Page 28 of Shannon in Sombra

Blame Mal? I… I can’t do that.

Which means I go right back to my top suspect.

“It had to have been the duke,” I spit out, knowing that just saying that could earn me a stint in his dungeons while wearing enchanted chains. I don’t care. Deep down, I can’t shake the sensation that Haures has something to do with Alana’s inexplicable disappearance.

“It wasn’t.”

At the certainty in the male’s voice coming from behind me, I whirl around.

It’s Dagon, and his expression tells me two things: that he isn’t just standing up for the demon duke out of some innate sense of loyalty, and that he found something that backs up his certainty.

“How do you know?”

“Because I found prints,” is his answer. “Bootprints. Human bootprints.” He pauses, then drops the bomb on me:

“Humanmalebootprints.”

CHAPTER12

VOW

MALPHAS

No matter how many years I live in Nuit, I will never get used to the skulls that line the edge of Sombra’s shadows just outside of our village.

A near-impenetrable wall of darkness, not even the hunters walk too far inside of them. To hunt the prey beasts that feed our village, they don’t have to. Only the predators—like the arkoda or the cambroga—live further inside. Same as those in Sombra who have gone fully demonic, turning to the dark before they end their own existence.

The horned skulls are all that remains of those who did. Over the centuries, Duke Haures has even sentenced those that betrayed him to the lost shadows. Some of these remains belong to the demons he executed. Others are demons who didn’t just fade away, but sought out a quicker and more brutal end.

Sometimes, immortality isn’t a promise. Forever can be a threat. Over my first millennium, I existed with the hope that I would someday find my one true mate. How long would I have simply endured for the idea of the female who might be mine? Ten centuries? Twenty? The doppelseers passedthirtybefore they claimed Tandy… would I have grown tired of the monotony and ended up just another skull on the edge of the ash fields?

I don’t know. I can’t say. But as I ignore the skulls, focusing instead on what Dagon has found, I realize it doesn’t matter. Forever has become something that I will cling to with my claws.

But how can I when it seems that it’s slipping through my fingers like ash? Some unknown male snuck into ourhome. He took our child. My mate’s anguished cry broke my heart; her tears scald me more than the heated rain falling from the sky.

In all my years, I’ve only seen a true rain fall in Nuit three times: once while I was a young demon; two days ago when Alana cried; and now. Only this time it isn’t a fluke. What started as a drizzle—a human word I’m familiar with from my time on Earth—has become more insistent, closer to the threatening downpour from the other day. It hisses and spits and splashes as it finds a patch of lava beneath the ash. Minutes pass—horrible, terrible minutes where my child is missing, and I’m helpless to do anything right now other than chase after her—and the rain doesn’t stop.

Just like the prophecy foretold, the fires of Sombra are being dampened by the unusual water, the rain continuing to fall even as anger has seemingly dried my mate’s eyes.

She is glaring at the print Dagon found in the muddy ash. Because of the drizzle, the ground has left evidence of the male who snuck out through the back of our house with our hopefully slumbering babe; though the rain tells us it was most likely otherwise. Dagon followed them here, to the edge of the shadows, and is quiet as he waits for her to come to the same conclusion that he already has about the owner of these footsteps.

A male. Ahumanmale.

This unknown human male is the only one who could have made these footprints. First of all, they are from shoes, something more Sombra demons don’t bother with. Large, flat boots that dug deep into the dirt as though the male was heavy enough to sink into the ground. A Sombra demon would shift to their shadows if attempting to be stealthy; we wouldn’t leave prints at all.

More than that, I cansmellhim.

The scent is distinctly human, and I agree that he must be a male. There’s a darkness to his scent, though, and he stinks of despair and terror and, at the same time,hope.

What does that mean? I don’t know, and neither does Dagon.

As for Shannon?—

“You’re sure?” my mate asks at last, her voice shaky, her emotions raw. She may have my essence, but her human nose is nowhere near as powerful as a Sombra demon’s so I’m not surprised she doubts Dagon. “A guy? A human guy? Not a woman?” She shudders out a breath. “It can’t be a chick. What the hell am I saying? That Kennedy took Alana? Or Billie? No.”

“I can promise you that it wasn’t Sierra, either, as the red moon kept my mate and I too busy to even leave Glaine’s home,” Dagon confirms. “Sammael and his mate went to stay with the mage. Even if these prints didn’t suggest a human male, all of the human females in Sombra are bonded. The red moon would’ve left them too distracted to do this.”

Distracted…

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