Page 31 of When Death Whispers

Still the shadows are mine to command. They stretch, they crawl, they whisper in the dark corners of her mind. Snow Pea. Always mine.

Yet, the beast lurks here too, his presence a foul stain upon my Snow Pea. He is tethered to her in ways I cannot sever and though I would delight in unmaking him, I cannot risk her fragile mortality. Not yet. Not until I knowIcan consume it.

I linger in the measly reach of shadows—watching, waiting. I feel her heartbeat—a delicate thrum, a melody that quickens with fear every time she sees me shift. It should be mine alone to savor. But the beast’s energy clashes with mine, an affront I can abide no longer.

When he slithers into my domain, unbidden and unworthy, it’s all I can do to contain my rage.

“Well, fancy seeing you here, Bone Daddy,” he says, his voice a low rumble laced with mockery. His form solidifies, his beastly visage towering yet absurd, fur rippling and fangs bared in a grotesque grin.

Bone...daddy?What utter nonsense is this?

“You know, you seem restless. Perhaps it’s been too long since you last fed,” he continues. “Maybe you should go elsewhere tonight. And all the nights thereafter…”

“Rädslakorcu,” I snarl, my voice a hiss that cuts through the air. “You trespass where you do not belong.”

He chuckles, the sound a grating jeer. “And you linger where you cannot act. Tell me, Steorfan, how does it feel to be so… impotent?” He prowls closer, his form radiating insolence. “Once again… she summoned me, you know. Chose me. Not you. We are connected, she and I.”

The shadows around us ripple with the force of my fury. “She ismine!Her death was promised to me from her first breath. You are but a parasite, feeding where you have no claim.”

“Claim?” Rädslakorcu’s grin widens, his eyes gleaming. “You speak of claims as though the girl’s life is yours to dictate. But she lives, Steo. And as long as she does, she is mine to enjoy.”

Fury ripples from me down my shadows and I lunge, my form surging toward him with the weight of centuries worth of hunger and wrath. He meets me head-on, his claws slashing through the air, his laughter echoing as we collide. The clash sends ripples through the fabric of the mortal realm, a battle of energies that tears at the fragile boundary between our world and hers.

He fights with the wild abandon of a beast, but I am no mere shadow to be scattered. I am the end of all things, the harbinger of final breaths, the keeper of inevitable truths. My strikes are precise, calculated, meant to unmake. Yet he counters with maddening agility, his movements chaotic and primal.

“You are a relic,” he snarls as he twists away from my grasp. “A hollow remnant of a time long past. She does not fear you as she once did with me around. And without her fear, what are you?”

His words bite deep, but they do not deter me. He does not know that I do not only seek fear and death. Not any longer. Not where my Snow Pea is concerned. I’ve tasted something much more potent from her and I willnotshare. I press forward, my form shifting and striking, each blow driving him back. “You cannot protect her forever, beast. Mortality is fleeting, and her end will come.”

“Perhaps,” he concedes, his grin faltering for the first time. “But not by your hand if I have any say.”

With a final surge of energy born of brutality and fear, he forces me back, his form solidifying as he returns to her realm. I remain in the shadows, seething, my essence fraying at the edges from hunger. He has won this skirmish, but the battle is far from over.

Snow Pea.MySnow Pea.

I will have her. No beast, no tether, no force in this cursed realm will deny me.

Her death will be mine.

The taste of her fear still echoes in my marrow, but it is not enough—not when she now dares to defy, not when a new thrill she discovered now vibrates in my shadows. Her fear is thinned, dulled by the beast’s interference. And thathuman—that warm-blooded thing with too-long limbs and a laugh like it belongs in the sun—he stands too close. Watches too closely.

He thinks he matters.

He does not.

But shelooksat him like he might. Trusts him. Craves his company. And that alone is enough to stoke my fury into something feral.

She was alone for so long. Icultivatedthat loneliness. I fed on it. Molded it. And now? Now it slips away like water through the cracks.

I rage silently from the shadows of the bakery—just far enough to avoid the worst of the fluorescent poison light—but close enough tosee. My vision narrows, my form coiling tighter, until it locks onto one thing:

The human.

He stands beneath a vent, stretching, arms loose, posture easy. Relaxed. Complacent.

Arrogant.

Andin my way.

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