Page 11 of Court of Bone and Amethyst

Swimming in my anger is a feeling that’s now becoming familiar, the swirl of the shadows within me. I can feel them pulsing beneath my skin, tingling off the tips of my fingers. The night air wraps around me like an old friend. I’ve always been at home in the dark. I just had to suppress it all those years at the Amethyst Palace. Perhaps that’s why it’s become strong so quickly here in Valaron. Here, I can finally be myself.

I hear Zyren’s footsteps a moment before he places his hand on my shoulder, spinning me around. “Where are you going?”

“Away from you,” I snarl.

He recoils in surprise for a moment before his eyes narrow and his jaw rolls. “Like it or not, you are stuck with me, and my job is to keep you alive. We need to mount back up and be on our way.”

“I am not going anywhere with you!”

I pull away from him and turn, but he’s on me before I even make it a full stride, grabbing my hand and yanking me back toward him. My shadows spin around me and a pulse of power moves between us. Zyren tenses, his eyes darkening.

“You’re not afraid I’m going to lose control,” I snap. “You’re afraid that being with me is going to causeyouto lose control.”

Where our hands are still clasped, my shadows swirl down around my wrist and across to his, binding us together. I can feel a buildup of pressure behind my eyes, and I know they’re darkening.

“Maybe we’re not supposed to fight this part of us,” I say softly. “Did that ever occur to you?”

His own eyes are nearly black now, only a halo of deep pewter around the pupils. “Sarielle,” he says, his voice several octaves deeper, half a warning and half a pained groan.

And even though I’m still furious with him, a bigger part of mecraveshim, craves that feeling of his rough hands on my body. Iwanthim to lose control, like he did in the meadow. He is mine, and I am done suppressing what lives within me.

I step closer to him, pulling his hand around behind me to cup the base of my spine. Our hips and chest brush together as I settle into the curve of his body. I tilt my head back, eyes locked to his. A low rumble moves through his chest, and he leans toward me, his mouth hovering over mine. He inhales slowly, drinking me in, our breath mixing. A shudder moves through him, and his hand tightens on my back.

Then he straightens abruptly, eyes flaring wide.

The shrill neigh of one of the horses shatters the night. Zyren whips around, spinning away from me.

“What is it?” I ask breathily, my heart now racing in my chest in an entirely different way.

“We’re being hunted,” he says, voice dark and deadly. He turns back to look at me. “To the horses. Now!”

Chapter Eight

Zyren

We run tothe horses, who stand a few dozen paces away in the river. I ignore the panicked questions in Sarielle’s gaze, lifting her onto her horse and then mounting mine in one swift movement. I kick my gelding into a gallop, making sure Sarielle is keeping pace alongside, and we flee across the plains.

I glance once over my shoulder before I turn my eyes north. There’s a glow of flame a couple miles behind us, but that isn’t what has my stomach in an iron knot. It’s the spot of blackest black against the horizon, the mass of darkness that stands out against the midnight sky as if a hole to another universe has opened inside it. Shadows darker than the night itself.

I have only sensed such dark magic one other time in my life.

We push the horses to their maximum, the ground flying by beneath us. I’d told Sarielle that we weren’t going to the Court of Bones, but now we have no choice. We can’t outrun that which hunts us, not for long. A battle will be fought tonight, and I don’t want to be caught out on the open plains. As places go tomake a final stand, it’s fitting. If not tragic, that the last of House Otreyas may fall in the same grave as her family.

It’s a bit overkill that Avonia sent a monster as well as an army.

The bigger question ishowshe did it. How did she manage to summon an ancient nightmare beyond the barrier of their territory? When Sarielle and I wed, we performed the blood spell to seal all of them beyond the river on the other side of the Forever Mountains. There shouldn’t be any monsters on this side of Valaron, let alone one of the oldest, most deadly nightmares there is.

All we can do now is flee.

The night rushes past in black ribbons. My horse’s mane flies in my face, his body breaking out into a sweat. Foam from his mouth flecks his neck. The pounding of hooves envelopes me, making my head buzz after a while, drowning out all other sounds. I do not hear the wind or the insects in the grasses and shrubs we pass through. I do not hear the pounding of my own heart. The night becomes nothing but rhythm, the hoofbeats counting down like the ticking of a clock.

We have a significant head start on those that pursue us, but we are still many miles from the Court of Bone, with nowhere in between to make a stand. It’s possible we’ll have to face our enemies out here in the open plains, and if we do, I do not think we’ll see the light of another day. Of course, that likelihood is slim even if wedomake it to the abandoned castle.

I would face ten armies rather than face the beast that hunts us.

Leaning low across my horse’s neck, I glance over my shoulder to gage the distance remaining between us. The flaming torches I’d seen in the distance aren’t any closer, but I know the nightmare is. I can’t catch a glimpse of it moving at this speed, but somehow I canfeelit. I can feel how it swallows the night asit moves, devouring all light in its path, what little there is out here beneath the stars. I can feel it because a shadow lives within me, too. A part of me that is the same as the monster.

And back there, by the river, I’d nearly let that part of me out.

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