Page 49 of Shade of Ruin

I stop moving, and the pain stops, but those blisters don’t go away. I stand perfectly still, not even wanting to blink for fear of more pain, and the Shade stands inches away from me. So close I can feel his breath on me. Those black tipped nails run over my cheek and slide down my neck.

“Calm down and breathe slowly,” he whispers to me. “I want you to be successful, Maeve Arden. I want you to survive and help your cousin to get better. These things won’t happen until you’re stronger, though.”

His breath whispers over my skin, hot and in direct opposition to the cool shadows that slip from his fingertips so similar to mine.

Those nails slide down my throat to where my tunic is, and for just a moment, I remember the way it felt when his shadows criss-crossed over my body, under my clothes. The way he’d touched me so intimately without ever putting a finger on me.

That drum that had been drowned out by fear roars to life. His nails go back to my throat, the black tips pressing against my skin as he softly tightens his grip. I swallow hard as that drumbeat tries to force shadows out of my fingertips.

The Shade’s hand moves over my face, gently covering my eyes for a moment, and suddenly the entire world is covered in darkness. Yet, I don’t care because I feel those black-tinted nails moving to the back of my neck.

“See it moving, Maeve,” he whispers to me, the lips I’ve never seen before only inches from my ear. “See it move and let the shadows flow just like your fingers would.”

I think about the imitation of him, and I see it gliding across the ground. My mind struggles with it, with believing that it’s possible, but while the Shade’s nails are on me, I don’t care.

Then I feel his shadows slipping under my clothes again. There’s no teasing this time, as they slide under my pants and press between my legs. A gasp escapes my lips as those shadows solidify just enough that I feel a pressure, an urgency. The world is nothing but blackness and he whispers, “See the effigy moving.”

Those shadows move ever so slightly, pressing harder against me, almost begging me forsomething. Something I don’t understand. Something that I desperately want. The sensation of soft pressure against my stomach begins at my navel, tracing a path down. Like kisses. Is the Shade kissing me?

The pressure between my legs intensifies, and the Shade whispers again, “Make it move, or I’ll stop.”

That drum inside me is pounding so fast that I wonder if anything isn’t covered in shadows. Then the pressure fades just a bit, and I whisper, “No. Please don’t stop.” I visualize the effigy and feel it moving. Not just a mental image.

No, for the first time, I can feel my shadows. They’re not separate from me, not a thing I control. No, they’re a part of me. Like my hair or fingernails. They simply grow faster than I’m used to.

I can feel the ground, can feel the way they curl and shift and slide as I pull the effigy toward me. I can feel when it nearly collapses, but I stabilize it. Then I make it move again, pulling it toward me.

“That’s it,” he whispers from behind me, and the shadows between my legs stiffen and become almost completely solid,pressing against my core. His hands press against my tunic-covered stomach until they’re nearly touching my breasts.

And then he releases me. His hands, his shadows, his… everything. It all seems to disappear, including the shadows covering my eyes. Right in front of me, a foot away, stands his effigy.

“Excellent work, Maeve,” he whispers in that dark voice that he was using to whisper in my ear. “Now you need to learn to use revulsion.”

I gape at him as he strides toward the nearest tree. Revulsion? How can he even think about training after the way he made me feel? My body is going crazy, and he wants me to focus on anything other than his touch?

He turns around and moves away from me. “Revulsion is the opposite of desire. Where desire is the need to be close to someone or something—to feel them and have them—revulsion is the need to be far away from them. It’s being sickened at the thought of them touching you. Revulsion is not how you feel about your enemy. It’s how you feel about your failures and about the people who have hurt you.”

“No,” I say. The Shade whirls around, and I could swear that he’s furious. My body is throbbing so hard that it feels like the entire world should move in time to my heartbeat. Shadows pour from my fingertips, but the anger inside me wars with it. “You keep touching me,” I hiss. “You keep making me feel things I shouldn’t feel for you. Making me want things I shouldn’t want. Then you walk away, leaving me desperate for your touch. You cannot expect me to focus on something brand new when I feel like this. When all I want is…”

“Is my hands on you?” he says so softly that I know that it’s a warning. “Or do you want more, Maeve Arden?”

When he moves toward me, I recognize the ferality. I know the look to his movements and the feel behind that cloak hood.I know that he’s on the verge of hurting me. No different from the day that I hurt Hazel and would have hurt Aunt Prudence if she’d tried to punish me.

I’m not a stupid human, though, and with each day that I practice, I feel more strength flowing through my veins. Especially tonight.

Which is why, when shadows wreathe his hands in black, I prepare myself. I know he could make that tally mark on my wrist burn just as he did earlier, but he’s angry, and he wants to make me pay for my insolence. For my questioning him.

I prepare to fight back, to use magic and my strength to defend myself. But he’s so fast. Like lightning, his hands move to my wrists so quickly that I can’t react. When I try to struggle, it’s like trying to struggle against stone or steel. Unbendable. Unbreakable. A force of nature that no Fae, much less a Wyrdling, can break.

He lifts my hands into the air, and the shadows wrapped around his hands tighten, holding me in place and leaving his hands free to do whatever he wants. I struggle against them, but there really is no way to get free. “You want more? I could give you more. I could give you more than you can handle. I could make you scream until morning.”

Fear takes a hold of me and doesn’t let go as he stands in front of me, his fingers hooked in the waistband of my pants. Unceremoniously, he pulls them down to my knees, baring me to the darkness of the woods. More shadows snake across the ground and wrap around my ankles, tightening until I know I can’t move my feet anymore than I can move my hands.

And then the shadows wreathe my body in darkness, sliding across my bare skin like a wind. The Shade watches me, both of our eyes open as that inky darkness makes my body feel things that I’d never imagined. It slips inside me, fitting in a way that only shadows could.

I can’t stop the moan that comes from my lips. The heat that radiates from between my legs should melt these shadows, but they keep swirling and tickling my most intimate parts as the Shade watches with no reaction. With no movement. As cold and heartless as I could ever imagine.

That doesn’t change how badly I need more. How badly I needhim.

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