

Wyrdling. A half-blood. Forgotten by the Fae. Pushed out by mortals. Destined to live alone forever. The word that villagers whisper when I walk by. The word I’ve hated more than anything my entire life.

Anger that was bubbling up inside me boils over, and I reach out for my cousin’s hand. I’ve never been this furious. I can’t remember ever wanting to break things this badly.

For the first time, I let go of the control I hold over my emotions. Hazel tries to pull her hand away, but she’s slow. Far, far slower than me. My fingers close around her frail wrist, and when she tries to pry them off, I ignore her.

The anger inside me feels alive, and I can feel it screaming to get out. I killed a wolf with no hesitation. Right now, as I look into my cousin’s eyes, that anger wants to do so much more than kill. It doesn’t want to end a threat. It wants my cousin to hurt.

There’s fear in her eyes. Deep down, I know that it’s that she’s seeing me like everyone else does. The look in her eye is one I’ve seen too many times.

Wyrdling. She said the word. It’s like a physical pain rips through me as I stare into her fear-stricken eyes, and she screams. Her hands claw at my fingers, but we both know she can’t match my strength.

“Stop, Maeve! It hurts!” Her voice should pull me away from the ache that throbs in my breast. It should make me rememberthat I spent my childhood protecting her in the forests. I started hunting because I could make a little extra money to buy things in town for the two of us. She’s the only person I’ve had in my life that cared about me. Her voice in pain should shake me out of the grip that my anger has on me.

But it doesn’t.

Instead, it only gets worse. I want her to hurt. I want her to feel the pain that I’ve shouldered for all these years as people did anything they could to stay away from me. “Maybe your parentswereright,” I hiss. “Maybe I am dangerous.” I tighten my grip on her wrist, and something shifts inside of me. The anger spikes, and then it’s gone. She lets out a scream that’swrong.

Immediately, I let go of Hazel’s wrist. Right where my fingers were, there are thin black lines, like smoke. They crawl up her arm, wrapping it in a spiderweb of hazy tendrils like a tattoo that’s just a little fuzzy.

I look on in horror as her other hand claws at the smokey lines hard enough to draw blood. But the drops of blood aren’t red. They’re a midnight black like ink running down her wrist and falling to the floor of the kitchen.

She tries to scream again, but it comes out as a hiss. The lines keep climbing up her arm, slowly but surely. Hazel’s eyes are filled with pure terror, no different from if she were watching a wolf bite her and was powerless to stop it.

For the first time in a very long time, I feel panic rush through me. What can I do? This is… not something I’m familiar with. I can’t say the word even in my head. It would mean that everything that people have said is true.Magic.

That’s when I know what to do. There’s almost no chance it’ll work, but almost no chance is better than nothing.

One of Hazel and my first lessons with Vesta was about the power of names. And the example she used was the Shade.

I fall to my knees, trying my best to ignore Hazel and the panic that’s doing its best to fill me up. If Vesta was right, then if I pray hard enough, there’s a chance that the Shade will hear me, and he’s said to be able to fix almost anything. For a price.

Everyone has heard of the Shade. But Vesta taught us just how to call to him. She always said that if you could visualize someone well enough, and you put enough force into their name, you could draw them to you. She told us that the Shade was used to listening to those calls.

I close my eyes and envision the image I’ve always had of the Shade. A black-cloaked man whose head is bowed just slightly. He’s quiet and barely moves. If he’d been anyone else, he’d probably fade into the background, except that he exudes shadow magic. Dark waves of inky shadows swirl around him like black water in a pool that only he’s in.

“Please Shade, hear my plea,” I say. “Save my cousin, Shade. I beg you.” I focus on the image in my head, imagining the being whose name is both a curse and a cry of desperation. Everything in me does its best to will him into being, even though the likelihood that he’d help a simple human girl is impossibly low.

I look at my cousin, see those terrible lines crawling across her skin. Lines that I put there. Hazel’s body contorts, her nails digging into her skin as she gasps for breath, and I don’t know what to do. I’ve seen so many animals die from terrible wounds, and the only thing I could ever do was end their misery just a little faster. There’s no doubt in my mind that my cousin is going to die, and there’s nothing I can do for her. My hand goes to the belt knife at my waist, but I can’t actually pull the knife from its sheath. Even though I see the fear and pain in her eyes, I can’t slide the metal across her throat like I’d do for something I’d hunted. I can’t kill my cousin even if it there’s no saving her.

And then there’s a subtle shifting in the air, like opening a window to a stuffy room. A sudden change in the pressure, andIknowthat he’s here. Just like I’d known that there had been predators across the clearing today. In a single movement, I stand and whirl around to face the being that’s both a legend and a nightmare. Everyone knows the rules of dealing with him.

He will grant you a favor if you call him, and in return, you will be in his debt forever until he calls it in. And there is no way to escape the debt. The only thing he promises not to require of his debtors is their lives.

And he’s the only one who can help Hazel.

I’ve heard the stories my entire life, but I never realized how much they focused on his cloak. No one speaks of how my eyes are drawn to those shadows under his hood. They don’t talk about how I feel compelled to reach out for that hood, to pull it down and look at that face that’s forever shrouded in darkness.

The cloak is a simple thing, flat black linen like so many priests’, but where theirs end above their shoes, the Shade’s doesn’t end. It simply flows into the shadows of the floor, almost becoming invisible. Even if I look specifically at it, I struggle to grasp an image of the shape of its hem.

“You are in need of a favor?” he asks. His voice feels old and haunting, like he’s seen far more of the world than I ever will, and yet he’s here. It snaps me out of my shock when I look down at Hazel. Her hand is at her throat, the black lines climbing up her neck.

She gasps for breath, but none comes to her, and I say, “Help my cousin. She… I did something, and now she’s like this. Please. I’ll give you anything or do anything you ask.”

The cloaked figure walks by me, and the scent of cedar and salt assails my senses. He says nothing as he kneels down and runs his long, black-tinted nails over Hazel’s face, never actually touching her skin with his fingers. That’s when I realize his hands look normal other than the black tinted nails. Not like a monster.

Underneath that cloak hides a person. Or, more likely, one of theFae.

Somehow, that thought is more frightening than a legend being in my house. Everyone knows how dangerous the Fae are. The miller’s baby was stolen by them when she was barely a year old. Everyone’s known someone who’s been stolen away by them.

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