Page 96 of Shade of Ruin

He doesn’t say it, but we both know it. “Stop being afraid of being who you are, Maeve. You’re not some prudish woman in Blackgrove. You’re royalty. You’re powerful. You aren’t beholden to the way people from forgotten villages would act. Do faunsor harpies wear pants? Are they ashamed of their naked bodies being on display?”

I don’t respond, but when the Shade’s shadows disappear, leaving my body bare again, I don’t cover up. “Stop acting like I’ve ever hurt you, Maeve,” he finishes. “I have only ever helped you, so stop fighting me.”

He’s right. He’s made me nervous and scared and uncomfortable, and he even caused me a little pain when I repaid that debt, but he’s never really hurt me. “What do you want from me today, Shade?” I say quietly, not agreeing with him, but not arguing either.

“It’s time that you learned the hardest and most dangerous lesson for wielding shadows. It’s time to learn to shadow walk. Will I need to help your shadows to come alive today?” he asks, and this time, when his shadows race toward me, I know what they’re going to do.

Streams of inky darkness slide over my bare skin, leaving it damp and sensitive. Like being caressed by a cloud or fog. So soft, yet still there. “No, I have no problems producing shadows anymore,” I say. “At least not when I can take off my mother’s ring.”

He nods. “Then we’ll go somewhere that you can do that.” His shadows leave my body and swirl between us, a writhing pool of darkness on top of the gold-flecked crimson marble.

“Shouldn’t I get some clothes?” I ask. “It won’t take long for me to get dressed.”

The Shade looks at me, cocking his head, and I know the answer. “Are you going to stop me from getting dressed?” I ask, my voice becoming steel.

“No, we both know that would require me to command a debt, but I would be disappointed in you. If you’d like clothing so badly, then make it yourself. Become the person you were born to be.”

A growl rises in my throat. The Shade never lets me do anything simply. I was supposed to be relaxing today. “Fine,” I say. “Except that I can’t make enough shadows here.”

“Then let’s be on our way.” His voice is almost cheerful. A first.

His hands are wreathed in shadows when he takes my hand in his. “Don’t do anything. Do not, under any circumstances, try to control anything. Once again, you need to trust me or terrible things will happen. So I’m asking you one more time. Do you trust me?”

It’s a question that has plagued my mind so many times about both the Shade and Cole. The Shade has never done anything to hurt me. Yet, every memory of him ends up with him getting closer and closer to me. It has him controlling my body.

I almost gave myself to him. I almost begged him to do all the things that I’d fantasized about. He was pushing me to do just that. Do I trust him? No.

“I won’t control anything,” I say.

He nods, and then he steps into the shadows that I know are revulsion shadows. He’s going to make us both go away.

My heart’s racing as he pulls me into nothingness. A pitch-black void that is so oppressive I feel like it’s going to crush me. Nothingness is the only way to describe it. Empty and void of any life, it soaks into my skin, pushing into my very soul, and begs me to just let go. To stop wanting anything. To give up.

The darkness that surrounds me only wants me to become a part of it.

And as I begin to give into it, I feel the Shade’s hand grip mine tighter, to keep it from slipping. Then I’m flying, moving so fast that for that split second, I wonder if I’m going to survive the speed. And then I’m being forced out of the ground into a wooded glen. A soft pool has formed around a spring in the ground.

Deer drink from it, completely unaware of us only a few feet behind them. Sunlight streams down through the trees like rays of glorious life.

Because this is not that oppressive darkness that calls to me. It is not the terrible, terrible place behind the shadows.

My stomach twists in knots and I fall to the ground. I was so close to being dead and gone. Lost to that darkness forever. My body shakes, and I’m nearly sick.

“It happens to everyone the first time,” the Shade says. The deer hear him and immediately take off in leaping sprints deeper into the forest. A squirrel screams at him, and I can do nothing except try to calm my stomach.

“That is the void between worlds where shadows come from. The House of Shadows is the connection to that void. It is the place for sleep. For secrets. For death.”

I finally feel like I’ve got control over my body again, and I slowly stand on shaky legs. “I could have died,” I say.

“It’s good that you didn’t try to control anything, isn’t it?” The way he says it is almost like he’s taunting me. He knows I don’t trust him, and he’s showing me just how badly it’d have gone if I had ignored his warning.

I slip off my mother’s ring, ignoring his comment, and I let the shadows flow out of my fingertips. They slip and slide over my body, clinging to me just as they did the very first time I used them.

And when they settle into place, I’m wearing a midnight black dress. Thin and nearly sheer, it only just hides my skin. Not nearly as clumsy as the Shade’s. I’m covered, yet not. The breeze that flows through the glen tickles my skin, and a leaf falls from a branch overhead. It tickles my back as it falls through my shadows.

The Shade nods his head slowly. “It’s beautiful,” he murmurs.

I step toward the pool in the center of the glen to look at myself in the reflection. The black dress clings to me in a way that not even a corset can. Solid, yet flowing. It’s so light and airy that spider silk couldn’t compare. Midnight black that even the sunlight can’t pierce.

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