Page 131 of Enchanted Shadows
My magic was inconsolable, begging for me to enter this fight.
“Kess,” I begged at a whisper, unable to see anything save for the magic lighting up my immediate surroundings all drenched in my wife’s shadows. I wanted to light up her shadows around us, but that would only give our location away.
“You have to stop glowing,” she bit out. “They can’t see through my shadows unless your magic gets too bright. Shut it down and we can start walking toward the ship while I hold this.”
“Kess.”
“I know it goes against your instincts, Owen, just trust me. It’s either that or you have to leave now without me.”
“Like hell?—”
“That’s what I thought,” she snapped. “Stubborn man.”
Another something slapped against her shadows, again aimed at my position within Kessara’s shadows.
I knew we had a long walk to the ship if we were being attacked. Still at a whisper, I felt the need to ask, “Can you hold them that long?”
Her lack of answer was enough of one. She needed both of her hands and all of her focus, so I stopped talking and pushed my magic down, though it fought me hard.
A phantom hand of her shadows slipped into my hand and started pulling me toward the ship.
Not trusting her to deliver me to the ship by her shadows while she might not have actually moved a foot from this spot, I moved my free hand and wrapped it around her waist, careful to position myself not to touch her hands, and whispered in her ear, “I’m not letting go of you.”
So together we began walking slowly within her shadows. I was walking facing toward the ship, my arm around her waist, while she was taking slow and steady steps backward.
Within her shadows, their shadows still attacked us in droves all around. It was darker than the darkest night. I had to rely on my other senses, hearing our steps, the smell of Kessara’s skin. The feel of her the only thing keeping my panic at bay.
I estimated we were about twenty feet away when my magic flared, and I felt Kessara shake under the weight of some sort of attack. Something sounded eerily like wood cracking and splitting.
How much was she fighting off? I was stuck in a war I was blind in. And I could do nothing, my power would only give away our location and make it easier for them to find us. I only hoped they couldn’t see from within Kessara’s thick shadows my magic flare every time they attacked.
“Let me know the moment you want to drop your shadows,” I whispered to Kessara. “I will gladly take over.”
“This fight is mine,” she grit out.
“But you don’t have to fight it alone.” I kept my arm around her and kept walking. Kept fighting against my magic. Kept fighting against my instincts. But I’d do it, I’d keep doing it, because I loved this woman.
This was not a ruse. And I wasn’t sure it ever fully was. She wasn’t mine. Yeah, we were married, but Kessara was a princess. She didn’t belong with me. She had finally gotten her parents to see Damek for what he truly was. She deserved her full freedom now. From any and all men trying to cage her. Me included.
Hearing and feeling the fierceness of her shadows as they gave back just as much as the men threw at us, I wondered how any of them ever dared to think they could tame her at all.
Kessara’s hands clenched as she groaned under the weight of yet another attack of the shadows.
“I’m ready,” I whispered. At this point trying to shove my magic down was painful. I was walking in my own personal hell. The woman I loved was being attacked and there being nothing I could do to help.
“New plan. I’m going to drop my shadows for only two seconds. Can you send out your power toward them? Everywhere there is a dense mass of shadows. Then shut it down as fast as possible and I will move us quickly away.”
“Gladly.” Finally. Finally, I could so something.
I waited and turned to face the same direction she was, willing my magic to build but not glow. Not yet.
“Ready?” she said from around her clenched teeth.
“Yeah.”
“Now,” she grunted, before removing the shadows enough that the evening sky and the docks could be spotted again.
I didn’t waste any time. I sent my magic out in obnoxiously thick strands and sent it traveling to every single pocket of perfect darkness, willed it to every threat. Willed that it stayed low andtraveled beneath the shadows, but when they found the assailants, it would reach up and cement in place one of their hands. Hands seemed to be just as important to shadow wielders as it was to palm wielders.
