Page 129 of Shadows of Ruin

Squeezing my hand one last time, his head rolled to the side, and his arm fell to the ground, revealing an inky black circular dark-one mark on his forearm.

Dead.

I stared at the mark. The sign that Hale had tried to take on a force none of us understood, all to save me. I wasn’t worthy of that kind of sacrifice. He had taken on evil for me. And died because of it.

A heart-wrenching scream left my lips, echoing throughout the meadow. “Come back,” I begged.

I brought my head to his unmoving chest as I closed my eyes. My bloodied hands trembled against his body. I could not keep doing this. I could not watch those I cared about falling, slaughtered, over and over. I stood, anger coursing through me.

A shout called my attention to a dark one running toward me. Good. I would kill them all. Realizing my weaponremained lodged in the head of a dark one several feet away, I reached for the white dagger at my thigh.

I screamed right back at the man, diving over Hale’s body, and thrust my blade deep into the gut of the attacker. Reckless and with abandon.

A sooty black mist erupted from his body with a loud crackle, as he crumpled to the ground instantly. The dark one's expression, once wild and crazed, now appeared relieved.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

Eyes wide, I stared in disbelief, not understanding.

What in the actual fuck?

It was as if the darkness left his body.

An eerie silence fell as my immediate surroundings quieted.

Gripping the blade tighter, I pivoted toward Andras, who stared at me with unmasked rage. Piles of bodies lay littered beside him, and his cloak glowed from the gems powered by the magic of the lifeless dead surrounding him.

“You are next, Andras Braumlyn,” I swore at him. A surprised, pained sneer deformed his lip as he stared at the man kneeling in front of me in complete disbelief.

“Casimir!” Andras shouted. The worm had not ventured far from Andras. With his eyes on the dead man beside me, he pointed and whispered something to Casimir.

I bolted into action, running toward the pair of them. They would die.Now. A dark puff of smoke appeared, and in a feat of magic I had never seen before, they were gone.

Vanished into thin air—and they weren’t the only ones gone. The previously overwhelming number of dark ones we thought we were battling disappeared too.

His army had been almost completely an illusion.

“No!” I screamed, reaching the spot where they just stood. “Come back and fight me, you cowards!”

A pair of strong hands grabbed me around my waist,lifting me into the air. I didn’t need to look to know it was Kade, the whispers of his shadows caressing my skin.

“Not now, Little Rebel.” Kade turned, throwing me over his shoulder, and ran toward the safety of our group. The few dark ones remaining, left out in the cold by their master, looked around and saw him gone. They fled, retreating into the woods.

I fought against his hold. “Let me go. We have to get them.”

Kade didn’t stop until we reached Storm, Raya, Corbin, and a limping Kalliah. Jax lay on the ground, his arm bloody, but not so bad that he didn’t give me a smile.

“Where’s Ian?” I asked in a panic.

Kade set me down and grasped my face in his hands. “Look at me,” he commanded. “Ian's fine. We have to get you to safety.” The heat of his touch sent sizzling waves of energy through me. Energy I was so used to feeling that it had become second nature for the thrum to never stop.

“But look at the destruction he has caused. Look at the death surrounding us.” I pointed to the bodies littered across the battlefield. “We have to stop him. I refuse to let anyone else die in my name. Hale—” I choked. “Hale is dead.”

His eyes softened, but he remained firm in his stance. “This is not the final battle. His time will come, I promise you. But for now, we need to regroup. We need to come up with a plan so we are not caught unsuspecting again.”

“We can’t leave him,” I whispered.

Kade kissed my forehead. “We will bury him before we go.”

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