Page 66 of Decoy

My heart jolted. “What’s happened?”

Wordlessly he handed me a missive. Horror seized my breath upon tearing it open and reading Father’s spidery scrawl:The shadows have Laila.

I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, my entire focus eclipsed by the news that immediately corrected my waning resolve.

Laila…

For an agonizing moment, fear rendered me completely frozen; the next, I hooked into the shadows’ power. I wasn’t entirely certain they’d cooperate considering my recent habit of rebellion, but considering my purpose was to heed their dire warning, they allowed me to melt into each one stretching across the night towards my destination.

Our family’s estate resided just outside the capital, close to both the palace and several other noble houses, an ideal position for our assassin trade. It was a short distance by carriage and even closer when I ran with the shadows’ momentum urging me forward.

Even cutting the travel to half an hour by magic felt exceedingly slow when my little sister needed me. Moving with the aid of the shadows was second nature, leaving my thoughts at the mercy of my fears.

I’d thought I’d won over the shadows’ temporary cooperation through blood and promises, but I should have known I’d never fully escaped their manipulative control. As tonight’s vision had made all too clear, my family had always been these dark wardens’ prisoners, our freedom sacrificed for the power that came at the cost of each of our souls.

Due to his familial association with our assassin house, Malik was able to borrow enough of the shadows’ powers to travel close beside me. For all his previous warnings, he didn’t offer any of the admonitions I so adamantly deserved; he didn’t need to, not when I was attacking myself with all manner of sharp reprimands for my foolishness.

A lifetime of imprisonment had given me firsthand knowledge of the shadows’ true nature, yet I’d naively chosen to turn a blind eye and instead focus on an impossible dream. Whether I’d angered them through neglecting my allegiance, from poking around the origins of the curse, or through my secret desires to escape their chains, they’d retaliated in the worst possible way.

I finally spotted my manor in the distance, a beacon in the endless night. I hastily scaled the wall to my sister’s bedroom on the third floor and slipped inside. Shadows crowded the room in an engulfing cloud of blackness. Considering Laila hadn’t entered into a formal contract, they’d always tended to stay away and instead prowl the corridors just outside her room, but now it was as if every shadow in the vicinity preyed on her.

“Get away from her!”

My desperate hiss went unanswered, though the shadows were at least accommodating enough to part just enough to provide a narrow path that twisted towards her bedside, assistance rendered unnecessary considering I’d have clawed my way through every last one of them to reach my sister.

“Laila?” I fell on my knees beside her and seized her cold and clammy hand, seeming extra small within my shaky grip.

She didn’t answer, nor did she even acknowledge my presence as she stared gauntly at the ceiling, her sharp breaths slow and uneven. The shadows had nearly smothered the candlelight, leaving barely enough to faintly illuminate her deathly pallid expression.

The shadows had captured my attention by the most effective means possible. The whispered stories passed down through the generations had taught me what they were capable of, but mere imaginings were nothing to seeing their work firsthand whenever the shadows punished those who failed their assassinations by entering their body to slowly consume their spirit, leaving behind an empty, comatose shell that brought a depression so intense that it led to eventual death.

And now they’d infected my precious sister, smothering her previous light like a flame.

I rested a gentle hand on Laila’s brow, damp with sweat. No matter how much I called her name, she was deaf to my earnest pleas, likely trapped in a nightmare which, if I didn’t act, she’d never awake from.

My despair deepened, suffocating me along with the tendrils of the surrounding night. What had been the purpose of my lifelong sacrifice if my precious sister was taken from me now? I’d sold my soul to the shadows so she could be free to live with the light that I, as the curse’s heir and prisoner, would never know. But now they’d tainted her world with a darkness which she could never escape…unless I did their bidding.

“What do you want from me?” I could barely manage the words past the tears clogging my throat.

Blood.

Aversion twisted my stomach at the chilling word, even as I embraced it for the promise of my sister’s safety…and not only hers. The shadows’ threats against her were only the beginning; the curse might have first chosen the one I held most dear, but they’d eventually poison the remainder of the household, followed by the tenants on our land, one by one until I complied with their sinister demands.

Death was what the shadows most coveted. Usually we fed them with the blood of strangers—many of whom deserved to die. What did their lives matter if their forced sacrifice could preserve those I truly cared for?

Yet my duties to the curse became blurred when I became entangled with their next chosen victim, the Estorian crown princess. I’d spent enough time with her to know she didn’t deserve to die like the curse’s other chosen victims. Would I have eventually come to the same conclusion with the targets of my past missions if I’d taken the time to investigate the reasons they’d been marked? The horrific thought entwined with the fear already consuming me.

How long would dear Laila be able to hold out? Too much time spent trapped in the shadows’ clutches would take her away from me forever. I already felt her life drifting away like sand in an hourglass, compelling me to act.

I had to kill. For my sister.

Deep down I’d always known that however long I delayed my mission, in the end I couldn’t escape my charge to murder the princess. Her beguiling beauty, spirit, friendship, and even her kisses had all distracted me from my true purpose, poisoning my resolve and with it my entire family.

But though I understood the torturous necessity of sacrificing her life to satisfy the shadows’ bloodlust, hesitancy still trapped me in indecision, preventing me from taking the action necessary. It was more than the thought of murder that was horrific in and of itself, it was finally being forced to walk the dark path I’d managed to avoid for so long, from which there could be no return.

It was no longer just my own conscience and Laila I wanted to be a good man for, but the woman I was growing to love.

As much as I resisted the idea, in the end the choice had already been made. My growing feelings for the princess, while precious, weren’t as deep as those I already felt for my beloved sister. My love for her made it impossible to escape the destiny fate had been so cruel to ensnare me in.

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