Page 25 of Beasts of Briar
“How are you doing this?” I asked.
She looked up at me, flashing another mischievous smile. “Let’s just focus on the task at hand.”
Once again, her voice, those words, caught hold of me, wrapping around me, commanding me. Something in my brain told me not to listen. Told me this wasn’t right, but every time I tried to stop walking or ask another question, her voice drowned out my own.
“Do you live all alone in this castle?” she asked.
“My shadows are always with me,” I said. “They’re here. My most trusted ones.”
“Anyone else?”
“A few servants,” I mumbled.
“Mm,” she said. “Any guards?”
I scoffed. Such a human question. “I don’t need guards to protect me.”
“Ah, of course not. Not when you’re such a big, strong spirit.”
I hated that spirit nonsense. We hadn’t been called the Seven Spirits when we walked among mortals. In fact, it hadn’t been until I’d been freed, came to this place that I’d even heard the term. I came across it in the library here, in text after text after text. I was called Spirit Shadow. A spirit. Like something that didn’t even exist. Maybe that was the point. That’s all we were to these elementals. They’d never known us, seen us. We might as well have been ghosts.
We neared the stairs at the end of the hallway. They wound down toward the main level of the castle.
“How did you know we were here? In your garden?” the woman asked, hand still clasped tight with mine.
“I know everything that goes on in my castle,” I said.
She peered at me with curiosity. “But how?”
My mouth clamped shut. This woman and her questions. I didn’t like them. They were prodding. They were...
“Oh come.” Her voice broke through my thoughts. “You know you want to tell me. Show off all that power. You haven’t had an audience in far too long, no one to be in awe of you.”
I’d never cared about having an audience, but her voice coaxed the confession out of me.
“My shadows are connected to me. They see all. They know all. The moment someone crosses that boundary, they alert me.”
It was how I’d protected this place, my identity, for so long.
“Interesting,” she murmured, the music, the enchantment, from her voice gone.
She frowned for a moment, and it took me back to the garden. To her breaking in and trying to steal from me. Just a weed. But it was mine nevertheless, and no one stole from Kairoth, god of shadows.
The woman tugged me closer. “Remember, those prisoners must be freed. All you care about is your privacy. We’ll go away, and it will be like we were never here at all.”
There was a frantic edge to her voice that didn’t quite dispel my thoughts like her previous words had. This woman. She was in my dreams. She was making me dream.
I jolted and yanked my hand from hers, and she backed up against the wall, a scowl replacing that charming smile she’d had just moments ago. It was like she was a different person now with the way she frowned at me.
“You’re harder to break than I’d hoped.” She bared her teeth, this small woman with wild black hair and scorching eyes.
“How are you doing this? You shouldn’t have this kind of power,” I murmured as she disappeared in front of me. “I am a god, and you are a...” I didn’t know what she was.
But I was going to find out.
Chapter Fifteen
YEAR 201, ERA OF THE GODS
