Page 50 of Shade of Ruin

“Please,” I whisper, wanting him to do everything he’s suggesting.

He says nothing. Instead, he takes one step toward me. He puts his hand between my legs, and a warmth so great that I can barely believe it flows through me. A finger slides inside me, and a shiver runs up my spine, dark and delicious.

But then he says, “No,” and pulls his hand away. He turns and walks away, the shadows dissipating again, and then he says, “Now I want you to think of something youhate.”

The fire burns at my wrist, and I grit my teeth, my pants around my knees still. If he wants me to think of someone I hate… I think of the Shade, pure anger rolling through me, threatening to wash away every bit of desire as I stare at him. And something changes. Those emotions blend and change and become something different. A single emotion. Revulsion. I want the Shade gone.

I feel the shadows flowing from my fingers before I see them. Everything in the clearing has become inky darkness between the two of us, but these tightly coiled shadows are different. Wrong, somehow. Unnatural.

And yet, I feel like I’ve felt them before. Like these are almost more familiar.

“Good,” the Shade says as my shadows crawl across the ground toward him. That feeling inside me doesn’t seem to end, like a fire that has more fuel than it could ever burn. I grit my teeth and push those shadows toward him.

But then he says, “Now stop. Pull up your damned pants, Maeve.”

His voice is shocking. I hadn’t even thought about the fact that my pants are still down, but it shakes me out of the emotions that had filled me up. The shadows that were only a few feet away from the Shade fade, leavingnothingbehind.

It’s… bizarre. All the shadows in the clearing dissipate, both the Shade and I letting go of them, and it’s easy to tell where the revulsion shadows were. I quickly pull up my pants, and the Shade doesn’t so much as glance at me.

“Revulsion makes things go away. It takes them into the void between worlds, and the darkness does everything it can to convince that item or person to let go. To become part of it.”

I blink and walk down the trail that’s been left by my revulsion shadows. No sticks. No grass or leaves or even piles of dirt. A small indentation on the forest floor is all that’s left between me and the Shade. Those shadows make thingsgo away.

“And if they touch a person?” I ask, no longer worried about what I’d wanted the Shade to do to me. “Do they die?”

“That part of the person goes into the void. If the shadows swallow the entire person, they’re brought to the void.”

They go into the void. “And they die?” I whisper.

“The darkness is very convincing,” the Shade says. “I have never heard of anyone other than members of the House of Shadows coming back from the darkness without an escort.”

A true combat magic. A way to protect myself from the Fae. “Thank you,” I whisper.

He nods his head. “Your training is done tonight.” And then he moves faster than ever before, stepping directly in front of me, inches away from me.

“Don’t you ever tell me ‘No’ again. You owe me three debts still, and I could make those three debts exceptionally uncomfortable.”

I stand up a little straighter. “I’m not afraid to pay my debts, Shade.”

I could swear that his lips curl up even though they’re hidden by the cloak. “That’s because you don’t know what I would ask.”

He turns around and takes several steps before saying, “Your debt is paid, Maeve Arden. You still have three left.”

He raises his hand, and something shifts inside me, like a bond between the Shade and I changes. The debt. I look down, and one of the tally marks is blurring and fading. Like smoke dissipating.

I turn back to see him as he takes a step and falls into the shadows at his feet. Swallowed up by the inky blackness, he disappears.

I take a deep breath and let it out slowly.I just repaid a debt.I don’t know how to feel about it, though. Especially with the emotions and sensations that the Shade drew out in me. Before he’d shown up, I’d wanted to understand how I was feeling about Cole. Now it’s the Shade that I can’t stop thinking about. The way he made me feel. The way he made mebeg.

Even so, all of that power seems to roll through me. I slide my mother’s ring on, and when I lift my hand into the air to force shadows from my fingertips, they show up as thin tendrils. Nothing compared to what I could do without the ring on, but enough that it’s terrifying.

I could hurt someone now, even with the ring on.

That’s power, and even though I no longer have any kind of safety net to depend on, it means I’m getting stronger, which is exactly what I need.

Because tomorrow, I’m entering the most dangerous place in the world.

Chapter 24

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